Twenty or thirty boats must be constructed to raft down the inland
rivers. There were forests to be traversed for hundreds of miles,
where only the keenest vigilance could keep the wolf packs off the
heels of the travellers. And when the expedition should reach the
tundras of eastern Siberia, there was the double danger of the Chukchee
tribes on the north, hostile as the American Indians, and of the
Siberian exile population on the south, branded criminals, political
malcontents, banditti of {10} the wilderness, outcasts of nameless
crimes beyond the pale of law. It needed no prophet to foresee such
people would thwart, not help, the expedition. And when the shores of
Okhotsk were reached, a fort must be built to winter there. And a
vessel for inland seas must be constructed to cross to the Kamchatka
peninsula of the North Pacific. And the peninsula which sticks out
from Asia as Norway projects from Europe, must be crossed with
provisions--a distance of some two hundred miles by dog trains over
mountains higher than the American Rockies. And once on the shores of
the Pacific itself, another fort must be built on the east side of the
Kamchatka peninsula.
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