Lieut.  Bruce joined Meares at Vladivostock, and he must have thought he was joining a travelling circus when he ran into this outfit.  Meares crossed by Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostock, thence made preparation to travel round the Sea of Okotsk to collect the necessary dogs.  He started off by train to Kharbarovsk, where he got in touch with the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, General Unterberger, who helped him immensely, got him a good travelling sledge for the trip down the Amur River to Nikolievsk, and wrote a letter which he gave Meares to show at the post-houses and whenever in difficulties.  The Governor-General ordered frozen food to be got ready for Meares’s journey.  A thousand versts (roughly 660 miles) had to be traversed, and this only took seven days; the going was interesting at times, and Meares had good weather on the sledge journey to Nikolievsk, although the cold was intense and sometimes the road was very bad.  The sledges were horse-drawn between the post-houses.

Mr. Rogers, the English manager of the Russo-Chinese Bank of Nikolievsk, helped Meares considerably in securing the dogs.  Most of them were picked up in the neighbourhood of that place, but were not chosen before they had been given some hard driving tests.  In one of the trial journeys the dogs pulled down a horse and nearly killed it before they could be beaten off.  Some of them have a good deal of the wolf in their blood.

A settlement of “fish-skin” Indians was visited in the dog search, and Meares told us of natives who dressed in cured skins of salmons.  These people were expert hunters who trekked weeks on end with just a pack of food on their backs, their travelling being done on snowshoes.

After taking great pains, thirty-four fine dogs were collected, all used to hard sledge travelling, and these Meares shipped on board steamer which took him and his menagerie by river to Kharbarovsk.  The journey to Vladivostock was by train.  The Russian officials allowed him to hitch on a couple of cattle trucks containing the dogs to the mail train for that part of the journey.

Russian soldiers and Chinamen were detailed by the Governor-General to assist the procession through the streets of Vladivostock to their kennels here.  A slight upset was caused by a mad dog rushing in amongst them, but fortunately it was killed before any of our dogs were bitten.  Some of them were flecked by the foam from the mad dog’s jaws, but none were any the worse after a good carbolic bath.  After the dogs were settled and in good shape the ponies were collected and brought from up-country in batches.  On arrival at the Siberian capital they were examined by the Government vet., after which Meares and an Australian trainer picked the best, until a score were purchased.  Horse boxes were obtained now and feed tins made for the voyage and, after minor troubles with shipping firms, Meares, Bruce, and three Russians sailed from