Viewing page 46 of 76

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

10

snow except on the environing mountains.

Our time could not be wasted, we had to organize everything for a further winter travel and, as I have mentioned before, we had to expect our unusually early winter.

I ordered Dodd to start back to different villages on the Tigil road to hire dogs. Being hardly able to move on account of terrible rheumatic pains in the legs I had to remain in Lessnoi and superintend the construction of our sleighs, snow shoes etc Kennan stayed with me and studied russian. He very soon conceived how helpless and useless was a foreigner in this country without any knowledge of the Russian language: he worked hard and made quite rapid progress. Dodd, whom I have engaged in Petropavlowsky, has lived several years on the Amoor and in Kamtchatka in Wm/ H Boardman's employ, and talks Russian quite well.

Teams of dogs soon began to arrive. Dodd had to go as far as Tigil because every village could not furnish more than a couple of teams. Since several years dogs are very scarce in Kamtchatka and all over the Okhotsk seacoast, a sort of epidemical disease distructing a great number of them. It is difficult to buy dogs even at very high prices and I have seen Kamtchadals refuse

Transcription Notes:
Tigil is a known place on the Kamchatka peninsula. Sigil is not. The word "distructing" does actually seem to appear in the text, probably a variant or backformation of "destruction."