startled by the sight of a long line of dark objects passing swiftly across the bare mountain-top only a few yards away and plunging down into the ravine out of which we had just come.  I caught only a glimpse of them, but they seemed to be dog-sledges, and with a great shout we started in pursuit.  Dog-sledges they were, and as we drew nearer I recognised among them the old sealskin covered pavoska which I had left at Anadyrsk the previous winter, and which I knew must be occupied by an American.  With heart beating fast from excitement I sprang from my sledge, ran up to the pavoska, and demanded in English, “Who is it?” It was too dark to recognise faces, but I knew well the voice that answered “Bush!” and never was that voice more welcome.  For more than three weeks I had not seen a countryman nor spoken a word of English; I was lonely and disheartened by constantly accumulating misfortunes, when suddenly at midnight on a desolate mountain-top, in a storm, I met an old friend and comrade whom I had almost given up as dead.  It was a joyful meeting.  The natives who had gone to Anadyr Bay in search of Bush and his party had returned in safety, bringing Bush with them, and he was on his way to Gizhiga to carry the news of the famine and get provisions and help.  He had been stopped by the storm as we had, and when it abated a little at midnight we had both started from opposite sides to cross the mountain, and had thus met upon the summit.

We went back together to my deserted camp on the south side of the mountain, blew up the embers of my still smouldering fire, spread down our bearskins, and sat there talking until we were as white as polar bears with the drifting snow, and day began to break in the East.

Bush brought more bad news.  They had gone down to the mouth of the Anadyr, as the priest had already informed me, in the early part of June, and had waited there for the Company’s vessels almost four months.  Their provisions had finally given out, and they had been compelled to subsist upon the few fish that they were able to catch from day to day, and go hungry when they could catch none.  For salt they scraped the staves of an old pork-barrel which had been left at Macrae’s camp the previous winter, and for coffee they drank burned rice water.  At last, however, salt and rice both failed, and they were reduced to an unvarying and often scanty diet of boiled fish, without coffee, bread, or salt.  Living in the midst of a great moss swamp fifty miles from the nearest tree, dressing in skins for the want of anything else, suffering frequently from hunger, tormented constantly by mosquitoes, from which they had no protection, and looking day after day and week after week for vessels which never came, their situation was certainly miserable.  The Company’s bark Golden Gate had finally arrived in October, bringing twenty-five men and a small steamer; but winter had already set in, and five days afterwards,