In early November, a thick layer of snow fell on Sakhalin. Hence it was a snowy road that lured me to travel. Also, comrades urged me to travel to Aleksandrovsk for a personal interview with the governor if I wanted to leave Sakhalin aboard the first springtime steamer.

My preparations didn't take long; I also soon found a felicitous travel companion, the secretary of the police administration, who’d just begun his professional career there.

We quickly acquired a pair of horses and harnessed them Siberian-style, in single-file. Such a method of traveling is needed there in the snow drifts. The attaching, that is, the lead, horse pushes its way through the snow with its broad chest, and it is the root horse that actually pulls the sleigh along the newly cut path.

I’d never crossed the Pilinga Range nor seen the faintly defined Tatar Strait coastline during winter, so this trip offered me an interesting novelty. Just three colors reigned the entire way: sky blue, snowy white, and forest green. Amid this palette, the spruce and fir tree needles seemed even darker and the snow even clearer and brighter.

As the snowy mountains rose, so lifted our mood. There was something ceremonial in the white road that seemed to abut the sky itself. It was quiet, clear, and fresh.

The raging sea spread threateningly in a wide blue ribbon along the whitened shoreline. All the promontories, necessarily cloaked in snow, had assumed a softer form than during summer; but, in general, the scene was cold and lifeless.

In Aleksandrovsk, I hurried to the island's military governor without delay. Though it was an inconvenient hour, he greeted me very courteously and listened patiently to my extensive testimony about life in Sakhalin exile.

Among other things, the general asked a lot about my jobs on the island. Having learned I was paid nothing for my work surveying Tymovsk District and measuring Aleksandrovsk Bay, he became indignant.

“This shows that we unceremoniously exploited you!” the governor loudly cried. “My ethical responsibility is to correct my predecessors’ mistakes. List all your jobs while on Sakhalin, bypass the administration, and address it ‘to my eyes only,’ and I’ll order you immediately be paid at least two hundred rubles. Your monthly salary should be increased as well…