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Updated: June 2, 2025
Arnold at Yamsk, Sandford on the Tilghai, and Bush at Anadyrsk, were trying, with the few men they had, to accomplish some work; but, owing to deep snow-storms, intensely cold weather, and a general lack everywhere of provisions and dogs, their efforts were mostly fruitless.
We left our camp in the valley early on the following morning, pushed on across the large and heavily timbered river called the Aklán, and entered upon the great steppe which stretches away from its northern bank toward Anadyrsk.
In the hut of a Christianised but ignorant native near Anadyrsk, I once saw an engraved portrait, cut from Harper's Weekly, of Major General Dix, framed, hung up in a corner of the room and worshipped as a Russian saint!
On the 20th of February, while we were all yet living together at Anadyrsk, there occurred one of the grandest displays of the arctic aurora which had been observed there for more than fifty years, and which exhibited such unusual and extraordinary brilliancy as to astonish and frighten even the natives.
A native of Anadyrsk once happened to tell me, in the course of conversation, that he had only five days' dog-food left. "But," said I, "what do you intend to do at the end of those five days?" "Bokh yevo znaiet" God only knows! was the characteristic response, and the native turned carelessly away as if it were a matter of no consequence whatever.
Such was the first news which I heard from the Northern District a famine at Anadyrsk, Bush and party absent since July, and eight natives and dog-sledges missing since the middle of October. I did not see how the state of affairs could be any worse, and I spent a sleepless night in thinking over the situation and trying to decide upon some plan of operations.
I was not at all satisfied with the route over which we had passed from Shestakóva to Anadyrsk, on account of its barrenness, and the impossibility of transporting heavy telegraph poles over its great snowy steppes from the few wooded rivers by which it was traversed.
The party of Americans which we had thus found buried in the snow, more than three hundred versts from Anadyrsk, had been landed there by one of the Company's vessels, some time in September.
The Major wrote as follows: "In case what God forbid Macrae and party have not arrived at Anadyrsk, you will immediately, upon the receipt of this letter, do your utmost to deliver them from their too long winter quarters at the mouth of the Anadyr, where they were landed in September.
Owing to their peculiarly isolated situation, and the difficulties and hardships of travel during the only season in which they are accessible, they had never, previous to our arrival, been visited by any foreigner, with the single exception of a Swedish officer in the Russian service, who led an exploring party from Anadyrsk toward Bering Strait in the winter of 1859-60.
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