was impossible to stand upon them without first cutting places for the feet with an axe.  Along the face of this smooth, snowy escarpment, which rose directly out of two or three fathoms of water, lay our only route to Yamsk.  The prospect of getting over it without meeting with some disaster seemed very faint, for the slightest caving away of the snow would tumble us all into the open sea; but as there was no alternative, we fastened our dogs to cakes of ice, distributed our axes and hatchets, threw off our heavy fur coats, and began cutting out a road.

We worked hard all day, and by six o’clock in the evening had cut a deep trench three feet in width along the face of the escarpment to a point about a mile and a quarter west of the mouth of the Viliga.  Here we were again stopped, however, by a difficulty infinitely worse than any that we had surmounted.  The beach, which had previously extended in one unbroken line along the foot of the cliffs, here suddenly disappeared, and the mass of snow over which we had been cutting a road came to an abrupt termination.  Unsupported from beneath, the whole escarpment had caved away into the sea, leaving a gap of open water about thirty-five feet in width, out of which rose the black perpendicular wall of the coast.  There was no possibility of getting across without the assistance of a pontoon bridge.  Tired and disheartened, we were compelled to camp on the slope of the escarpment for the night, with no prospect of being able to do anything in the morning except return with all possible speed to the Viliga, and abandon the idea of reaching Yamsk altogether.

A wilder, more dangerous location for a camp than that which we occupied could hardly be found in Siberia, and I watched with the greatest uneasiness the signs of the weather as it began to grow dark.  The huge sloping snow-drift upon which we stood rose directly out of the water, and, so far as we knew, it might have no other foundation than a narrow strip of ice.  If so, the faintest breeze from any direction except north would roll in waves high enough to undermine and break up the whole escarpment, and either precipitate us with an avalanche of snow into the open sea, or leave us clinging like barnacles to the bare face of the precipice, seventy-five feet above it.  Neither alternative was pleasant to contemplate, and I determined, if possible, to find a place of greater security.  Leet, with his usual recklessness, dug himself out what he called a “bedroom” in the snow about fifty feet above the water, and promised me “a good night’s sleep” if I would accept his hospitality and share his cave; but under the circumstances I thought best to decline.  His “bedroom,” bed, and bedding might all tumble into the sea before morning, and his “good night’s sleep” be indefinitely prolonged.  Going back a short distance in the direction of the Viliga, I finally discovered a place where a small stream had once fallen over the summit of the cliff, and had worn out a steep narrow channel in its face.  In the rocky, uneven bed of this little ravine the natives and I stretched ourselves out for the night, our bodies inclined at an angle of forty-five degrees—­our heads, of course, up-hill.