the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, General Unterberger, who helped
him immensely, got him a good travelling sledge for the trip down the
Amur River to Nikolievsk, and wrote a letter which he gave Meares to show
at the post-houses and whenever in difficulties. The Governor-General
ordered frozen food to be got ready for Meares's journey. A thousand
versts (roughly 660 miles) had to be traversed, and this only took seven
days; the going was interesting at times, and Meares had good weather on
the sledge journey to Nikolievsk, although the cold was intense and
sometimes the road was very bad. The sledges were horse-drawn between the
post-houses.

Mr. Rogers, the English manager of the Russo-Chinese Bank of Nikolievsk,
helped Meares considerably in securing the dogs. Most of them were picked
up in the neighbourhood of that place, but were not chosen before they
had been given some hard driving tests. In one of the trial journeys the
dogs pulled down a horse and nearly killed it before they could be beaten
off. Some of them have a good deal of the wolf in their blood.

A settlement of "fish-skin" Indians was visited in the dog search, and
Meares told us of natives who dressed in cured skins of salmons. These
people were expert hunters who trekked weeks on end with just a pack of
food on their backs, their travelling being done on snowshoes.

After taking great pains, thirty-four fine dogs were collected, all used
to hard sledge travelling, and these Meares shipped on board steamer
which took him and his menagerie by river to Kharbarovsk. The journey to
Vladivostock was by train. The Russian officials allowed him to hitch on
a couple of cattle trucks containing the dogs to the mail train for that
part of the journey.