down, and then by lying down flat upon my face on the ice; but all was of no avail; my slippery furs took no hold of the smooth, treacherous surface, and I drifted away even faster than before.  I had already torn off my mittens, and as I slid at last over a rough place in the ice I succeeded in getting my finger-nails into the little corrugations of the surface and in stopping my perilous drift; but I hardly dared breathe lest I should lose my hold.  Seeing my situation, Leet slid to me the sharp iron-spiked oerstel, which is used to check the speed of a sledge in descending hills, and by digging this into the ice at short intervals I crept back to shore, only a short distance above the open water at the mouth of the river, into which my mittens had already gone.  Our guide was still sliding slowly and at intervals down stream, but Paderin went to his assistance with another oerstel, and together they brought his sledge once more to land.  I would have been quite satisfied now to turn back and get out of the storm; but our guide’s blood was up, and cross the valley he would if we lost all our sledges in the sea.  He had warned us of the danger and we had insisted upon coming on; we must now take the consequences.  As it was evidently impossible to cross the river at this point, we struggled up its left bank in the teeth of the storm almost half a mile, until we reached a bend which put land between us and the open water.  Here we made a second attempt, and were successful.  Crossing a low ridge on the west side of the “Propashchina,” we reached another small stream known as the Viliga, at the foot of the Viliga Mountains.  Along this there extended a narrow strip of dense timber, and in this timber, somewhere, stood the yurt of which we were in search.  Our guide seemed to find the road by a sort of instinct, for the drifting clouds of snow hid even our-leading dogs from sight, and all that we could see of the country was the ground on which we stood.  About an hour before dark, tired and chilled to the bone, we drew up before a little log hut in the woods, which our guide said was the Viliga yurt.  The last travellers who had occupied it had left the chimney hole open, and it was nearly filled with snow, but we cleared it out as well as we could, built a fire on the ground in the centre, and, regardless of the smoke, crouched around it to drink tea.  We had seen nothing of the postilion since noon, and hardly thought it possible that he could reach the yurt; but just as it began to grow dark we heard the howling of his dogs in the woods, and in a few moments he made his appearance.  Our party now numbered nine men—­two Americans, three Russians, and four Koraks—­and a wild-looking crowd it was, as it squatted around the fire in that low smoke-blackened hut, drinking tea and listening to the howling wind.  As there was not room enough for all to sleep inside the yurt, the Koraks camped out-doors on the snow, and before morning were half buried in a drift.