After having made the contract with Baron Toll, Trontheim was on January 28th (January 16th by Russian reckoning) already at Berezoff, where there was then a Yassak-meeting, [22] and consequently a great assembly of Ostiaks and Samoyedes. Trontheim made use of this opportunity and bought 33 (this ought probably to be 40) choice sledge dogs. These he conveyed to the little country town of Muzhi, where he made preparations for the "very long journey," passing the time in this way till April 16th. By this date he had prepared 300 pud (about 9600 lbs.) of dog provender, consisting chiefly of dried fish. For 300 roubles he engaged a Syriane, named Terentieff, with a reindeer herd of 450, to convey him, his dogs, and baggage to Yugor Strait. For three months these two with their caravan--reindeer, drivers, dogs, women, and children--travelled through the barren tracts of northern Siberia. At first their route lay through the Ural Mountains. "It was more a sort of nomadic life than a journey. They did not go straight on towards their destination, but wandered over wide tracts of country, stopping wherever it was suitable for the reindeer, and where they found lichen. From the little town of Muzhi the expedition passed up the Voikara River to its sources; and here began the ascent of the Ural Mountains by the Pass of Kjaila (Kjola). In their crossing of the chain they tried to skirt along the foot of the mountains, climbing as little as possible.... "They noticed one marked contrast between the mountains in the northern and those in the southern part of the Ural chain. In the south the snow melts quickly in the lower regions and remains lying on the tops. Here (in the northern Ural), on the contrary, the mountain-tops are free from snow before the sun's rays penetrate into the valleys and melt it there. In some valleys, especially those closed by mountains to the south, and more exposed to north winds, the snow lies the whole summer. When they had got across the Ural Mountains they first followed the course of the River Lemva, then crossed it, and now followed a whole system of small rivers, for which even the natives have no names. At last, on May 4th, the expedition reached the River Ussa, on the banks of which lay the hut of the Syriane Nikitsa." This was "the one inhabited spot in this enormous tract of country," and here they stopped two weeks to rest the reindeer and get provender for them. "The country lying between the sources of the Voikara and the Ussa is wooded in every direction." "Between the River Ussa and the River Vorkuta, and even beyond that, Trontheim and his company travelled through quite luxuriant wood. In the middle of May, as the caravan approached the tundra region, the wood got thinner and thinner, and by May 27th it was nothing but scattered underwood. After this came quite small bushes and weeds, and then at last the interminable tundra came in sight. Not to be without fuel on the tundra, they felled some