Wandering Chukchis had brought the news to the settlement that a small band of white men had been landed on the coast south of Bering Strait late in the fall, from a "fire-ship" or steamer; that they had dug a sort of cellar in the ground, covered it over with bushes and boards, and gone into winter quarters.

This curious iron tube which so puzzled the Chukchis we at once supposed to be a stove-pipe, and it furnished the strongest possible confirmation of the truth of the story.

Besides this, when we finally reached Anadyr Bay, if we ever did, we should have no means of finding out where the Americans were; and unless we happened to meet a band of Chukchis who had seen them, we might wander over those desolate plains for a month without coming across the stove-pipe, which was the only external sign of their subterranean habitation.

We had as yet only the vaguest, most indefinite information with regard to the situation of the American party, and we determined to wait a few days until a Cossack named Kozhevin (ko-zhay'-vin), who had gone to visit a band of Wandering Chukchis, should return.

On Saturday, Jan. 20th, N.S., Kozhevin returned from his visit to the Chukchis north of Anadyrsk, bringing as we expected later and fuller particulars with regard to the party of exiled Americans south of Bering Strait.

They had also, Kozhevin was told, an enormous tame black bear, which they allowed to run loose around the house, and which chased away the Chukchis in a most energetic manner.

The intense cold, the solitude, the oppressive silence, and the red, gloomy moonlight, like the glare of a distant but mighty conflagration, all united to excite in the mind feelings of awe, which were perhaps intensified by the consciousness that never before had any human being, save a few Wandering Chukchis, ventured in winter upon these domains of the Frost King.

They might in that time have gone a hundred miles down the coast looking for a settlement, or have wandered far back into the interior with a band of Reindeer Chukchis.

The Wandering Chukchis had soon found out their situation and frequently visited them on reindeer-sledges, and brought them fresh meat, and blubber which they used for lamp-oil; but these natives, on account of a superstition which I have previously mentioned, refused to sell them any living reindeer, so that all their efforts to procure transportation were unavailing.

The party originally consisted of five menMacrae, Arnold, Robinson, Harder, and Smith; but Macrae and Arnold, about three weeks previous to our arrival, had organised themselves into a "forlorn hope," and had gone away with a large band of Wandering Chukchis in search, of some Russian settlement.

The Chukchis came to Anadyrsk, I knew, every winter, for the purpose of trade, and would probably bring the two Americans with them.

Many bands of Chukchis from the lower Anadyr had arrived at the village, but nothing had been heard of the missing men.

I should have sent a party in search of them, but I had not the slightest clue to the direction in which they had gone, or the intentions of the party that had carried them away; and to look for a band of Wandering Chukchis on those great steppes was as hopeless as to look for a missing vessel in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and far more dangerous.

[Illustration: A MAN OF THE WANDERING CHUKCHIS] The Lamutkis, however, were an entirely different race, and resembled the Chukchis only in their nomadic habits.

[Illustration: A MAN OF THE WANDERING CHUKCHIS] The Lamutkis, however, were an entirely different race, and resembled the Chukchis only in their nomadic habits.

The first of these, which may be called the North American Indian class, comprises the wandering and settled Chukchis and Koraks, and covers that part of Siberia lying between the 160th meridian of east longitude and Bering Strait.

Their tents are smaller and differently constructed and instead of dragging their tent-poles from place to place as the Chukchis do, they leave them standing; when they break camp, and either cut new ones or avail themselves of frames left standing by other bands.

The natives of whom we saw most at Anadyrsk were, as I have already said, the Chukchis.

I had been trying it one clear cold day out-of-doors, and quite a crowd of Chukchis and Yukagirs had gathered around me to see what I was doing.

The languages of the Chukchis and Koraks have never-been reduced to writing; nor, so far as I know, do either of those tribes ever attempt to express ideas by signs or pictures.

Whether they had starved, or frozen to death on some great desolate plain south of Bering Strait, or been murdered by the Chukchis, we could not conjecture, but their long absence was a proof that they had met with some misfortune.

When the Major wrote this letter, however, he did not suppose that Dodd and I would hear of the landing of the party through the Wandering Chukchis, or that we would think of going in search of them without orders.

For sixty-four days they had been living with the Wandering Chukchis, and making their way slowly and by a circuitous route towards Anadyrsk.

As soon as we were all together, we raised the flag on a pole over our little log house, made a whisky punch out of the liquor which had traversed half north-eastern Siberia, and drank it in honour of the men who had lived sixty-four days with the Wandering Chukchis, and carried the stars and stripes through the wildest, least known region on the face of the globe.

Macrae and Arnold had explored nearly all the region lying south of the Anadyr and along the lower Myan, and had gained much valuable information concerning the little-known tribe of Wandering Chukchis.