Petersburg, seven thousand miles to the Pacific coast. From
St. Petersburg to Moscow, Kasan, the Tartar desert and Siberia, pack
horses were used. It was a common thing for caravans of four or even
five thousand pack horses employed by the Russian fur traders of
America to file into Irkutsk of a night. At the head waters of the
Lena, rafts and flatboats, similar to the old Mackinaw boats of
American fur traders on the Missouri, were built and the cargo floated
down to Yakutsk, the great rendezvous of Siberian fur traders. Here
exiles acting as packers and Cossacks as overseers usually went on a
wild ten days' spree. From Yakutsk pack horses, dog trains, and
reindeer teams were employed for the remaining thousand miles to the
Pacific; and this was the hardest part of the journey. Mountains
higher than the Rockies had to be traversed. Mountain torrents
tempestuous with the spring thaw had to be forded--ice cold and to the
armpits of the drivers; and in winter time, the packs of timber wolves
following on the heels of the cavalcade could only be driven off by the
hounds kept to course down grouse and hare {299} for the evening meal.
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