from Gizhiga sometimes has to hunt for it a whole day, and if he be not familiar with the net-work of channels into which the Anadyr River is here divided, he may not find it at all.  The inhabitants of all four settlements divide their time in summer between fishing, and hunting the wild reindeer which make annual migrations across the river in immense herds.  In winter they are generally absent with their sledges, visiting and trading with bands of Wandering Chukchis, going with merchandise to the great annual fair at Kolyma, and hiring their services to the Russian traders from Gizhiga.  The Anadyr River, in the vicinity of the village and for a distance of seventy-five miles above, is densely wooded with trees from eighteen to twenty-four inches in diameter, although the latitude of the upper portion of it is 66 deg.  N. The climate is very severe; meteorological observations which we made at Markova in February, 1867, showed that on sixteen days in that month the thermometer went to -40 deg., on eight days it went below -50 deg., five days below -60 deg., and once to -68 deg..  This was the lowest temperature we ever experienced in Siberia.  The changes from intense cold to comparative warmth are sometimes very rapid.  On February 18th, at 9 A.M., the thermometer stood at -52 deg., but in twenty-seven hours it had risen seventy-three degrees and stood at +21 deg..  On the 21st it marked +3 deg. and on the 22d -49 deg., an equally rapid change in the other direction.  Notwithstanding the climate, however, Anadyrsk is as pleasant a place to live as are nine tenths of the Russian settlements in north-eastern Siberia, and we enjoyed the novelty of our life there in the winter of 1866 as much as we had enjoyed any part of our previous Siberian experience.

The day which succeeded our arrival we spent in resting and making ourselves as presentable as possible with the limited resources afforded by our sealskin trunks.

Thursday, January 6th, N.S. was the Russian Christmas, and we all rose about four hours before daylight to attend an early service in the church.  Everybody in the house was up; a fire burned brightly in the fireplace; gilded tapers were lighted before all the holy pictures and shrines in our room, and the air was fragrant with incense.  Out of doors there was not yet a sign of daybreak.  The Pleiades were low down in the west, the great constellation of Orion had begun to sink, and a faint aurora was streaming up over the tree-tops north of the village.  From every chimney rose a column of smoke and sparks, which showed that the inhabitants were all astir.  We walked over to the little log church as quickly as possible, but the service had already commenced when we entered and silently took our places in the crowd of bowing worshippers.  The sides of the room were lined with pictures of patriarchs and Russian saints, before which were burning long wax candles wound spirally with strips of gilded paper.  Clouds