ot at the end of twenty-two days, but of thirty-three. Here
he succumbed immediately, and although his sickbed was in the
comfortable home of the agent of the Company, and he had medical
attendance of a sort, his fever and convalescence lasted for eight
weeks. Then, in spite of the supplications of his friends, chief among
whom was his faithful Jon, and the prohibition of the doctor, he began
the second stage of his journey.

The road from Yakutsk to Irkutsk, some two thousand six hundred versts,
or fifteen hundred and fifty English miles, lay for the most part
alternately on and along the river Lena in a southeasterly direction;
there being no attempt to cross Siberia at any point in a straight
line. By this time the river was frozen, and the only concession
Rezanov would make to his enfeebled frame was an arrangement to cover
the entire journey by private sledge instead of employing the swifter
course of post sledge on the long stretches and horseback on the
shorter cuts.

The weather was now intensely cold, the river winding, the delays many,
but there were adequate stations for the benefit and accommodation of
travelers every hundred versts or less. Rezanov felt so invigorated by
the long hours in the open after the barbarous closeness of his sick
room, that at the end of a fortnight he was again possessed with all
his old ardor of desire to reach the end of his journey. He vowed he
was well again, abandoned his comfortable sledge, and pushed on in the
common manner. In the wretched post sledges he was often exposed to
the full violence of a Siberian winter, and although the horseback
exercise stirred his blood and refreshed him for the moment, he
suffered in reaction and was several times forced to remain two nights
instead of one at a station. But he was muffled in sables to his very
eyes, and the road was diverting, often beautiful, with its Gothic
mountains, its white plains set with villages and farms, the high thin
crosses above the open or swelling domes of the little churches.
Sometimes the Lena narrowed until its frozen surface looked like a mass
of ice that had ground its way between perpendicular walls or
overhanging masses of rock that awaited the next convulsion of nature
to close the pass altogether. Then the dogs trotted past caves and
grottos, left the abrupt and craggy banks, crossed level plains once
more; where herds of cattle grazed in the summertime, now a vast
uncheckered expanse of w