[Illustration:  THE YURT IN THE “STORMY GORGE OF THE VILIGA” From a painting by George A. Frost]

All night the wind roared a deep, hoarse bass through the forest which sheltered the yurt, and at daylight on the following morning there was no abatement of the storm.  We knew that it might blow without intermission in that ravine for two weeks, and we had only four days’ dog-food and provisions left.  Something must be done.  The Viliga Mountains which blocked up the road to Yamsk were cut by three gaps or passes, all of which opened into the valley, and in clear weather could be easily found and crossed.  In such a storm, however, as the one which had overtaken us, a hundred passes would be of no avail, because the drifting snow hid everything from sight at a distance of thirty feet, and we were as likely to go up the side of a peak as up the right pass, even if we could make our dogs face the storm at all, which was doubtful.  After breakfast we held a council of war for the purpose of determining what it would be best to do.  Our guide thought that our best course would be to go down the Viliga River to the coast, and make our way westward, if possible, along what he called the “pripaika”—­a narrow strip of sea ice generally found at the water’s edge under the cliffs of a precipitous coast line.  He could not promise us that this route would be practicable, but he had heard that there was a beach for at least a part of the distance between the Viliga and Yamsk, and he thought that we might make our way along this beach and the pripaika, or ice-foot, to a ravine, twenty-five or thirty miles farther west, which would lead us up on the tundra beyond the mountains.  We could at least try this shelf of ice under the cliffs, and if we should find it impassable we could return, while if we went into the mountains in such a blizzard we might never get back.  The plan suggested by the guide seemed to me a bold and attractive one and I decided to adopt it.  Making our way down the river, in clouds of flying snow, we soon reached the coast, and started westward, along a narrow strip of ice-encumbered beach, between the open water of the sea and a long line of black perpendicular cliffs, one hundred and fifty to three hundred feet in height.  We were making very fair progress when we found ourselves suddenly confronted by an entirely unexpected and apparently insurmountable obstacle.  The beach, as far as we could see to the westward, was completely filled up from the water’s edge to a height of seventy-five or a hundred feet by enormous drifts of snow, which had been gradually accumulating there throughout the winter, and which now masked the whole face of the precipice, and left no room for passage between it and the sea.  These snow-drifts, by frequent alternations of warm and cold weather, had been rendered almost as hard and slippery as ice, and as they sloped upward toward the tops of the cliffs at an angle of seventy-five or eighty degrees, it