Petersburg. Snow fell continually. Storms raged in
from the sea. The little villages of northern Sweden and Finland were
buried in snow to the chimney-tops. Wherever he happened to be at
nightfall, he knocked at the door of a fisherman's hut. Wherever he
was taken in, he slept, whether on the bare floor before the hearth, or
among the dogs of the outhouses, or in the hay-lofts of the cattle
sheds. No more waiting for Ledyard! Storm or shine, early and late,
he {258} tramped two hundred miles a week for seven weeks from the time
he left Stockholm. When he marched into St. Petersburg on the 19th of
March, men hardly knew whether to regard him as a madman or a wonder.
Using the names of Jefferson and Lafayette, he jogged up the Russian
authorities by another application for the passport. The passport was
long in coming. How was Ledyard to know that Ismyloff, the Russian fur
trader, whom he had met in Oonalaska, had written letters stirring up
the Russian government to jealous resentment against all comers to the
Pacific? Ledyard was mad with impatience.
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