tainous sea.
Would they see our signal? Would the skipper dare to lay-to in such
tempestuous weather, hemmed in as he was by the treacherous ice? Had we
known, however, at the time that the staunch little _Belvedere_ was
commanded by the late Capt. Joseph Whiteside, of New Bedford, we should
have been spared many moments, which seemed hours, of intense anxiety.
Without a thought of his own safety, or a valuable cargo of whales
representing many thousands of pounds, this gallant sailor stood boldly
in shore, launched a boat, which, after a scuffle with the natives and a
scramble over floating ice, we managed to reach, and hauled us aboard
the little whaler, more dead than alive. A month later we were in San
Francisco, far from the fair French city we had hoped to reach, but
sincerely grateful for our preservation. For twenty-four hours after our
rescue no ship could have neared that ice-bound coast, and we could
scarcely have survived, amidst such surroundings, until the following
spring.

A glance at a map will show the route which I had intended to pursue in
1896, although, as this land journey has never before been accomplished
(or even attempted), I was unable to benefit by the experience of
previous explorers. From New York we travelled to Vancouver, thence
across the now famous Chilkoot Pass to the Great Lakes and down the
Yukon River to the sea, crossing Bering Straits in an American revenue
cutter to the Siberian settlement of melancholy memory. From here I
hoped to reach the nearest Russian outpost, Anadyrsk, by dog-sled,
proceeding thence along the western shores of the Okhotsk Sea to Okhotsk
and Yakutsk. The latter is within a couple of thousand miles of
civilisation, a comparatively easy stage in this land of stupendous
distances. Had I been able on this occasion to reach Anadyrsk, I could,
all being well, have pushed on to Yakutsk, for Cossacks carry a mail,
once a year, between the two places. But the connecting link between
that miserable Tchuktchi village and Anadyrsk was missing, and so we had
to submit to the will of fate.

Follow now on a map my itinerary upon the last occasion, starting from
Paris to Moscow, and continuing from Moscow to Irkutsk by the
Trans-Siberian Railway. Here we strike in a north-easterly direction to
Yakutsk by means of horse-sleighs. Reindeer-sleighs are procured at
Yakutsk, and we then steer a north-westerly course to Verkhoyansk. From
Verkhoyansk we again proceed (still wit