SIBERIA 



99 



shallow; it has many islands; and in summer it is nearly 

 always draped in fog. But our host was a man not easy 

 to turn back; in five minutes he was romping with his 

 children again as if nothing had happened. But the ship's 

 course was changed to southeast, around Walrus Island. 

 It did indeed look for a while as if we had more than half 

 a mind to turn back. But in a couple of hours we were 

 headed toward Siberia again and went plunging through 

 the fog and obscurity with our ' ferocious whistle,' as Pro- 

 fessor Emerson characterized it, tearing the silence, and 

 with it our sleep, to tatters. The next day, the ioth, we 

 hoped to touch at the Island of St. Matthew, but we 

 missed it in the thick obscurity and searching for it was 

 hazardous, so we went again northward. 



The fog continued on the nth till nearly noon, when 

 we ran into clear air and finally into sunshine, and in the 

 early afternoon the coast of Siberia lay before us like a 

 cloud upon the hor- 

 izon — Asia at last, 

 crushed down there 

 on the rim of the 

 world as if with the 

 weight of her cen- 

 turies and her cruel 

 Czar's iniquities. As 

 we drew near, her 

 gray, crumbling, de- 

 crepit granite bluffs 

 and mountains, streaked with snow, helped the illusion. 

 This was the old world indeed. Our destination was 

 Plover Bay, where at six in the afternoon we dropped 

 anchor behind a long crescent-shaped sand spit that put 

 out from the eastern shore. On this sand spit was an 

 Eskimo encampment of skin-covered huts which was soon 

 astir with moving forms. Presently eight of the figures 



ESKIMO SKIN HUTS OR ' TOPEKS, PLOVER BAY, 

 SIBERIA. 



