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But nature makes the most of the three months of warmth. Within a comparatively short time everything develops and unfolds. The great plain of Yakutsk offers a charming spectacle; it is fertile, and here and there cultivation already begins to show.

He therefore sailed in the Onward with me for Okhotsk, intending to disembark there, start for Yakutsk on horseback, and send me back in the ship to pick up our working parties along the coast. The last of July found us becalmed, about fifty miles off the harbour and river of Okhotsk.

To these also belong the Bouriats, by Lake Baikal; the Toungusians from the Yenesei to the Amur; the Lamorets, by the Sea of Okhotsk; and the Olentzi, in the Government of Irkutsk. Races of eastern Siberia: the Koriaks, living in the north-eastern corner of Siberia; the Youkagirs, in the territory of Yakutsk; the Kamchadales, in Kamchatka. Their number amounts to 500,000.

Two or three years ago a mail carrier from Ayan to Yakutsk was visited by a bear during a night halt. The mail bag was lying by a tree a few steps from the Cossack, and near the bank of a brook. The bear seized and opened the pouch, regardless of the government seal on the outside. After turning the letter package several times in his paws, he tossed it into the brook.

Couriers, officers, and travelers of every kind pay at each station the rate fixed by law. In Kamchatka and North Eastern Siberia the post route is equipped with dog-teams, just as it has horses in more southerly latitudes. In the northern part of Yakutsk the reindeer is used for postal or traveling service.

Judging from our experience in Yakutsk, the Siberian custom has the support of sound reason, inasmuch as the amount of drinking involved in the riotous ceremony of "provozhanie" unfits a man for any place except bed, and any occupation more strenuous than slumber. A man could never see his friend off in the morning and then go back to his business.

The Company's vessels, it is true, had been very late in their arrival, and one of them, the Onward, had not come at all; but the Palmetto had brought twelve or fourteen more men and a full supply of tools and provisions, Major Abaza had gone to Yakutsk to hire six or eight hundred native labourers and purchase three hundred horses, and we hoped that the first of February would find the work progressing rapidly along the whole extent of the line.

Then, as I sat at the table, he dictated the following lines: "It is by our order that the woman Olga Alexandrovna Bauer, native of Orel, shall be deported without trial to Yakutsk, in Eastern Siberia, and there sent to penal servitude for life. And further, that Ivan Ivanovitch shall be confined for life in the Fortress of Schlüsselburg. Given at our Palace of Tsarskoe-Selo, December 1st, 1916."

In Samoieda, Yakutsk, Kamtschatka, and Russian Lapland, it is found of the richest quality, and darkest color. In its habits, it resembles the ermine. It preys on small squirrels and birds, sleeps by day, and prowls for food during the night.

The worst and most difficult part of the post-route between Okhotsk and Yakutsk, viz., the mountainous part, is maintained by a half-wild tribe of arctic nomads known to the Russians as Tunguses.