He had succeeded, with the sanction and cooperation of the governor of that province, in hiring for a period of three years a force of eight hundred Yakut labourers, at a fixed rate of sixty rubles, or about forty dollars a year for each man. He had also purchased three hundred Yakut horses and pack-saddles, and an immense quantity of material and provisions of various kinds for the equipment and subsistence of horses and workmen. A portion of these men were already on their way to Okhotsk, and the whole force would be sent thither in successive detachments as rapidly as possible, and distributed from there along the whole route of the line. It would be necessary, of course, to put this large force of native labourers under skilled American superintendence; and as we had not foremen enough in all our parties to oversee more than five or six gangs of men, Major Abaza determined to send a courier to Petropavlovsk for the officers who had sailed from San Francisco in the bark _Onward_, and who he presumed had been landed by that vessel in Kamchatka. He directed me, therefore, to make arrangements for the transportation of these men from Petropavlovsk to Gizhiga; to prepare immediately for the reception of fifty or sixty Yakut labourers; to send six hundred army rations to Yamsk for the subsistence of our American party there, and three thousand pounds of rye flour for a party of Yakuts who would reach there in February. To fill all these requisitions I had at my disposal about fifteen dog-sledges, and even these had gone with provisions to Penzhina for the relief of Lieutenant Bush. With the assistance of the Russian governor I succeeded in getting two Cossacks to go to Petropavlovsk after the Americans who were presumed to have been left there by the _Onward_, and half a dozen Koraks to carry provisions to Yamsk, while Lieutenant Arnold himself sent sledges for the six hundred rations. I thus retained my own fifteen sledges to supply Lieutenant Sandford and party, who were now cutting poles on the Tilghai River, north of Penzhinsk Gulf. One day late in December, while Dodd and I were out on the river above the settlement training a team of dogs, word was brought to us that an American had arrived from Kamchatka, bringing news from the long-missing bark _Onward_ and the party of men whom she landed at Petropavlovsk. Hurrying back to the village with all possible speed, we found Mr. Lewis, the American in question, seated comfortably in our house drinking tea. This enterprising young man--who, by the way, was a telegraph operator, wholly unaccustomed to rough life--without being able to speak a word of Russian, had traversed alone, in mid-winter, the whole wilderness of Kamchatka from Petropavlovsk to Gizhiga. He had been forty-two days on the road, and had travelled on dog-sledges nearly twelve hundred miles, with no companions except a few natives and a Cossack from Tigil. He seemed