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on towards the shores of the frozen sea. Before the start a pathetic little incident occurred which is indelibly photographed on my memory. My small supply of reading matter comprised a "_Daily Mail_ Year Book," and although very loth to part with this I had not the heart to take it away from a young exile who had become engrossed in its contents. For the work contained matters of interest which are usually blacked out by the censor. "I shall learn it all off, Mr. de Windt," said the poor fellow, as the Chief of Police for a moment looked away, and I handed him the tiny encyclopaedia. "When we meet again I shall know it all by heart!" But twelve long years must elapse before my unhappy friend bids farewell to Verkhoyansk! Nevertheless, the almost childish delight with which the trifling gift was received would have been cheaply bought at the price of a valuable library. CHAPTER VII THROUGH DARKEST SIBERIA Let the reader picture the distance, say, from London to Moscow as one vast undulating plateau of alternate layers of ice and snow, and he has before him the region we traversed between the so-called towns of Verkhoyansk and Sredni-Kolymsk. Twelve hundred miles may not seem very far to the railway passenger, but it becomes a different proposition when the traveller has to contend against intense cold, scanty shelter, and last, but not least, sick reindeer. For the first seven or eight hundred versts we passed through dense forests, which gradually dwindled away to sparse and stunted shrubs until the timber line was crossed and vegetation finally disappeared. The so-called _stancias_, filthier, if possible, than those south of Verkhoyansk, were now never less than two hundred miles apart. There were also _povarnias_ every eighty miles or so, but these were often mere shapeless heaps of timber rotting in the snow. Throughout the whole distance there was no track of any kind and the sledges were steered like ships at sea, our course being shaped by compass and an occasional rest-house or _povarnia_, and these were easily passed unnoticed on a dark night, or after a heavy snow-fall had concealed their low log walls. "League on league on league of desolation, Mile on mile on mile without a change" aptly describes the long, dreary expanse that stretches from the Yana River to the Polar Sea, for I doubt if there is a more gloomy, desolate region on the face of this earth. So sparsely is it peopled th
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