p. 3-4: My friend Harvie-Brown had been collecting information about the river Petchora for some time, and it was finally arranged that we should spend the summer of 1875 there together. We were under the impression that, ornithologically speaking, it was virgin ground, but in this we afterwards discovered that we were mistaken. So far as we were able to ascertain, no Englishman had travelled from Archangel to the Petchora for 250 years. In that curious old book called ‘Purchas his Pilgrimes,’ published in 1625, may be found the narrative of divers merchants and mariners who visited this river between the years 1611 and 1615 for the purpose of establishing a trade there in furs and skins, especially beaver, for which Ust-Zylma on the Petchora was at that time celebrated.
p. 83: We had plenty to interest us however, in reading the letters and papers that had reached us from England. The steamer had arrived from Ust-Zylma the day before, bringing us tidings of home from April 4th to May 13th, inclusive. The post had reached Ust-Zylma on the 26th; the last letters had therefore been five weeks en route, and so far as we know they had not been delayed in Archangel. From Ust-Zylma to Alexievka they would have taken more than another week to travel, had it not been for the steamer. On the 13th of May the Consul at Archangel wrote that the ice on the Dvina was expected to break up in seven days. A letter dated the 26th described the Dvina as quite free from ice for some days past, showing that it and the Petchora broke up within a day or two of each other.