We staid at Gavenki only twelve or thirteen hours. We set off in the night for Poustaretsk, which is at the distance of more than two hundred wersts from it. We were five days in travelling it, and no journey had ever been so painful. We had no reason to complain of the weather during the first day; but the next we were extremely harassed by the snow and gales of wind, which succeeded without interruption, and with such impetuosity that our conductors were blinded. They could distinguish no object four paces from them, and could not even see the sledge that immediately followed them. To increase our misfortune, our Gavenki guide was old and short sighted, and frequently therefore went out of the road. We were then obliged to stop while he went on before to find the vestiges of the road; but how was it possible to find them in so extensive a plain, covered with snow, and where we could perceive neither tree, nor mountain, nor river? The experience of our guide was continually at fault from the badness of the weather, notwithstanding the incredible knowledge he had of these roads. The smallest rising, the least shrub, was sufficient to set him right; meanwhile we calculated that the deviations he occasioned us amounted each day to twenty wersts. At the end of the second day's journey, my dogs were reduced to a single fish, which I divided between them. The want of food soon exhausted their strength, so as to make them unable to proceed. Some fell under the blows of our conductors, others refused to draw, and many from inanition died on the spot. Of the thirty-seven dogs that were harnessed to my vezock upon leaving Bolcheretsk, only twenty-three remained, and these were reduced to the utmost poverty. M. Kasloff had in like manner lost a considerable number of his. The famine became at last so great, that we were apprehensive of being starved to death in this desert. Not having a morsel of fish left for our dogs, we were obliged to feed them with part of our own provisions; but their share was very moderate, prudence requiring us to observe the most rigid oeconomy. In this woeful conjuncture, we left our equipage in the midst of the way, under guard of some of our conductors, and having chosen the most tolerable of the dogs to supply the place of those which we had lost, we went on.