As they proceeded into lower country, plains appeared, many of them dotted over with clusters of lakes, some vast in size, others tiny pools. It was bitterly cold. They were well north of sixty degrees latitude, which runs just south of Seward, Alaska. During the night they touched the Arctic Circle. CHAPTER X BANZAI! As the mountains flattened out, the ragged plains seemed to stretch in inconceivable distances. Dense uncharted forests blanketed the land. Two forest fires were raging in this district, about fifty miles apart. Heavy masses of smoke hung over them, or were torn into shreds and hurried away by the high wind. Bursts of flames reddened the smoke, and licked greedily upward. When Dulcie went to bed, she experienced the ever-recurring thrill to find herself in a luxurious stateroom, far above the earth. The rarefied clean air made her body tingle. Dulcie thought shudderingly of her narrow escape from being left behind. “It only goes to show,” she told herself, “that occasionally one has to act.” The following morning, Wednesday, after breakfast, Doctor Trigg and Doctor Sims stood gazing at the waste below them. “Endless, arid plains,” said Dr. Trigg. “Russia—Siberia—the steppes—” “I wonder just where we are,” said Dulcie, suddenly bobbing up at the window under Doctor Sims’ arm. He removed the arm. “I believe we are about seven hundred and fifty miles west of Yakutsk,” said Mr. Hamilton, speaking from his usual place at the desk. “Is that a city?” asked Dulcie. “Yakutsk,” said Doctor Trigg, “is the principal city of the Lena Gold Fields, and lies over the Stanovoi Range, toward the western end of the Sea of Okhotsk. In this part of Siberia lie the vast gold fields known as the Russian Klondike. They produce, with incredible hardship and labor, over two hundred million rubles annually. A ruble,” he added, rolling an affectionate and whimsical eye at Dulcie, “is at present worth—hum—let me think—” “About fifty cents,” said Mr. Hamilton promptly. “Yes,” continued Doctor Trigg. “This bleak and terrible country, stretching on, desolate league after desolate league, has been unofficially the death chamber of thousands of political and criminal prisoners every year. Herded together, the lowest and highest, in horrible proximity, sometimes in chains, the poor wretches are sent here from civilization to work the mines for a ruthless State, to labor, suffer, and die. Often the keenest, cleverest intellectual, whose only crime was a chance word, misstated by some jealous contemporary, is chain-mate to the vilest wretch crawling. No redress, no pardon. The poet Shelley pictures Prometheus chained to a rock, the fox gnawing at his vitals, and Prometheus groans, ‘No rest, no change, no hope; Yet I endure.’” “Yes, conditions are said to be pretty bad,” mused Mr. Hamilton. “And this is called the storehouse of the world.”