very
inhabitant of Sredni-Kolymsk fired up preparatory to blocking up his
chimney for the night. The outlook from our hut was at this hour a weird
and unique one, as an avenue of fires rose from the mud hovels and
ascended in sheets of flame to the starlit sky. But this illumination
was stifled in a few seconds by dense clouds of smoke. This method of
obtaining warmth is scarcely a success, for I sat during my visit to
Strajevsky in an atmosphere minus 47 deg. Fahrenheit by my thermometer.
And in this miserable den my Polish friend, once a prosperous barrister
in Warsaw, had passed eight of the best years of his life, and is still,
if alive, dragging out a hopeless existence.

In summer time life here is perhaps less intolerable than during the
winter, for the Kolyma River teems with fish, and edible berries are
obtainable in the woods. Geese, duck, and other wild fowl are plentiful
in the spring, and as fire-arms are not prohibited, game at this season
is a welcome addition to a generally naked larder. Manual labour, too,
is procurable, and an exile may earn a few roubles by fishing,
trapping, wood-cutting, &c.; but the dark winter months must be passed
in a condition of inactive despair. During the winter season there are
two mails from Russia brought by the Cossacks in charge of the yearly
consignment of exiles, but in spring, summer, and early autumn
Sredni-Kolymsk is as completely cut off from the outer world, as a
desert island in mid-ocean, by swamps and thousands of shallow lakes
which extend landwards on every side for hundreds of miles. A
reindeer-sled skims easily over their frozen surface, but in the open
season a traveller sinks knee-deep at every step into the wet spongy
ground.

Summer here is no glad season of sunshine and flowers, only a few brief
weeks of damp and cloudy weather, for even on fine days the sun looms
through a curtain of mist. Rainy weather prevails, and the leaky huts
are often flooded for days together by an incessant downfall. Swarms of
mosquitoes and sand flies are added to other miseries, for there is no
protection against these pests by night or day, save by means of
_dimokuris_, a bundle of leaves, moss, and damp pine logs which is
ignited near a hut and envelops it in a perpetual cloud of pungent and
stifling smoke. At this season of the year there is much sickness,
especially a kind of low fever produced by the _miasma_ from the
surrounding marshes. Epidemics are frequent, and