When the inner man had been satisfied, I began to think of how the outer man might be improved upon. My clothes were in rags, my weight had fallen from one hundred and sixty pounds to one hundred and fifteen, my beard was long and unkempt, my boots were in shreds. The good friends had thoughtfully brought along my steamer trunk, which now lay in one of the tents. I ordered several kettles of water heated, and stripping behind the tent, I threw the noisome rags, with all their denizens, as far into the bush as I could, and then went in and had a glorious tubbing. I got into a suit of soft flannels, Scotch tweed knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, and after shaving and grooming myself for an hour, the loathsome larva that had crawled into camp emerged from that tent a bejeweled butterfly. That delicious moment was worth almost as much as it cost. Then we made our way back to Ghijiga, where I distributed presents among my friends, native and foreign, and boarded the steamer for Vladivostok. I reached that place twelve days later, and gave account of my travels and explorations. The search for a Siberian Klondike had been, so far, a failure. This is not the place for a technical account of my observations in northern Siberia, but this much I may say: though there may be gold within the radius that I covered, I satisfied myself that there were no extensive auriferous deposits on the streams flowing into the Okhotsk Sea near its head, nor in the beach sands along the shore of Bering Sea, south of the Anadyr River. But, of course, the whole question was not yet settled, for there remained the whole stretch of the northeast peninsula, above the point I had reached, and it turned out that my work was not yet finished. CHAPTER XVI A TEN-THOUSAND-MILE RACE Persistent rumors of gold in the Tchuktche peninsula--Count Unarliarsky--I am called to Vladivostok to fit out an expedition--Our vessel arrives off Indian Point--Charging through the ice-floes--A meeting with Eskimos--Our prospecting proves fruitless--We meet the rival expedition in Plover Bay--Their chagrin--The end.