Rezanov disembarked from the Juno at Okhotsk during the first days of October. Had it not been for a touch of fever that had returned in the filth and warm dampness of Sitka, he would have felt almost as buoyant in mind and body as in those days when California had gone to his head. The Juno had touched at Kadiak, Oonalaska, and others of the more important settlements, and he had found his schools and libraries in good condition, seals and otters rapidly increasing, in their immunity from indiscriminate slaughter, new and stronger forts threatening the nefarious Bostonian and Bri-ton. At Okhotsk he learned that the embassy of Count Golofkin to China had failed as signally as his own, and this alone would have put him in the best of tempers even had he not found his arma-ment and caravan awaiting him, facilitating his im-mediate departure. He wrote a gay letter to Con-cha, giving her the painful story of the naturalist attached to the Golofkin embassy, Dr. Redovsky, who had remained in the East animated by the same scientific enthusiasm as that of his colleague, the good Langsdorff; parted some time since from his too exacting master. Rezanov had written Concha many letters during his detention in Sitka, and left them with Baranhov to send at the first opportun-ity. The Chief-Manager, deeply interested in the romance of the mighty Chamberlain with whom he alone dared to take a liberty, vowed to guard all that came to his care and sooner or later to send them to California. Rezanov had also written com-prehensively to the Tsar and the directors of the Russian-American Company, adroitly placing his marriage in the light of a diplomatic maneuver, and painting California in colors the more vivid and en-ticing for the sullen clouds and roaring winds, the dripping forests and eternal snows of that derelict corner of Earth where he had been stranded so long. He had also, when Langsdorff announced his intention to start upon a difficult journey in the in-terest of science, provided him not only with letters of recommendation, but with all the comforts pro-curable in a land where the word comfort was the stock in trade of the local satirist. But Langsdorff, although punctiliously acknowledging the favors, never quite forgave the indifference of a mere am-bassador and chamberlain, rejoicing in the dignity of an honorary membership in the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, to the supreme division of natural history.
The first stage of the journey--from Okhotsk to Yakutsk--was about six hundred and fifty English miles, not as the crow flew, but over the Stanovoi mountains in a southwesterly direction to the Maya, by this river's wavering course to the Youdoma, then northwest to the Aldan, and south beside the Lena. The beaten track lay entirely alongside the rivers at this season, upon their surface in winter; and in addition to these great streams there were many too unimportant for the map, but as erratic in course and as irresistible in energy after the first rains of autumn.
Captain D'Wolf had proved himself capable and faithful, and a caravan of forty horses had been in Okhotsk a week; twenty for immediate use, twenty for relief, or substitutes in almost certain emer-gency. As there were but one or two stations of any importance between Okhotsk and Yakutsk, and as a week might pass without the shelter of so much as a hut, it was necessary to take tents and bearskin beds for the Chamberlain, his Cossack guard, valet-de-chambre, cook and other servants, one set of fine blankets and linen, cooking utensils, axes, arms, tinder-boxes, provisions for the entire trip, besides a great quantity of personal luggage.
Rezanov lost no time. He had changed his origi-nal plan and dispatched Davidov on the Avos from Oonalaska. Guns and provisions awaited the Juno at Okhotsk, and in less than a week after his ar-rival Rezanov was able to start on his long journey with a mind at rest. Although the almost extrava-gant delight that his body had taken in the com-forts of his manager's home, after ten weeks on the Juno, warned him that he might be in a better con-dition to begin a journey of ten thousand versts, he hearkened neither to the hint nor to the insistence of his host. His impatient energy and stern will, combined with the passionate wish to accomplish the double object of his journey, returning in the least possible time to California with his treaty and the consent of the Pope and King to his marriage, would have carried him out of Okhotsk in forty-eight hours had disease declared itself. Nor were there any inducements aside from a comfortable bed and refined fare, in the flat, unhealthy town with its everlasting rattle of chains, and the hideous physiognomies of criminals always at work to the rumbling accompaniment of Cossack oaths.
