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Updated: May 2, 2025
Our progress toward Anadyrsk after we left the coast of the Okhotsk Sea was very slow, on account both of the shortness of the days, and the depth and softness of the freshly fallen snow.
When we met the Anadyrsk people, therefore, at Gizhiga, late in November, and learned that nothing had been heard of any such party, we of course concluded that for some reason the plan which Colonel Bulkley proposed had been given up.
These directions I had already anticipated and carried out, and Macrae's party, or at least all I could find of it, was now living in Anadyrsk. When the Major wrote this letter, however, he did not suppose that Dodd and I would hear of the landing of the party through the Wandering Chukchis, or that we would think of going in search of them without orders.
Returning from Anadyrsk, I reached Gizhiga on the 15th of December, after a hard and lonely journey of sixteen days. A special courier had just arrived there from Yakutsk, bringing letters and orders from Major Abaza.
Fearful for the safety of the party of men which he presumed to have been landed by the engineer-in-chief at the mouth of the Anadyr River, Major Abaza had intended to go directly from Kamenoi to Anadyrsk himself in search of them, and to send Dodd and me westward along the coast of the Okhotsk Sea to meet Mahood and Bush.
Bulkley, the chief-engineer of the enterprise, had promised us, when we sailed from San Francisco, that he would land a party of men with a whale boat at or near the mouth of the Anadyr River, early enough in the season so that they could ascend the river to the settlement of Anadyrsk and open communication with us by the first winter road.
Bush had been put in command of the Northern District from Penzhina to Bering Strait, and he, together with Macrae, Harder, and Smith, had been left at Anadyrsk for the summer. As soon as the Anadyr River should open, this party was directed to descend it in canoes to its mouth, and there await the arrival of one of the Company's vessels from San Francisco, with reinforcements and supplies.
I then sent for the chief of a band of Wandering Koraks who happened to be encamped near Penzhina, and prevailed upon him to drive his herd of reindeer to Anadyrsk, and kill enough to supply the starving inhabitants with food until they could get other help.
I caught only a glimpse of them, but they seemed to be dog-sledges, and with a great shout we started in pursuit. Dog-sledges they were, and as we drew nearer I recognised among them the old sealskin covered pavoska which I had left at Anadyrsk the previous winter, and which I knew must be occupied by an American.
A journey from Gizhiga to the last settlement, Anadyrsk, on the Arctic Circle, would occupy from twenty to thirty days, according to weather, and beyond that point there was no possibility of going under any circumstances. The region west of Gizhiga, along the coast of the Okhotsk Sea, was reported to be better, but very rugged and mountainous, and heavily timbered with pine and larch.
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