Wind and tide opposed each other and tossed us rather uncomfortably.  The waves breaking over the bow saturated the Cossack and sprinkled some of the sailors.  At the stern we managed to protect ourselves, though we caught occasionally a few drops of spray.  Wrapped in my overcoat and holding a bear-skin on my knees, I studied the summer night in that high northern latitude.  At midnight it seemed like day break, and I half imagined we had wrongly calculated the hours and were later than we supposed.  Between sunset and sunrise the twilight crept along the horizon from Occident to Orient.  Further north the inhabitants of the Arctic circle were enjoying the light of their long summer day.  What a contrast to the bleak night of cold and darkness that stretches with faint glimmerings of dawn through nearly half the year.  The shores of the bay were high perpendicular banks, sharply cut like the bluffs at Vicksburg.  There are several head-lands, but none project far enough to form harbors behind them.  The bottom furnishes good anchoring ground, but the bay is quite open to southerly winds.

Captain Lund dropped his chin to his breast and slept soundly.  Anossoff raised his coat collar and drew in his head like a tortoise returning into his shell, but with all his efforts he did not sleep.  I was wakeful and found that time dragged slowly.  The light-house had no light and needed none, as the darkness was far from profound.  In approaching the mouth of the river we discovered a cluster of buildings, and close at hand two beacons, like crosses, marking the direction of the channel.

There was a little surf breaking along the beach as our keel touched the ground.  Our blankets came dripping from the bottom of the boat, and my satchel had taken water enough to spoil my paper collars and a dozen cigars.  My greatest calamity on that night was the sudden and persistent stoppage of my watch.  An occurrence of little moment in New York or London was decidedly unpleasant when no trusty watchmaker lived within four thousand miles.

Major Abasa and the Ispravnik of Ghijiga escorted us from the landing to their quarters, where we soon warmed ourselves with hot tea, and I took opportunity and a couple of bearskins and went to sleep.  Late in the day we had a dinner of soup, pork and peas, reindeer meat, and berry pudding.  The deer’s flesh was sweet and tender, with a flavor like that of the American elk.

In this part of Siberia there are many wide plains (tundras) covered with moss and destitute of trees.  The blueberry grows there, but is less abundant than the “maroska,” a berry that I never saw in America.  It is yellow when ripe, has an acid flavor, and resembles the raspberry in shape and size.  We ate the maroska in as many forms as it could be prepared, and they told us that it grew in Scotland, Scandinavia, and Northern Russia.

[Illustration:  TAKING THE CENSUS.]