For the first week the exercise he loved best and the long days in the crisp open air renewed his vigor, and he even looked forward to the four months of what was then the severest traveling in the world, in a boyish spirit of adventure. He reflected that he might as well give his brain a relief from the constant revolving of schemes and plans for the advancement of his country, his company, and himself, and let his thoughts have their carnival of anticipation with the unparalleled happiness and success that awaited him in the future. There was no possible doubt of the acquiescence and assistance of the Tsar, and no man ever looked down a fairer perspective than he, as he galloped over the ugly country, often far ahead of his caravan, splashing through bogs and streams, fording rivers without ferries, camping at night in forests so dense the cold never escaped their embrace, muffled to the eyes in furs as he made his way past valleys whose eternal ice fields chilled the country for miles about; sometimes able to procure a little fresh milk and butter, oftener not; occasionally passing a caravan returning for furs, generally seeing nothing but a stray reindeer for hours together, once meeting the post and finding much for himself that in nowise dampened his spirit. But on the eighth day the rains began: a fine steady mist, then in torrents as endless. Wrapped in bearskins at night within the shelter of a tent or of some wayside hut, and closely covered by day, Rezanov at first merely cursed the inconvenience of the rain; but while crossing the river Allach Juni, his guides without consulting him having taken him miles out of his way in order to avoid the hamlet of the same name where the small-pox was raging, but where there was a government ferry, his horse lost his footing in the rapid, swollen current and fell. Rezanov managed to retain his seat, and pulled the frightened, plunging beast to its feet while his Cossacks were still shouting their consternation. But he was soaked to the skin, his personal luggage was in the same condition, and they did not reach a hut where a fire could be made until nine hours later. It was then that the seeds of malaria, accumulated during the last three years in unsanitary ports and sown deep by exceptional hardships, but which he believed had taken themselves off during his six weeks in California, stirred more vigorously than in Sitka or Okhotsk. He rode on the next day in a burning fever. Jon, minding Langsdorff's instructions, doctored him--not without difficulty--from the medicine chest, and for a day or two the fever seemed broken. But Jon, sick with apprehension, implored him to turn back. He might as well have implored the sky to turn blue. "How do you think men accomplish things in this world?" asked Rezanov angrily. "By turning back and going to bed every time they have a migraine?"