After a month’s rest, a short journey brought him to the banks of the Lena, on which he embarked on June 27, to descend to Jakutsk, which he reached on July 27. This small town of 4000 inhabitants bears the gloomy stamp of the frigid north, for though it has a few good houses, its dwellings chiefly consist of the winter yourts of the Jakuts, with turf-covered roofs, doors of skins, and windows of talc or ice. The only “sight” of this dreary place is the old ruinous ostrog or wooden fort built by the Cossacks, the conquerors of the country, in 1647. Jakutsk is the centre of the interior trade of Siberia. To this place are brought, in enormous quantities, furs of all kinds, walrus-teeth, and mammoth-tusks, from distances of many thousand versts, to an amount of half a million pounds. The commercial sphere of the Jakutsk merchants is of an immense extent. During a cold of ten and twenty degrees they set out for the Lächow Isles, for the fair of Ostrownoje, for Ochotsk, or Kjachta. Jakutsk merchants were the first who ventured in crazy ships across the Sea of Kamchatka, and discovered the island of Kadjiak, eighty degrees of longitude from their home. On September 12 Wrangell left Jakutsk, where regular travelling ends, as from thence to Kolymsk, and generally throughout Northern Siberia, there are no beaten roads. The utmost that can be looked for are foot or horse tracks leading through morasses or tangled forests, and over rocks and mountains. Travellers proceed on horseback through the hilly country, and, on reaching the plains, use sledges drawn either by reindeer or dogs. In this manner Wrangell crossed from the basin of the Lena to that of the Yana, never experiencing a higher temperature than +2°, and frequently enduring a cold of more than -12°, during the journey over the intervening hills, and then turning eastward, traversed the Badarany, a completely uninhabited desert, chiefly consisting of swamps. These Badarany never entirely dry up, even after the longest summer-drought. At that time a solid crust is formed, through which the horses frequently break, but they are preserved from totally sinking in the mire by the perpetually frozen underground. Nothing can be more dismal and dreary than the Badarany. As far as the eye reaches, nothing is to be seen but a covering of dingy moss, relieved here and there on some more elevated spots by wretched specimens of dwarf-larches. The winter is the only season for traversing this treacherous waste, but woe to the traveller should he be overtaken by a snow-storm, as for miles and miles there is no shelter to be found but that of some ruinous powarni, or post-station. At length, fifty-two days after leaving Jakutsk, Wrangell arrived on November 2 at Nishne-Kolymsk, the appointed head-quarters of the expedition, where he was welcomed with a cold of -40°, or 72° below the freezing-point of water.