On April 4 we find Middendorff, accompanied by Mr. Brandt, a Danish forester, and a single servant, on the ice of the Jenissei between Turuchansk and Dudino. Here his companions were attacked by measles; but as it was high time to reach the Chatanga before the melting of the snow, the patients were carefully packed up in boxes lined with skins, and the whole party--whose numbers, meanwhile, had been increased by the addition of a topographer and of three Cossacks-- emerged from the region of forests on April 13, having to face a cold of -36°, and a storm that almost overturned their sledges. With Tunguse guides they traversed the tundra in a north-easterly direction as far as the Päsina, and thence passing on from one Samoïede horde to another, at length reached Koronnoie Filippowskoi (71° 5´ lat.) on the Boganida, an affluent of the Cheta, which is itself a tributary of the Chatanga. Here a halt was made, partly because all the party except Middendorff were by this time attacked with the reigning epidemic, and partly to wait for the Samoïedes, whom they intended to join on their summer migration to the north. During this interval Middendorff made an excursion to the Chatanga, for the purpose of gathering information about the voyage down that river, and to make the necessary preparations. In the village of Chatangsk, however, he found nearly all the inhabitants suffering from the measles; and as no assistance was to be expected from them, he resolved to alter his route, and to proceed as soon as possible to the River Taimur, which would in all probability afford him the best means for penetrating to the extreme confines of continental Asia. As this most _northerly_ river of the Old World lies far beyond the boundaries of arboreal growth, a boat-frame of twelve feet on the keel had to be made at Koronnoie before setting out. Brandt was left behind with part of the company, to make a prolonged series of meteorological observations, and to gather as complete a collection as possible of the animals and plants of the country, while Middendorff started on his adventurous tour (May 19) with sixty-eight reindeer, under the guidance of a few Samoïedes on their progress to the north, and accompanied only by the topographer, an interpreter, and two Cossacks. The difficulties of this journey, since a boat-frame, fuel, provisions, physical instruments, apparatuses for the preservation of objects of natural history, forming altogether a load for many sledges, had to be transported along with the travellers, would have been great at all times, but were now considerably increased by the epidemic having also seized the tribe of Samoïedes which Middendorff expected to find near the small River Nowaia, and which was to guide him farther on to the Taimur. At length, after a search of three days, he found the remnant of the horde, which had been decimated and reduced to a deplorable condition by the epidemic. In vain he sought for the