After an incessant journey, lasting two months, I arrived at Sredne Kolmysk, a small town of log huts situate at a point far beyond the Arctic circle, where the deep river Ankudine flows into the Kolyma. The houses, scattered about in disorder, are inhabited by Cossacks, Mieshchany, Yakouts, and exiles. The highest erection is a log church, and the only curiosity a small wooden tower, crooked with age, which stands within the church enclosure, and was built by the conquerors of the country as a protection from raids of hostile tribes. The condition of the unfortunate exiles there was terrible, even for Siberia. In that land, where winter commences in August and lasts till May, and where the temperature varies from nine degrees above freezing-point to thirteen degrees below, man is utterly powerless. Only a handful of wretched savages inhabit the fearful region, having been driven to outer darkness by the tribes with more vitality and energy. It takes about eighteen months to reach this extremity of the habitable globe, and by introducing, as a part of the penal system, exile to the Arctic zone, the Russian Government has overstepped even its broad allowance of iniquity. This hamlet is a penitentiary colony for political exiles, whose punishment is purposely aggravated by physical suffering, and who are compelled to exist in a perpetual state of famine in dwellings that are simply wretched huts built of upright beams, with rafters laid across and covered with layers of earth. From the Government store musty rye flour is eked out to them at intervals, and for the rest, they subsist upon what fish they can catch in the river. I was not long in discovering General Okoulow’s residence, and, acting as Imperial messenger, delivered the dispatches in as ceremonious a manner as I could. As I had anticipated, they contained several pardons, and when this became known in the little colony I was _fêted_ and treated with every courtesy and kindness. Although such a reception was pleasant after the wearying monotony of the Verkho-yansk Desert, yet I was anxious for an opportunity to shake the snow of Siberia from my feet. Having waited several days while the Governor was preparing his reports for Petersburg, I one morning made a request—not without trepidation, I admit—that he should endorse my passport so as to enable me to go on a brief visit to a brother in Petropaulovsk before returning to Russia. To my joy, the accommodating Governor saw no objection to this course, and with a light heart I set out at dawn on the following day towards the Stanovoi mountains.