. Nearing the
Tashayaktak[38] mountain, however, we travelled along the Dogdo River
for some distance; but here, although the road was clear, constant
overflows compelled us to travel along the centre of the stream, which
is about ten times the width of the Thames at Gravesend. Here the sleds
occasionally skated over perilously thin ice, and as night was falling I
was glad to reach _terra firma_. The Tashayaktak range is at this point
nowhere less than three thousand feet in height, and I was anticipating
a second clamber over their snowy peaks when Stepan informed me that the
crossing could be easily negotiated by a pass scarcely five hundred
feet high. Fortunately the wind had now dropped, for during gales the
snow is piled up in huge drifts along this narrow pass, and only the
previous year two Yakutes had been snowed up to perish of cold and
starvation. However, we crossed the range without much difficulty,
although boulders and frozen cataracts made it hard work for the deer,
and another one fell here to mark our weary track across Siberia. And we
lost yet another of the poor little beasts, which broke its leg in the
gnarled roots of a tree, before reaching the _povarnia_ of Siss, a
hundred and thirty versts from Tostach. Here both men and beasts were
exhausted, and I resolved to halt for twelve hours and recuperate.

[Footnote 37: When the letter "u" is surmounted by two dots it is
pronounced like that in "Curtain."]

[Footnote 38: The names of places between Verkhoyansk and Sredni-Kolymsk
were furnished by Stepan Rastorguyeff.]

The _povarnia_ of Siss was more comfortable than usual, which means that
its accommodation was about on a par with an English cow-shed. But we
obtained a good night's rest, notwithstanding icy draughts and melted
snow. The latter was perhaps the chief drawback at these places, for we
generally awoke to find ourselves lying inch-deep in watery slush
occasioned by the warmth of the fire. At Siss the weather cleared, and
we set out next day with renewed spirits, which the deer seemed to
share, for they, too, had revelled in moss, which was plentiful around
the _povarnia_, while, as a rule, they had to roam for several miles in
search of it. Siberian reindeer seem to have an insatiable appetite;
whenever we halted on the road (often several times within the hour)
every team would set to work pawing up the snow in search of food, with
such engrossed energy that it took some time to set them