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A forest of birch extended about half way up the mountain side, and was succeeded by low evergreen bushes, trailing-pine, and finally by bare black rocks rising high over all, where not even the hardy reindeer-moss could find soil enough to bury its roots.
The ravine up which our road lay was badly choked with massive rocks, patches of trailing-pine, and dense thickets of alder, and it cost us two hours' more hard work to cut a trail through it with axes. Before dark, however, we had reached the site of our second day's camp, and about midnight we arrived at the ruined yurt where we had eaten lunch five days before.
For two days we travelled over this barren snowy plain, seeing no vegetation but stunted trees and patches of trailing-pine along the banks of occasional streams, and no life except one or two solitary ravens and a red fox. The bleak and dreary landscape could have been described in two words snow and sky.
As we rested our dogs a few moments upon the summit, before commencing our descent, we tried to discern through the gathering gloom the black tents which we imagined stood somewhere beneath our feet; but nothing save the dark patches of trailing-pine broke the dead white of the level steppe. The encampment was hidden by a projecting shoulder of the mountain.
Our camp near Mount Nalgim abounded in trailing-pine and we made a fire which sent up a column of ruddy flame ten feet in height; but it did not seem to have much influence upon the atmosphere.
On great ocean-like plains, destitute of all other vegetation, this trailing-pine lurks beneath the snow, and covers the ground in places with a perfect network of gnarled, twisted, and interlocking trunks. For some reason it always seems to die when it has attained a certain age, and wherever you find its green spiny foliage you will also find dry white trunks as inflammable as tinder.
I only know that just before noon we left the tundra, as this kind of moss steppe is called, and descended gradually into a region of the wildest, rockiest character, where all vegetation disappeared except a few stunted patches of trailing-pine.
After supper the drivers piled dry branches of trailing-pine upon the fire until it sent up a column of hot ruddy flame ten feet in height, and then gathering in a picturesque group around the blaze, they sang for hours the wild melancholy songs of the Kamchadals, and told never-ending stories of hardship and adventure on the great steppes and along the coast of the "Icy Sea."
We left Mikina early, November 23d, and started out upon another great snowy plain, where there was no vegetation whatever except a little wiry grass and a few meagre patches of trailing-pine.
He said that as far as he had ever gone towards Anadyr Bay there was trailing-pine enough along the banks of the river to supply us with firewood, and that the country was no worse than much of that over which we had already travelled between Gizhiga and Anadyrsk. He said that he was entirely willing to undertake the trip, and would go with his own team of dogs wherever we would lead the way.
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