Now, if there was any branch of Viushin's Siberian education upon which he especially prided himself, it was his proficiency in crawling into small holes. Persevering practice had given him a flexibility of back and a peculiar sinuosity of movement which we might admire but could not imitate; and although the distinction was not perhaps an altogether desirable one, he was invariably selected to explore all the dark holes and underground passages (miscalled doors) which came in our way. This seemed to be one of the most peculiar of the many different styles of entrance which we had observed; but Viushin, assuming as an axiom that no part of his body could be greater than the (w)hole, dropped into a horizontal position, and requesting Dodd to give his feet an initial shove, crawled cautiously in. A few seconds of breathless silence succeeded his disappearance, when, supposing that all must be right, I put my head into the hole and crawled warily after him. The darkness was profound; but, guided by Viushin's breathing, I was making very fair progress, when suddenly a savage snarl and a startling yell came out of the gloom in front, followed instantly by the most substantial part of Viushin's body, which struck me with the force of a battering-ram on the top of the head, and caused me, with the liveliest apprehensions of ambuscade and massacre, to back precipitately out. Viushin, with the awkward retrograde movements of a disabled crab, speedily followed.

"What in the name of Chort [Footnote: The Devil.] is the matter?" demanded Dodd in Russian, as he extricated Viushin's head from the folds of the skin curtain in which it had become enveloped. "You back out as if Shaitan and all his imps were after you!"—"You don't suppose," responded Viushin, with excited gestures, "that I'm going to stay in that hole and be eaten up by Korak dogs? If I was foolish enough to go in, I've got discretion enough to know when to come out. I don't believe the hole leads anywhere, anyhow," he added apologetically; "and it's all full of dogs." With a quick perception of Viushin's difficulties and a grin of amusement at his discomfiture, our Korak guide entered the hole, drove out the dogs, and lifting up an inner curtain, allowed the red light of the fire to stream through. Crawling on hands and knees a distance of twelve or fifteen feet through the low doorway, we entered the large open circle in the interior of the tent. A crackling fire of resinous pine boughs burned brightly upon the ground in the centre, illuminating redly the framework of black, glossy poles, and flickering fitfully over the dingy skins of the roof and the swarthy tattooed faces of the women who squatted around. A large copper kettle, filled with some mixture of questionable odour and appearance, hung over the blaze, and furnished occupation to a couple of skinny, bare-armed women, who with the same sticks were alternately stirring its contents, poking up the fire, and knocking over the head two or three ill-conditioned but inquisitive dogs. The smoke, which rose lazily from the fire, hung in a blue, clearly defined cloud about five feet from the ground, dividing the atmosphere of the tent into a lower stratum of comparatively clear air, and an upper cloud region where smoke, vapours, and ill odours contended for supremacy.

The location of the little pure air which the yurt afforded made the boyish feat of standing upon one's head a very desirable accomplishment; and as the pungent smoke filled my eyes to the exclusion of everything else except tears, I suggested to Dodd that he reverse the respective positions of his head and feet, and try it—he would escape the smoke and sparks from the fire, and at the same time obtain a new and curious optical effect. With the sneer of contempt which always met even my most valuable suggestions, he replied that I might try my own experiments, and throwing himself down at full length on the ground, he engaged in the interesting diversion of making faces at a Korak baby. Viushin's time, as soon as his eyes recovered a little from the effects of the smoke, was about equally divided between preparations for our evening meal, and revengeful blows at the stray dogs which ventured in his vicinity; while the Major, who was probably the most usefully employed member of the party, negotiated for the exclusive possession of a polog. The temperature of a Korak tent in winter seldom ranges above 20 deg. or 25 deg. Fahr., and as constant exposure to such a degree of cold would be at least very disagreeable, the Koraks construct around the inner circumference of the tent small, nearly air-tight apartments called pologs, which are separated one from another by skin curtains, and combine the advantages of exclusiveness with the desirable luxury of greater warmth. These pologs are about four feet in height, and six or eight feet in width and length. They are made of the heaviest furs sewn carefully together to exclude the air, and are warmed and lighted by a burning fragment of moss floating in a wooden bowl of seal oil. The law of compensation, however, which pervades all Nature, makes itself felt even in the pologs of a Korak yurt, and for the greater degree of warmth is exacted the penalty of a closer, smokier atmosphere. The flaming wick of the lamp, which floats like a tiny burning ship in a miniature lake of rancid grease, absorbs the vital air of the polog, and returns it in the shape of carbonic acid gas, oily smoke, and sickening odours. In defiance, however, of all the known laws of hygiene, this vitiated atmosphere seems to be healthful; or, to state the case negatively, there is no evidence to prove its unhealthfulness. The Korak women, who spend almost the whole of their time in these pologs, live generally to an advanced age, and except a noticeable tendency to angular outlines, and skinniness, there is nothing to distinguish them physically from the old women of other countries. It was not without what I supposed to be a well-founded apprehension of suffocation, that I slept for the first time in a Korak yurt; but my uneasiness proved to be entirely groundless, and gradually wore away.



With a view to escape from the crowd of Koraks, who squatted around us on the earthen floor, and whose watchful curiosity soon became irksome, Dodd and I lifted up the fur curtain of the polog which the Major's diplomacy had secured, and crawled in to await the advent of supper. The inquisitive Koraks, unable to find room in the narrow polog for the whole of their bodies, lay down to the number of nine on the outside, and poking their ugly, half-shaven heads under the curtain, resumed their silent supervision. The appearance in a row of nine disembodied heads, whose staring eyes rolled with synchronous motion from side to side as we moved, was so ludicrous that we involuntarily burst into laughter. A responsive smile instantly appeared upon each of the nine swarthy faces, whose simultaneous concurrence in the expression of every emotion suggested the idea of some huge monster with nine heads and but one consciousness. Acting upon Dodd's suggestion that we try and smoke them out, I took my brier-wood pipe from my pocket and proceeded to light it with one of those peculiar snapping lucifers which were among our most cherished relics of civilisation. As the match, with a miniature fusillade of sharp reports, burst suddenly into flame, the nine startled heads instantly disappeared, and from beyond the curtain we could hear a chorus of long-drawn "tye-e-e's" from the astonished natives, followed by a perfect Babel of animated comments upon this diabolical method of producing fire. Fearful, however, of losing some other equally striking manifestation of the white men's supernatural power, the heads soon returned, reenforced by several others which the report of the wonderful occurrence had attracted. The fabled watchfulness of the hundred-eyed Argus was nothing compared with the scrutiny to which we were now subjected. Every wreath of curling smoke which rose from our lips was watched by the staring eyes as intently as if it were some deadly vapour from the bottomless pit, which would shortly burst into report and flame. A loud and vigorous sneeze from Dodd was the signal for a second panic-stricken withdrawal of the row of heads, and another comparison of respective experiences outside the curtain. It was laughable enough; but, tired of being stared at and anxious for something to eat, we crawled out of our polog and watched with unassumed interest the preparation of supper.

Out of a little pine box which contained our telegraphic instruments, Viushin had improvised a rude, legless mess-table, which he was engaged in covering with cakes of hardbread, slices of raw bacon, and tumblers of steaming tea. These were the luxuries of civilisation, and beside them on the ground, in a long wooden trough and a huge bowl of the same material, were the corresponding delicacies of barbarism. As to their nature and composition we could, of course, give only a wild conjecture; but the appetites of weary travellers are not very discriminating, and we seated ourselves, like cross-legged Turks, on the ground, between the trough and the instrument-box, determined to prove our appreciation of Korak hospitality by eating everything which offered itself. The bowl with its strange-looking contents arrested, of course, the attention of the observant Dodd, and, poking it inquiringly with a long-handled spoon, he turned to Viushin, who, as chef-de-cuisine, was supposed to know all about it, and demanded:

"What's this you've got?"

"That?" answered Viushin, promptly, "that's kasha" (hasty pudding made of rice).

"Kasha!" exclaimed Dodd, contemptuously. "It looks more like the stuff that the children of Israel made bricks of. They don't seem to have wanted for straw, either," he added, as he fished up several stems of dried grass. "What is it, anyhow?"

"That," said Viushin again, with a comical assumption of learning, "is the celebrated 'Jamuk chi a la Poosteretsk,' the national dish of the Koraks, made from the original recipe of His High Excellency Oollcot Ootkoo Minyegeetkin, Grand Hereditary Taiyon and Vwisokee Prevoskhodeetelstvo—"

"Hold on!" exclaimed Dodd, with a deprecating gesture, "that's enough, I'll eat it"; and taking out a halfspoonful of the dark viscid mass, he put it to his lips.

"Well," said we expectantly, after a moment's pause, "what does it taste like?"

"Like the mud pies of infancy!" he replied sententiously. "A little salt, pepper, and butter, and a good deal of meat and flour, with a few well selected vegetables, would probably improve it; but it isn't particularly bad as it is."

Upon the strength of this rather equivocal recommendation I tasted it. Aside from a peculiar earthy flavour, it had nothing about it which was either pleasant or disagreeable. Its qualities were all negative except its grassiness, which alone gave character and consistency to the mass.

The mixture, known among the Koraks as manyalla, is eaten by all the Siberian tribes as a substitute for bread, and is the nearest approximation which native ingenuity can make to the staff of life. It is valued, we were told, more for its medicinal virtues than for any intrinsic excellence of taste, and our limited experience fully prepared us to believe the statement. Its original elements are clotted blood, tallow, and half-digested moss, taken from the stomach of the reindeer, where it is supposed to have undergone some essential change which fits it for second-hand consumption. These curious and heterogeneous ingredients are boiled up together with a few handfuls of dried grass to give the mixture consistency, and the dark mass is then moulded into small loaves and frozen for future use. Our host was evidently desirous of treating us with every civility, and, as a mark of especial consideration, bit off several choice morsels from the large cube of venison in his grimy hand, and taking them from his mouth, offered them to me. I waived graciously the implied compliment, and indicated Dodd as the proper recipient of such attentions; but the latter revenged himself by requesting an old woman to bring me some raw tallow, which he soberly assured her constituted my only food when at home. My indignant denials, in English were not, of course, understood; and the woman, delighted to find an American whose tastes corresponded so closely with her own, brought the tallow. I was a helpless victim, and I could only add this last offence to the long list of grievances which stood to Dodd's credit, and which I hoped some time to settle in full.

Supper, in the social economy of the Koraks, is emphatically the meal of the day. Around the kettle of manyalla, or the trough of reindeer meat; gather the men of the band, who during the hours of daylight have been absent, and who, between mouthfuls of meat or moss, discuss the simple subjects of thought which their isolated life affords. We availed ourselves of this opportunity to learn something of the tribes that inhabited the country to the northward, the reception with which we should probably meet, and the mode of travel which we should be compelled to adopt.



CHAPTER XVIII

WHY THE KORAKS WANDER—THEIR INDEPENDENCE—CHEERLESS LIFE—USES OF THE REINDEER—KORAK IDEAS OF DISTANCE—"MONARCH OF THE BRASS-HANDLED SWORD"

The Wandering Koraks of Kamchatka, who are divided into about forty different bands, roam over the great steppes in the northern part of the peninsula, between the 58th and the 63d parallels of latitude. Their southern limit is the settlement of Tigil, on the west coast, where they come annually to trade, and they are rarely found north of the village of Penzhina, two hundred miles from the head of the Okhotsk Sea. Within these limits they wander almost constantly with their great herds of reindeer, and so unsettled and restless are they in their habits, that they seldom camp longer than a week in any one place. This, however, is not attributable altogether to restlessness or love of change. A herd of four or five thousand reindeer will in a very few days paw up the snow and eat all the moss within a radius of a mile from the encampment, and then, of course, the band must move to fresh pasture ground. Their nomadic life, therefore, is not entirely a choice, but partly a necessity, growing out of their dependence upon the reindeer. They must wander or their deer will starve, and then their own starvation follows as a natural consequence. Their unsettled mode of life probably grew, in the first place, out of the domestication of the reindeer, and the necessity which it involved of consulting first the reindeer's wants; but the restless, vagabondish habits thus produced have now become a part of the Korak's very nature, so that he could hardly live in any other way, even had he an opportunity of so doing. This wandering, isolated, independent existence has given to the Koraks all those characteristic traits of boldness, impatience of restraint, and perfect self-reliance, which distinguish them from the Kamchadals and the other settled inhabitants of Siberia. Give them a small herd of reindeer, and a moss steppe to wander over, and they ask nothing more from all the world. They are wholly independent of civilisation and government, and will neither submit to their laws nor recognise their distinctions. Every man is a law unto himself so long as he owns a dozen reindeer; and he can isolate himself, if he so chooses, from all human kind, and ignore all other interests but his own and his reindeer's. For the sake of convenience and society they associate themselves in bands of six or eight families each; but these bands are held together only by mutual consent, and recognise no governing head. They have a leader called a taiyon who is generally the largest deer-owner of the band, and he decides all such questions as the location of camps and time of removal from place to place; but he has no other power, and must refer all graver questions of individual rights and general obligations to the members of the band collectively. They have no particular reverence for anything or anybody except the evil spirits who bring calamities upon them, and the "shamans" or priests, who act as infernal mediators between these devils and their victims. Earthly rank they treat with contempt, and the Tsar of all the Russias, if he entered a Korak tent, would stand upon the same level with its owner. We had an amusing instance of this soon after we met the first Koraks. The Major had become impressed in some way with the idea that in order to get what he wanted from these natives he must impress them with a proper sense of his power, rank, wealth, and general importance in the world, and make them feel a certain degree of reverence and respect for his orders and wishes. He accordingly called one of the oldest and most influential members of the band to him one day, and proceeded to tell him, through an interpreter, how rich he was; what immense resources, in the way of rewards and punishments, he possessed; what high rank he held; how important a place he filled in Russia, and how becoming it was that an individual of such exalted attributes should be treated by poor wandering heathen with filial reverence and veneration. The old Korak, squatting upon his heels on the ground, listened quietly to the enumeration of all our leader's admirable qualities and perfections without moving a muscle of his face; but finally, when the interpreter had finished, he rose slowly, walked up to the Major with imperturbable gravity, and with the most benignant and patronising condescension, patted him softly on the head! The Major turned red and broke into a laugh; but he never tried again to overawe a Korak.

Notwithstanding this democratic independence of the Koraks, they are almost invariably hospitable, obliging, and kind-hearted; and we were assured at the first encampment where we stopped, that we should have no difficulty in getting the different bands to carry us on deer-sledges from one encampment to another until we should reach the head of Penzhinsk Gulf. After a long conversation with the Koraks who crowded around us as we sat by the fire, we finally became tired and sleepy, and with favourable impressions, upon the whole, of this new and strange people, we crawled into our little polog to sleep. A voice in another part of the yurt was singing a low, melancholy air in a minor key as I closed my eyes, and the sad, oft-repeated refrain, so different from ordinary music, invested with peculiar loneliness and strangeness my first night in a Korak tent.

To be awakened in the morning by a paroxysm of coughing, caused by the thick, acrid smoke of a low-spirited fire—to crawl out of a skin bedroom six feet square into the yet denser and smokier atmosphere of the tent—to eat a breakfast of dried fish, frozen tallow, and venison out of a dirty wooden trough, with an ill-conditioned dog standing at each elbow and disputing one's right to every mouthful, is to enjoy an experience which only Korak life can afford, and which only Korak insensibility can long endure. A very sanguine temperament may find in its novelty some compensation for its discomfort, but the novelty rarely outlasts the second day, while the discomfort seems to increase in a direct ratio with the length of the experience. Philosophers may assert that a rightly constituted mind will rise superior to all outward circumstances; but two weeks in a Korak tent would do more to disabuse their minds of such an erroneous impression than any amount of logical argument. I do not myself profess to be preternaturally cheerful, and the dismal aspect of things when I crawled out of my fur sleeping-bag, on the morning after our arrival at the first encampment, made me feel anything but amiable. The first beams of daylight were just struggling in misty blue lines through the smoky atmosphere of the tent. The recently kindled fire would not burn but would smoke; the air was cold and cheerless; two babies were crying in a neighbouring polog; the breakfast was not ready, everybody was cross, and rather than break the harmonious impression of general misery, I became cross also. Three or four cups of hot tea, however, which were soon forthcoming, exerted their usual inspiriting influence, and we began gradually to take a more cheerful view of the situation. Summoning the taiyon, and quickening his dull apprehension with a preliminary pipe of strong Circassian tobacco, we succeeded in making arrangements for our transportation to the next Korak encampment in the north, a distance of about forty miles. Orders were at once given for the capture of twenty reindeer and the preparation of sledges. Snatching hurriedly a few bites of hardbread and bacon by way of breakfast, I donned fur hood and mittens, and crawled out through the low doorway to see how twenty trained deer were to be separated from a herd of four thousand wild ones.



Surrounding the tent in every direction were the deer belonging to the band, some pawing up the snow with their sharp hoofs in search of moss, others clashing their antlers together and barking hoarsely in fight, or chasing one another in a mad gallop over the steppe. Near the tent a dozen men with lassos arranged themselves in two parallel lines, while twenty more, with a thong of sealskin two or three hundred yards in length, encircled a portion of the great herd, and with shouts and waving lassos began driving it through the narrow gantlet. The deer strove with frightened bounds to escape from the gradually contracting circle, but the sealskin cord, held at short distances by shouting natives, invariably turned them back, and they streamed in a struggling, leaping throng through the narrow opening between the lines of lassoers. Ever and anon a long cord uncoiled itself in air, and a sliding noose fell over the antlers of some unlucky deer whose slit ears marked him as trained, but whose tremendous leaps and frantic efforts to escape suggested very grave doubts as to the extent of the training. To prevent the interference and knocking together of the deer's antlers when they should be harnessed in couples, one horn was relentlessly chopped off close to the head by a native armed with a heavy sword-like knife, leaving a red ghastly stump from which the blood trickled in little streams over the animal's ears. They were then harnessed to sledges in couples, by a collar and trace passing between the forelegs; lines were affixed to small sharp studs in the headstall, which pricked the right or left side of the head when the corresponding rein was jerked, and the equipage was ready.

Bidding good-by to the Lesnoi Kamchadals, who returned from here, we muffled ourselves from the biting air in our heaviest furs, took seats on our respective sledges, and at a laconic "tok" (go) from the taiyon we were off; the little cluster of tents looking like a group of conical islands behind us as we swept out upon the limitless ocean of the snowy steppe. Noticing that I shivered a little in the keen air, my driver pointed away to the northward, and exclaimed with a pantomimic shrug, "Tam shipka kholodno"—"There it's awful cold." We needed not to be informed of the fact; the rapidly sinking thermometer indicated our approach to the regions of perpetual frost, and I looked forward with no little apprehension to the prospect of sleeping outdoors in the arctic temperatures of which I had read, but which I had never yet experienced.

This was my first trial of reindeer travel, and I was a little disappointed to find that it did not quite realise the expectations that had been excited in my boyish days by the pictures of galloping Lapland deer in the old geographies. The reindeer were there, but they were not the ideal reindeer of early fancy, and I felt a vague sense of personal injury and unjustifiable deception at the substitution of these awkward, ungainly beasts for the spirited and fleet-footed animals of my boyish imagination. Their trot was awkward and heavy, they carried their heads low, and their panting breaths and gaping mouths were constantly suggestive of complete exhaustion, and excited pity for their apparently laborious exertions, rather than admiration for the speed which they really did exhibit. My ideal reindeer would never have demeaned himself by running with his mouth wide open. When I learned, as I afterward did, that they were compelled to breathe through their mouths, on account of the rapid accumulation of frost in their nostrils, it relieved my apprehensions of their breaking down, but did not alter my firm conviction that my ideal reindeer was infinitely superior in an aesthetic point of view to the real animal. I could not but admit, however, the inestimable value of the reindeer to his wandering owners. Besides carrying them from place to place, he furnishes them with clothes, food, and covering for their tents; his antlers are made into rude implements of all sorts; his sinews are dried and pounded into thread, his bones are soaked in seal oil and burned for fuel, his entrails are cleaned, filled with tallow, and eaten; his blood, mixed with the contents of his stomach, is made into manyalla; his marrow and tongue are considered the greatest of delicacies; the stiff, bristly skin of his legs is used to cover snow-shoes; and finally his whole body, sacrificed to the Korak gods, brings down upon his owners all the spiritual and temporal blessings which they need. It would be hard to find another animal which fills so important a place in the life of any body of men, as the reindeer does in the life and domestic economy of the Siberian Koraks. I cannot now think of one which furnishes even the four prime requisites of food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. It is a singular fact, however, that the Siberian natives—the only people, so far as I know, who have ever domesticated the reindeer, except the Laps—do not use in any way the animal's milk. Why so important and desirable an article of food should be neglected, when every other part of the deer's body is turned to some useful account, I cannot imagine. It is certain, however, that no one of the four great wandering tribes of north-eastern Siberia, Koraks, Chukchis, Tunguses, and Lamutkis, uses in any way the reindeer's milk.

By two o'clock in the afternoon it began to grow dark, but we estimated that we had accomplished at least half of our day's journey, and halted for a few moments to allow our deer to eat. The last half of the distance seemed interminable. The moon rose round and bright as the shield of Achilles, and lighted up the vast, lonely tundra with noonday brilliancy; but the silence and desolation, the absence of any dark object upon which the fatigued eye could rest, and the apparently boundless extent of this Dead Sea of snow, oppressed us with new and strange sensations of awe. A dense mist or steam, which is an unfailing indication of intense cold, rose from the bodies of the reindeer and hung over the road long after we had passed. Beards became tangled masses of frozen iron wire; eyelids grew heavy with white rims of frost and froze together when we winked; noses assumed a white, waxen appearance with every incautious exposure, and only by frequently running beside our sledges could we keep any "feeling" in our feet. Impelled by hunger and cold, we repeated twenty times the despairing question, "How much farther is it?" and twenty times we received the stereotyped but indefinite answer of "cheimuk," near, or occasionally the encouraging assurance that we would arrive in a minute. Now we knew very well that we should not arrive in a minute, nor probably in forty minutes; but it afforded temporary relief to be told that we would. My frequent inquiries finally spurred my driver into an attempt to express the distance arithmetically, and with evident pride in his ability to speak Russian, he assured me that it was only "dva verst," or two versts more. I brightened up at once with anticipations of a warm fire and an infinite number of cups of hot tea, and by imagining prospective comfort, succeeded in forgetting the present sense of suffering. At the expiration, however, of three-quarters of an hour, seeing no indication of the promised encampment, I asked once more if it were much farther away. One Korak looked around over the steppe with a well assumed air of seeking some landmark, and then turning to me with a confident nod, repeated the word "verst" and held up four fingers! I sank back upon my sledge in despair. If we had been three-quarters of an hour in losing two versts, how long would be we in losing versts enough to get back to the place from which we started. It was a discouraging problem, and after several unsuccessful attempts to solve it by the double rule of three backwards, I gave it up. For the benefit of the future traveller, I give, however, a few native expressions for distances, with their numerical equivalents: "cheimuk"—near, twenty versts; "bolshe nyet"—there is no more, fifteen versts; "sey chas priyedem"—we will arrive this minute, means any time in the course of the day or night; and "dailoko"—far, is a week's journey. By bearing in mind these simple values, the traveller will avoid much bitter disappointment, and may get through without entirely losing faith in human veracity. About six o'clock in the evening, tired, hungry, and half-frozen, we caught sight of the sparks and fire-lit smoke which arose from the tents of the second encampment, and amid a general barking of dogs and hallooing of men we stopped among them. Jumping hurriedly from my sledge, with no thought but that of getting to a fire, I crawled into the first hole which presented itself, with a firm belief, founded on the previous night's experience, that it must be a door. After groping about some time in the dark, crawling over two dead reindeer and a heap of dried fish, I was obliged to shout for assistance. Great was the astonishment of the proprietor, who came to the rescue with a torch, to find a white man and a stranger crawling around aimlessly in his fish storehouse. He relieved his feelings with a ty-e-e-e of amazement, and led the way, or rather crawled away, to the interior of the tent, where I found the Major endeavouring with a dull Korak knife to cut his frozen beard loose from his fur hood and open communication with his mouth through a sheet of ice and hair. The teakettle was soon simmering and spouting over a brisk fire, beards were thawed out, noses examined for signs of frost-bites, and in half an hour we were seated comfortably on the ground around a candle-box, drinking tea and discussing the events of the day.

Just as Viushin was filling up our cups for the third time, the skin curtain of the low doorway at our side was lifted up, and the most extraordinary figure which I ever beheld in Kamchatka crawled silently in, straightened up to its full height of six feet, and stood majestically before us. It was an ugly, dark-featured man about thirty years of age. He was clothed in a scarlet dress-coat with blue facings and brass buttons, with long festoons of gold cord hung across the breast, trousers of black, greasy deerskin, and fur boots. His hair was closely shaven from the crown of his head, leaving a long fringe of lank, uneven locks hanging about his ears and forehead. Long strings of small coloured beads depended from his ears, and over one of them he had plastered for future use a huge quid of masticated tobacco. About his waist was tied a ragged sealskin thong, which supported a magnificent silver-hilted sword and embossed scabbard. His smoky, unmistakably Korak face, shaven head, scarlet coat, greasy skin trousers, gold cord, sealskin belt, silver-hilted sword, and fur boots, made up such a remarkable combination of glaring contrasts that we could do nothing for a moment but stare at him in utter amazement. He reminded me of "Talipot, the Immortal Potentate of Manacabo, Messenger of the Morning, Enlightener of the Sun, Possessor of the Whole Earth, and Mighty Monarch of the Brass-handled Sword."

"Who are you?" suddenly demanded the Major, in Russian. A low bow was the only response. "Where in the name of Chort did you come from?" Another bow. "Where did you get that coat? Can't you say something? Ay! Meranef! Come and talk to this—fellow, I can't make him say anything." Dodd suggested that he might be a messenger from the expedition of Sir John Franklin, with late advices from the Pole and the North-west Passage, and the silent owner of the sword bowed affirmatively, as if this were the true solution of the mystery. "Are you a pickled cabbage?" suddenly inquired Dodd in Russian. The Unknown intimated by a very emphatic bow that he was. "He doesn't understand anything!" said Dodd in disgust; "where's Meranef?" Meranef soon made his appearance, and began questioning the mysterious visitor in a scarlet coat as to his residence, name, and previous history. For the first time he now found a voice. "What does he say?" asked the Major; "what's his name?"

"He says his name is Khanalpooginuk."

"Where did he get that coat and sword?"

"He says 'the Great White Chief' gave it to him for a dead reindeer." This was not very satisfactory, and Meranef was instructed to get some more intelligible information. Who the "Great White Chief" might be, and why he should give a scarlet coat and a silver-hilted sword for a dead reindeer, were questions beyond our ability to solve. Finally, Meranef's puzzled face cleared up, and he told us that the coat and sword had been presented to the Unknown by the Emperor, as a reward for reindeer given to the starving Russians of Kamchatka during a famine. The Korak was asked if he had received no paper with these gifts, and he immediately left the tent, and returned in a moment with a sheet of paper tied up carefully with reindeer's sinews between a couple of thin boards. This paper explained everything. The coat and sword had been given to the present owner's father, during the reign of Alexander I., by the Russian Governor of Kamchatka as a reward for succour afforded the Russians in a famine. From the father they had descended to the son, and the latter, proud of his inherited distinction, had presented himself to us as soon as he heard of our arrival. He wanted nothing in particular except to show himself, and after examining his sword, which was really a magnificent weapon, we gave him a few bunches of tobacco and dismissed him. We had hardly expected to find in the interior of Kamchatka any relics of Alexander I., dating back to the time of Napoleon.



CHAPTER XIX

THE SNOW-DRIFT COMPASS—MARRIAGE BY CAPTURE—AN INTOXICATING FUNGUS—MONOTONY OF KORAK LIFE

On the following morning at daybreak we continued our journey, and rode until four hours after dark, over a boundless level steppe, without a single guiding landmark to point the way. I was surprised to see how accurately our drivers could determine the points of the compass and shape their course by simply looking at the snow. The heavy north-east winds which prevail in this locality throughout the winter sweep the snow into long wave-like ridges called sastrugi (sas-troo'-gee), which are always perpendicular to the course of the wind, and which almost invariably run in a north-west and south-east direction. They are sometimes hidden for a few days by fresh-fallen snow; but an experienced Korak can always tell by removing the upper layer which way is north, and he travels to his destination by night or day in a nearly straight line.

We reached the third encampment about six o'clock, and upon entering the largest tent were surprised to find it crowded with natives, as if in expectation of some ceremony or entertainment. Inquiry through our interpreter elicited the interesting fact that the ceremony of marriage was about to be performed for, or rather by, two members of the band; and instead of taking up our quarters, as we at first intended, in another less crowded tent, we determined to remain and see in what manner this rite would be solemnised by a wholly uncivilised and barbarous people.

The marriage ceremony of the Koraks is especially remarkable for its entire originality, and for the indifference which it manifests to the sensibilities of the bridegroom. In no other country does there exist such a curious mixture of sense and absurdity as that which is dignified in the social life of the Koraks with the name of marriage; and among no other people, let us charitably hope, is the unfortunate bridegroom subjected to such humiliating indignities. The contemplation of marriage is, or ought to be, a very serious thing to every young man; but to a Korak of average sensibility it must be absolutely appalling. No other proof of bravery need ever be exhibited than a certificate of marriage (if the Koraks have such documents), and the bravery rises into positive heroism when a man marries two or three times. I once knew a Korak in Kamchatka who had four wives, and I felt as much respect for his heroic bravery as if he had charged with the Six Hundred at Balaklava.

The ceremony, I believe, has never been described; and inadequate as a description may be to convey an idea of the reality, it will perhaps enable American lovers to realise what a calamity they escaped when they were born in America and not in Kamchatka. The young Korak's troubles begin when he first falls in love; this, like Achilles' wrath, is "the direful spring of woes unnumbered." If his intentions are serious, he calls upon the damsel's father and makes formal proposals for her hand, ascertains the amount of her dower in reindeer, and learns her estimated value. He is probably told that he must work for his wife two or three years—a rather severe trial of any young man's affection. He then seeks an interview with the young lady herself, and performs the agreeable or disagreeable duty which corresponds in Korak to the civilised custom of "popping the question." We had hoped to get some valuable hints from the Koraks as to the best method which their experience suggested for the successful accomplishment of this delicate task; but we could learn nothing that would be applicable to the more artificial relations of civilised society. If the young man's sentiments are reciprocated, and he obtains a positive promise of marriage, he goes cheerfully to work, like Ferdinand in The Tempest for Miranda's father, and spends two or three years in cutting and drawing wood, watching reindeer, making sledges, and contributing generally to the interests of his prospective father-in-law. At the end of this probationary period comes the grand "experimentum crucis," which is to decide his fate and prove the success or the uselessness of his long labour.

At this interesting crisis we had surprised our Korak friends in the third encampment. The tent which we had entered was an unusually large one, containing twenty-six pologs, arranged in a continuous circle around its inner circumference. The open space in the centre around the fire was crowded with the dusky faces and half-shaven heads of the Korak spectators, whose attention seemed about equally divided between sundry kettles and troughs of manyalla, boiled venison, marrow, frozen tallow, and similar delicacies, and the discussion of some controverted point of marriage etiquette. Owing to my ignorance of the language, I was not able to enter thoroughly into the merits of the disputed question; but it seemed to be ably argued on both sides. Our sudden entrance seemed to create a temporary diversion from the legitimate business of the evening. The tattooed women and shaven-headed men stared in open-mouthed astonishment at the pale-faced guests who had come unbidden to the marriage-feast, having on no wedding garments. Our faces were undeniably dirty, our blue hunting-shirts and buckskin trousers bore the marks of two months' rough travel, in numerous rips, tears, and tatters, which were only partially masked by a thick covering of reindeer hair from our fur kukhlankas. Our general appearance, in fact, suggested a more intimate acquaintance with dirty yurts, mountain thickets, and Siberian storms, than with the civilising influences of soap, water, razors, and needles. We bore the curious scrutiny of the assemblage, however, with the indifference of men who were used to it, and sipped our hot tea while waiting for the ceremony to begin. I looked curiously around to see if I could distinguish the happy candidates for matrimonial honours; but they were evidently concealed in one of the closed pologs. The eating and drinking seemed by this time to be about finished, and an air of expectation and suspense pervaded the entire crowd. Suddenly we were startled by the loud and regular beating of a native baraban or bass drum, which fairly filled the tent with a great volume of sound. At the same instant the tent opened to permit the passage of a tall, stern-looking Korak, with an armful of willow sprouts and alder branches, which he proceeded

to distribute in all the pologs of the tent. "What do you suppose that's for?" asked Dodd in an undertone. "I don't know," was the reply; "keep quiet and you'll see." The regular throbs of the drum continued throughout the distribution of the willow sticks and at its close the drummer began to sing a low, musical recitative, which increased gradually in volume and energy until it swelled into a wild, barbarous chant, timed by the regular beats of the heavy drum. A slight commotion followed, the front curtains of all the pologs were thrown up, the women stationed themselves in detachments of two or three at the entrance of each polog, and took up the willow branches which had been provided. In a moment a venerable native, whom we presumed to be the father of one of the parties, emerged from one of the pologs near the door, leading a good-looking young Korak and the dark-faced bride. Upon their appearance the excitement increased to the pitch of frenzy, the music redoubled its rapidity, the men in the centre of the tent joined in the uncouth chant, and uttered at short intervals peculiar shrill cries of wild excitement. At a given signal from the native who had led out the couple, the bride darted suddenly into the first polog, and began a rapid flight around the tent, raising the curtains between the pologs successively, and passing under. The bridegroom instantly followed in hot pursuit; but the women who were stationed in each compartment threw every possible impediment in his way, tripping up his unwary feet, holding down the curtains to prevent his passage, and applying the willow and alder switches unmercifully to a very susceptible part of his body as he stooped to raise them. The air was filled with drum-beats, shouts of encouragement and derision, and the sound of the heavy blows which were administered to the unlucky bridegroom by each successive detachment of women as he ran the gantlet. It became evident at once that despite his most violent efforts he would fail to overtake the flying Atalanta before she completed the circuit of the tent. Even the golden apples of Hesperides would have availed him little against such disheartening odds; but with undismayed perseverance he pressed on, stumbling headlong over the outstretched feet of his female persecutors, and getting constantly entangled in the ample folds of the reindeerskin curtains, which were thrown with the skill of a matador over his head and eyes. In a moment the bride had entered the last closed polog near the door, while the unfortunate bridegroom was still struggling with his accumulating misfortunes about half-way around the tent. I expected to see him relax his efforts and give up the contest when the bride disappeared, and was preparing to protest strongly in his behalf against the unfairness of the trial; but, to my surprise, he still struggled on, and with a final plunge burst through the curtains of the last polog and rejoined his bride. The music suddenly ceased, and the throng began to stream out of the tent. The ceremony was evidently over. Turning to Meranef, who with a delighted grin had watched its progress, we inquired what it all meant. "Were they married?"—"Da's," was the affirmative reply. "But," we objected, "he didn't catch her."—"She waited for him, your honour, in the last polog, and if he caught her there it was enough."—"Suppose he had not caught her there, then what?"—"Then," answered the Cossack, with an expressive shrug of commiseration, "the beidnak [poor fellow] would have had to work two more years." This was pleasant—for the bridegroom! To work two years for a wife, undergo a severe course of willow sprouts at the close of his apprenticeship, and then have no security against a possible breach of promise on the part of the bride. His faith in her constancy must be unlimited. The intention of the whole ceremony was evidently to give the woman an opportunity to marry the man or not, as she chose, since it was obviously impossible for him to catch her under such circumstances, unless she voluntarily waited for him in one of the pologs. The plan showed a more chivalrous regard and deference for the wishes and preferences of the gentler sex than is common in an unreconstructed state of society; but it seemed to me, as an unprejudiced observer, that the same result might have been obtained without so much abuse of the unfortunate bridegroom! Some regard ought to have been paid to his feelings, if he was a man. I could not ascertain the significance of the chastisement which was inflicted by the women upon the bridegroom with the willow switches. Dodd suggested that it might be emblematical of married life—a sort of foreshadowing of future domestic experience; but in view of the masculine Korak character, this hardly seemed to me probable. No woman in her senses would try the experiment a second time upon one of the stern, resolute men who witnessed that ceremony, and who seemed to regard it then as perfectly proper. Circumstances would undoubtedly alter cases.

Mr. A.S. Bickmore, in the American Journal of Science for May, 1868, notices this curious custom of the Koraks, and says that the chastisement is intended to test the young man's "ability to bear up against the ills of life"; but I would respectfully submit that the ills of life do not generally come in that shape, and that switching a man over the back with willow sprouts is a very singular way of preparing him for future misfortunes of any kind.

Whatever may be the motive, it is certainly an infringement upon the generally recognised prerogatives of the sterner sex, and should be discountenanced by all Koraks who favour masculine supremacy. Before they know it, they will have a woman's suffrage association on their hands, and female lecturers will be going about from band to band advocating the substitution of hickory clubs and slung-shots for the harmless willow switches, and protesting against the tyranny which will not permit them to indulge in this interesting diversion at least three times a week. [Footnote: It is now well known that this ceremony is a form of "marriage by capture" which is widely prevalent among barbarous peoples.—G.K. (1909).]

After the conclusion of the ceremony we removed to an adjacent tent, and were surprised, as we came out into the open air, to see three or four Koraks shouting and reeling about in an advanced stage of intoxication—celebrating, I suppose, the happy event which had just transpired. I knew that there was not a drop of alcoholic liquor in all northern Kamchatka, nor, so far as I knew, anything from which it could be made, and it was a mystery to me how they had succeeded in becoming so suddenly, thoroughly, hopelessly, undeniably drunk. Even Ross Browne's beloved Washoe, with its "howling wilderness" saloons, could not have turned out more creditable specimens of intoxicated humanity than those before us. The exciting agent, whatever it might be, was certainly as quick in its operation, and as effective in its results, as any "tanglefoot" or "bottled lightning" known to modern civilisation. Upon inquiry we learned to our astonishment that they had been eating a species of the plant vulgarly known as toadstool. There is a peculiar fungus of this class in Siberia, known to the natives as "muk-a-moor," and as it possesses active intoxicating properties, it is used as a stimulant by nearly all the Siberian tribes. [Footnote: Agaricus muscarius or fly-agaric.] Taken in large quantities it is a violent narcotic poison; but in small doses it produces all the effects of alcoholic liquor. Its habitual use, however, completely shatters the nervous system, and its sale by Russian traders to the natives has consequently been made a penal offence by Russian law. In spite of all prohibitions, the trade is still secretly carried on, and I have seen twenty dollars' worth of furs bought with a single fungus. The Koraks would gather it for themselves, but it requires the shelter of timber for its growth, and is not to be found on the barren steppes over which they wander; so that they are obliged for the most part to buy it, at enormous prices, from the Russian traders. It may sound strangely to American ears, but the invitation which a convivial Korak extends to his passing friend is not, "Come in and have a drink," but, "Won't you come in and take a toadstool?" Not a very alluring proposal perhaps to a civilised toper, but one which has a magical effect upon a dissipated Korak. As the supply of these toadstools is by no means equal to the demand, Korak ingenuity has been greatly exercised in the endeavour to economise the precious stimulant, and make it go as far as possible. Sometimes, in the course of human events, it becomes imperatively necessary that a whole band shall get drunk together, and they have only one toadstool to do it with. For a description of the manner in which this band gets drunk collectively and individually upon one fungus, and keeps drunk for a week, the curious reader is referred to Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, Letter 32. It is but just to say, however, that this horrible practice is almost entirely confined to the settled Koraks of Penzhinsk Gulf—the lowest, most degraded portion of the whole tribe. It may prevail to a limited extent among the wandering natives, but I never heard of more than one such instance outside of the Penzhinsk Gulf settlements.

Our travel for the next few days after leaving the third encampment was fatiguing and monotonous. The unvarying routine of our daily life in smoky Korak tents, and the uniform flatness and barrenness of the country over which we journeyed, became inexpressibly tiresome, and we looked forward in longing anticipation to the Russian settlement of Gizhiga, at the head of Gizhiginsk Gulf, which was the Mecca of our long pilgrimage. To spend more than a week at one time with the Wandering Koraks without becoming lonesome or homesick, requires an almost inexhaustible fertility of mental resource. One is thrown for entertainment entirely upon himself. No daily paper, with its fresh material for thought and discussion, comes to enliven the long blank evenings by the tent fire; no wars or rumours of wars, no coup d'etat of diplomacy, no excitement of political canvass ever agitates the stagnant intellectual atmosphere of Korak existence. Removed to an infinite distance, both physically and intellectually, from all of the interests, ambitions, and excitements which make up our world, the Korak simply exists, like a human oyster, in the quiet waters of his monotonous life. An occasional birth or marriage, the sacrifice of a dog, or, on rare occasions, of a man to the Korak Ahriman, and the infrequent visits of a Russian trader, are the most prominent events in his history, from the cradle to the grave. I found it almost impossible sometimes to realise, as I sat by the fire in a Korak tent, that I was still in the modern world of railroads, telegraphs, and daily newspapers. I seemed to have been carried back by some enchantment through the long cycles of time, and made a dweller in the tents of Shem and Japheth. Not a suggestion was there in all our surroundings of the vaunted enlightenment and civilisation of the nineteenth century, and as we gradually accustomed ourselves to the new and strange conditions of primitive barbarism, our recollections of a civilised life faded into the unreal imagery of a vivid dream.



CHAPTER XX

THE KORAK TONGUE—RELIGION OF TERROR—INCANTATIONS OF SHAMANS—KILLING OF OLD AND SICK—REINDEER SUPERSTITION—KORAK CHARACTER

Our long intercourse with the Wandering Koraks gave us an opportunity of observing many of their peculiarities, which would very likely escape the notice of a transient visitor; and as our journey until we reached the head of Penzhinsk Gulf was barren of incident, I shall give in this chapter all the information I could gather relative to the language, religion, superstitions, customs, and mode of life of the Kamchatkan Koraks.

There can be no doubt whatever that the Koraks and the powerful Siberian tribe known as Chukchis (or Tchucktchis, according to Wrangell) descended originally from the same stock, and migrated together from their ancient locations to the places where they now live. Even after several centuries of separation, they resemble each other so closely that they can hardly be distinguished, and their languages differ less one from the other than the Portuguese differs from the Spanish. Our Korak interpreters found very little difficulty in conversing with Chukchis; and a comparison of vocabularies which we afterward made showed only a slight dialectical variation, which could be easily accounted for by a few centuries of separation. None of the Siberian languages with which I am acquainted are written, and, lacking a fixed standard of reference, they change with great rapidity. This is shown by a comparison of a modern Chukchi vocabulary with the one compiled by M. de Lesseps in 1788. Many words have altered so materially as to be hardly recognisable. Others, on the contrary, such as "tin tin," ice, "oottoot," wood, "weengay," no, "ay," yes, and most of the numerals up to ten, have undergone no change whatever. Both Koraks and Chukchis count by fives instead of tens, a peculiarity which is also noticeable in the language of the Co-Yukons in Alaska. The Korak numerals are:—

Innin, One. Nee-ak deg.h, Two. Nee-ok deg.h, Three. Nee-ak deg.h, Four. Mil-li-gen, Five. In-nin mil-li-gen, Five-one. Nee-ak deg.h " Five-two. Nee-ok deg.h " Five-three. Nee-ak deg.h " Five-four. Meen-ye-geet-k deg.hin, Ten.

After ten they count ten-one, ten-two, etc., up to fifteen, and then ten-five-one; but their numerals become so hopelessly complicated when they get above twenty, that is would be easier to carry a pocketful of stones and count with them, than to pronounce the corresponding words.

Fifty-six, for instance, is "Nee-akh-khleep-kin-meen-ye-geet-khin-par-ol-in-nin-mil-li-gen," and it is only fifty-six after it is all pronounced! It ought to be at least two hundred and sixty-three millions nine hundred and fourteen thousand seven hundred and one—and then it would be long. But the Koraks rarely have occasion to use high numbers; and when they do, they have an abundance of time. It would be a hard day's work for a boy to explain in Korak one of the miscellaneous problems in Ray's Higher Arithmetic. To say 324 x 5260 = 1,704,240 would certainly entitle him to a recess of an hour and a reward of merit. We were never able to trace any resemblance whatever between the Koraki-Chukchi language and the languages spoken by the natives on the eastern side of Bering Strait. If there be any resemblance, it must be in grammar rather than in vocabulary.



The religion of all the natives of north-eastern Siberia, wandering and settled, including six or seven widely different tribes, is that corrupted form of Buddhism known as Shamanism. It is a religion which varies considerably in different places and among different people; but with the Koraks and Chukchis it may be briefly defined as the worship of the evil spirits who are supposed to be embodied in all the mysterious powers and manifestations of Nature, such as epidemic and contagious diseases, severe storms, famines, eclipses, and brilliant auroras. It takes its name from the shamans or priests, who act as interpreters of the evil spirits' wishes and as mediators between them and man. All unnatural phenomena, and especially those of a disastrous and terrible nature, are attributed to the direct action of these evil spirits, and are considered as plain manifestations of their displeasure. It is claimed by many that the whole system of Shamanism is a gigantic imposture practised by a few cunning priests upon the easy credulity of superstitious natives. This I am sure is a prejudiced view. No one who has ever lived with the Siberian natives, studied their character, subjected himself to the same influences that surround them, and put himself as far as possible in their places, will ever doubt the sincerity of either priests or followers, or wonder that the worship of evil spirits should be their only religion. It is the only religion possible for such men in such circumstances. A recent writer [Footnote: W.E.H. Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe.] of great fairness and impartiality has described so admirably the character of the Siberian Koraks, and the origin and nature of their religious belief, that I cannot do better than quote his words:—

"Terror is everywhere the beginning of religion. The phenomena which impress themselves most forcibly on the mind of the savage are not those which enter manifestly into the sequence of natural laws, and which are productive of most beneficial effects; but those which are disastrous and apparently abnormal. Gratitude is less vivid than fear, and the smallest infraction of a natural law produces a deeper impression than the most sublime of its ordinary operations. When, therefore, the most startling and terrible aspects of Nature are presented to his mind—when the more deadly forms of disease or natural convulsion desolate his land, the savage derives from them an intensely realised perception of diabolical presence. In the darkness of the night; amid the yawning chasms and the wild echoes of the mountain gorge; under the blaze of the comet or the solemn gloom of the eclipse; when famine has blasted the land; when the earthquake and the pestilence have slaughtered their thousands; in every form of disease which refracts and distorts the reason, in all that is strange, portentous, and deadly, he feels and cowers before the supernatural. Completely exposed to all the influences of Nature, and completely ignorant of the chain of sequence that unites its various parts, he lives in continual dread of what he deems the direct and isolated acts of evil spirits. Feeling them continually near him, he will naturally endeavour to enter into communion with them. He will strive to propitiate them with gifts. If some great calamity has fallen upon him, or if some vengeful passion has mastered his reason, he will attempt to invest himself with their authority, and his excited imagination will soon persuade him that he has succeeded in his desire."

These pregnant words are the key to the religion of the Siberian natives, and afford the only intelligible explanation of the origin of shamans. If any proof were needed that this system of religion is the natural outgrowth of human nature in certain conditions of barbarism, it would be furnished by the universal prevalence of Shamanism in north-eastern Siberia among so many diverse tribes of different character and different origin. The tribe of Tunguses for instance, is certainly of Chinese descent, and the tribe of Yakuts is certainly Turkish. Both came from different regions, bringing different beliefs, superstitions, and modes of thought; but, when both were removed from all disturbing agencies and subjected to the same external influences, both developed precisely the same system of religious belief. If a band of ignorant, barbarous Mahometans were transported to north-eastern Siberia, and compelled to live alone in tents, century after century, amid the wild, gloomy scenery of the Stanavoi Mountains, to suffer terrific storms whose causes they could not explain, to lose their reindeer suddenly by an epidemic disease which defied human remedies, to be frightened by magnificent auroras that set the whole universe in a blaze, and decimated by pestilences whose nature they could not understand and whose disastrous effects they were powerless to avert—they would almost inevitably lose by degrees their faith in Allah and Mahomet, and become precisely such Shamanists as the Siberian Koraks and Chukchis are today. Even a whole century of partial civilisation and Christian training cannot wholly counteract the irresistible Shamanistic influence which is exerted upon the mind by the wilder, more terrible manifestations of Nature in these lonely and inhospitable regions. The Kamchadals who accompanied me to the Samanka Mountains were the sons of Christian parents, and had been brought up from infancy in the Greek Church; they were firm believers in the Divine atonement and in Divine providence, and prayed always night and morning for safety and preservation; yet, when overtaken by a storm in that gloomy range of mountains, the sense of the supernatural overcame their religious convictions, God seemed far away while evil spirits were near and active, and they sacrificed a dog, like very pagans, to propitiate the diabolical wrath of which the storm was an evidence. I could cite many similar instances, where the strongest and apparently most sincere convictions of the reality of Divine government and superintendence have been overcome by the influence upon the imagination of some startling and unusual phenomenon of Nature. Man's actions are governed not so much by what he intellectually believes as by what he vividly realises; and it is this vivid realisation of diabolical presence which has given rise to the religion of Shamanism.

The duties of the shamans or priests among the Koraks are, to make incantations over the sick, to hold communication with the evil spirits, and to interpret their wishes and decrees to man. Whenever any calamity, such as disease, storm, or famine, comes upon a band, it is of course attributed to some spirit's displeasure, and the shaman is consulted as to the best method of appeasing his wrath. The priest to whom application is made assembles the people in one of the largest tents of the encampment, puts on a long robe marked with fantastic figures of birds and beasts and curious hieroglyphic emblems, unbinds his long black hair, and taking up a large native drum, begins to sing in a subdued voice to the accompaniment of slow, steady drum-beats. As the song progresses it increases in energy and rapidity, the priest's eyes seem to become fixed, he contorts his body as if in spasms, and increases the vehemence of his wild chant until the drum-beats make one continuous roll. Then, springing to his feet and jerking his head convulsively until his long hair fairly snaps, he begins a frantic dance about the tent, and finally sinks apparently exhausted into his seat. In a few moments he delivers to the awe-stricken natives the message which he has received from the evil spirits, and which consists generally of an order to sacrifice to them a certain number of dogs or reindeer, or perhaps a man.



In these wild incantations the priests sometimes practise all sorts of frauds upon their credulous followers, by pretending to swallow live coals and to pierce their bodies with knives; but, in a majority of instances, the shaman seems actually to believe that he is under the control and guidance of diabolical intelligence. The natives themselves, however, seem to doubt occasionally the priest's pretended inspiration, and whip him severely to test the sincerity of his professions and the genuineness of his revelations. If his fortitude sustains him under the infliction without any exhibition of human weakness or suffering, his authority as a minister of the evil spirits is vindicated, and his commands obeyed. Aside from the sacrifices which are ordered by the shamans, the Koraks offer general oblations at least twice a year, to assure a good catch of fish and seal and a prosperous season. We frequently saw twenty or thirty dogs suspended by the necks on long poles over a single encampment. Quantities of green grass are collected during the, summer and twisted into wreaths, to be hung around the necks of the slaughtered animals; and offerings of tobacco are always thrown to the evil spirits when the Koraks cross the summit of a mountain. The bodies of the dead, among all the wandering tribes, are burned, together with all their effects, in the hope of a final resurrection of both spirit and matter; and the sick, as soon as their recovery becomes hopeless, are either stoned to death or speared. We found it to be true, as we had been told by the Russians and the Kamchadals, that the Koraks murdered all their old people as soon as sickness or the infirmities of age unfitted them for the hardships of a nomadic life. Long experience has given them a terrible familiarity with the best and quickest methods of taking life; and they often explained to us with the most sickening minuteness, as we sat at night in their smoky pologs, the different ways in which a man could be killed, and pointed out the vital parts of the body where a spear or knife thrust would prove most instantly fatal. I thought of De Quincey's celebrated Essay upon "Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts," and of the field which a Korak encampment would afford to his "Society of Connoisseurs in Murder." All Koraks are taught to look upon such a death as the natural end of their existence, and they meet it generally with perfect composure. Instances are rare where a man desires to outlive the period of his physical activity and usefulness. They are put to death in the presence of the whole band, with elaborate but unintelligible ceremonies; their bodies are then burned, and the ashes suffered to be scattered and blown away by the wind.

These customs of murdering the old and sick, and burning the bodies of the dead, grow naturally out of the wandering life which the Koraks have adopted, and are only illustrations of the powerful influence which physical laws exert everywhere upon the actions and moral feelings of men. They both follow logically and almost inevitably from the very nature of the country and climate. The barrenness of the soil in north-eastern Siberia, and the severity of the long winter, led man to domesticate the reindeer as the only means of obtaining a subsistence; the domestication of the reindeer necessitated a wandering life; a wandering life made sickness and infirmity unusually burdensome to both sufferers and supporters; and this finally led to the murder of the old and sick, as a measure both of policy and mercy. The same causes gave rise to the custom of burning the dead. Their nomadic life made it impossible for them to have any one place of common sepulture, and only with the greatest difficulty could they dig graves at all in the perpetually frozen ground. Bodies could not be left to be torn by wolves, and burning them was the only practicable alternative. Neither of these customs presupposes any original and innate savageness or barbarity on the part of the Koraks themselves. They are the natural development of certain circumstances, and only prove that the strongest emotions of human nature, such as filial reverence, fraternal affection, selfish love of life, and respect for the remains of friends, all are powerless to oppose the operation of great natural laws. The Russian Church is endeavouring by missionary enterprise to convert all the Siberian tribes to Christianity; and although they have met with a certain degree of apparent success among the settled tribes of Yukagirs (yoo-kag'-eers), Chuances (choo-an'-ces), and Kamchadals, the wandering natives still cling to Shamanism, and there are more than 70,000 followers of that religion in the scanty population of north-eastern Siberia. Any permanent and genuine conversion of the Wandering Koraks and Chukchis must be preceded by some educational enlightenment and an entire change in their mode of life.

Among the many superstitions of the Wandering Koraks and Chukchis, one of the most noticeable is their reluctance to part with a living reindeer. You may purchase as many dead deer as you choose, up to five hundred, for about seventy cents apiece; but a living deer they will not give to you for love nor money. You may offer them what they consider a fortune in tobacco, copper kettles, beads, and scarlet cloth, for a single live reindeer, but they will persistently refuse to sell him; yet, if you will allow them to kill the very same animal, you can have his carcass for one small string of common glass beads. It is useless to argue with them about this absurd superstition. You can get no reason for it or explanation of it, except that "to sell a live reindeer would be atkin [bad]." As it was very necessary in the construction of our proposed telegraph line to have trained reindeer of our own, we offered every conceivable inducement to the Koraks to part with one single deer; but all our efforts were in vain. They could sell us a hundred dead deer for a hundred pounds of tobacco; but five hundred pounds would not tempt them to part with a single animal as long as the breath of life was in his body. During the two years and a half which we spent in Siberia, no one of our parties, so far as I know, ever succeeded in buying from the Koraks or Chukchis a single living reindeer. All the deer which we eventually owned—some eight hundred—we obtained from the Wandering Tunguses. [Footnote: This feeling or superstition eventually disappeared or was overcome. Many years later, living reindeer were bought in north-eastern Siberia for transportation to Alaska.]



The Koraks are probably the wealthiest deer-owners in Siberia, and consequently in the world. Many of the herds which we saw in northern Kamchatka numbered from eight to twelve thousand; and we were told that a certain rich Korak, who lived in the middle of the great tundra, had three immense herds in different places, numbering in the aggregate thirty thousand head. The care of these great herds is almost the only occupation of the Koraks' lives. They are obliged to travel constantly from place to place to find them food, and to watch them night and day to protect them from wolves. Every day eight or ten Koraks, armed with spears and knives, leave the encampment just before dark, walk a mile or two to the place where the deer happen to be pastured, build themselves little huts of trailing pine branches, about three feet in height and two in diameter, and squat in them throughout the long, cold hours of an arctic night, watching for wolves. The worse the weather is, the greater the necessity for vigilance. Sometimes, in the middle of a dark winter's night, when a terrible north-easterly storm is howling across the steppe in clouds of flying snow, a band of wolves will make a fierce, sudden attack upon a herd of deer, and scatter it to the four winds. This it is the business of the Korak sentinels to prevent. Alone and almost unsheltered on a great ocean of snow, each man squats down in his frail beehive of a hut, and spends the long winter nights in watching the magnificent auroras, which seem to fill the blue vault of heaven with blood and dye the earth in crimson, listening to the pulsating of the blood in his ears and the faint distant howls of his enemies the wolves. Patiently he endures cold which freezes mercury and storms which sweep away his frail shelter like chaff in a mist of flying snow. Nothing discourages him; nothing frightens him into seeking the shelter of the tents. I have seen him watching deer at night, with nose and cheeks frozen so that they had turned black; and have come upon him early cold winter mornings, squatting under three or four bushes, with his face buried in his fur coat, as if he were dead. I could never pass one of those little bush huts on a great desolate tundra without thinking of the man who had once squatted in it alone, and trying to imagine what had been his thoughts while watching through long dreary nights for the first faint flush of dawn. Had he never wondered, as the fiery arms of the aurora waved over his head, what caused these mysterious streamers? Had the solemn far-away stars which circled ceaselessly above the snowy plain never suggested to him the possibility of other brighter, happier worlds than this? Had not some

"—revealings faint and far, Stealing down from moon and star, Kindled in that human clod Thought of Destiny and God?"

Alas for poor unaided human nature! Supernatural influences he could and did feel; but the drum and wild shrieks of the shaman showed how utterly he failed to understand their nature and teachings.

The natural disposition of the Wandering Koraks is thoroughly good. They treat their women and children with great kindness; and during all my intercourse with them, extending over two years, I never saw a woman or a child struck. Their honesty is remarkable. Frequently they would harness up a team of reindeer after we had left their tents in the morning, and overtake us at a distance of five or ten miles, with a knife, a pipe, or some such trifle which we had overlooked and forgotten in the hurry of departure. Our sledges, loaded with tobacco, beads, and trading goods of all kinds, were left unguarded outside their tents; but never, so far as we knew, was a single article stolen. We were treated by many bands with as much kindness and generous hospitality as I ever experienced in a civilised country and among Christian people; and if I had no money or friends, I would appeal to a band of Wandering Koraks for help with much more confidence than I should ask the same favour of many an American family. Cruel and barbarous they may be, according to our ideas of cruelty and barbarity; but they have never been known to commit an act of treachery, and I would trust my life as unreservedly in their hands as I would in the hands of any other uncivilised people whom I have ever known.

Night after night, as we journeyed northward, the polar star approached nearer and nearer to the zenith, until finally, at the sixty-second parallel of latitude, we caught sight of the white peaks of the Stanavoi Mountains, at the head of Penzhinsk Gulf, which marked the northern boundary of Kamchatka. Under the shelter of their snowy slopes we camped for the last time in the smoky tents of the Kamchatkan Koraks, ate for the last time from their wooden troughs, and bade good-by with little regret to the desolate steppes of the peninsula and to tent life with its wandering people.



CHAPTER XXI

FIRST FROST-BITE—THE SETTLED KORAKS HOUR-GLASS YURTS—CLIMBING DOWN CHIMNEYS—YURT INTERIORS—LEGS AS FEATURES—TRAVELLING BY "PAVOSKA"—BAD CHARACTER OF SETTLED KORAKS

On the morning of November 23d, in a clear, bracing atmosphere of twenty-five degrees below zero, we arrived at the mouth of the large river called the Penzhina, which empties into Penzhinsk Gulf, at the head of the Okhotsk Sea. A dense cloud of frozen mist, which hung over the middle of the gulf, showed the presence there of open water; but the mouth of the river was completely choked up with great hummocks, rugged green slabs, and confused masses of ice, hurled in by a south-westerly storm, and frozen together in the wildest shapes of angular disorder. Through the grey mist we could see dimly, on a high bluff opposite, the strange outlines of the X-shaped yurts of the Kamenoi Koraks.

Leaving our drivers to get the reindeer and sledges across as best they could, the Major, Dodd, and I started on foot, picking our way between huge irregular blocks of clear green ice, climbing on hands and knees over enormous bergs, falling into wide, deep crevices, and stumbling painfully across the chevaux-de-frise of sharp splintered fragments into which the ice had been broken by a heavy sea. We had almost reached the other side, when Dodd suddenly cried out, "Oh, Kennan! Your nose is all white; rub it with snow—quick!" I have not the slightest doubt that the rest of my face also turned white at this alarming announcement; for the loss of my nose at the very outset of my arctic career would be a very serious misfortune. I caught up a handful of snow, however, mixed with sharp splinters of ice, and rubbed the insensible member until there was not a particle of skin left on the end of it, and then continued the friction with my mitten until my arm ached. If energetic treatment would save it, I was determined not to lose it that time. Feeling at last a painful thrill of returning circulation, I relaxed my efforts, and climbed up the steep bluff behind Dodd and the Major, to the Korak village of Kamenoi.

The settlement resembled as much as anything a collection of titanic wooden hour-glasses, which had been half shaken down and reduced to a state of rickety dilapidation by an earthquake. The houses—if houses they could be called—were about twenty feet in height, rudely constructed of driftwood which had been brought down by the river, and could be compared in shape to nothing but hour-glasses. They had no doors, or windows of any kind, and could be entered only by climbing up a pole on the outside, and sliding down another pole through the chimney—a mode of entrance whose practicability depended entirely upon the activity and intensity of the fire which burned underneath. The smoke and sparks, although sufficiently disagreeable, were trifles of comparative insignificance. I remember being told, in early infancy, that Santa Claus always came into a house through the chimney; and although I accepted the statement with the unreasoning faith of childhood, I could never understand how that singular feat of climbing down a chimney could be safely accomplished. To satisfy myself, I felt a strong inclination, every Christmas, to try the experiment, and was only prevented from doing so by the consideration of stove-pipes. I might succeed, I thought, in getting down the chimney; but coming out into a room through an eight-inch stove-pipe and a narrow stove-door was utterly out of the question. My first entrance into a Korak yurt, however, at Kamenoi, solved all my childish difficulties, and proved the possibility of entering a house in the eccentric way which Santa Claus is supposed to adopt. A large crowd of savage-looking fur-clad natives had gathered around us when we entered the village, and now stared at us with stupid curiosity as we made our first attempt at climbing a pole to get into a house. Out of deference for the Major's rank and superior attainments, we permitted him to go first. He succeeded very well in getting up the first pole, and lowered himself with sublime faith into the dark narrow chimney hole, out of which were pouring clouds of smoke; but at this critical moment, when his head was still dimly visible in the smoke, and his body out of sight in the chimney, he suddenly came to grief. The holes in the log down which he was climbing were too small to admit even his toes, covered as they were with heavy fur boots; and there he hung in the chimney, afraid to drop and unable to climb out—a melancholy picture of distress. Tears ran out of his closed eyes as the smoke enveloped his head, and he only coughed and strangled whenever he tried to shout for help. At last a native on the inside, startled at the appearance of his struggling body, came to his assistance, and succeeded in lowering him safely to the ground. Profiting by his experience, Dodd and I paid no attention to the holes, but putting our arms around the smooth log, slid swiftly down until we struck bottom. As I opened my tearful eyes, I was saluted by a chorus of drawling "zda-ro'-o-o-va's" from half a dozen skinny, greasy old women, who sat cross-legged on a raised platform around the fire, sewing fur clothes.

The interior of a Korak yurt—that is, of one of the wooden yurts of the settled Koraks—presents a strange and not very inviting appearance to one who has never become accustomed by long habit to its dirt, smoke, and frigid atmosphere. It receives its only light, and that of a cheerless, gloomy character, through the round hole, about twenty feet above the floor, which serves as window, door, and chimney, and which is reached by a round log with holes in it, that stands perpendicularly in the centre. The beams, rafters, and logs which compose the yurt are all of a glossy blackness, from the smoke in which they are constantly enveloped. A wooden platform, raised about a foot from the earth, extends out from the walls on three sides to a width of six feet, leaving an open spot eight or ten feet in diameter in the centre for the fire and a huge copper kettle of melting snow. On the platform are pitched three or four square skin pologs, which serve as sleeping apartments for the inmates and as refuges from the smoke, which sometimes becomes almost unendurable. A little circle of flat stones on the ground, in the centre of the yurt, forms the fireplace, over which is usually simmering a kettle of fish or reindeer meat, which, with dried salmon, seal's blubber, and rancid oil, makes up the Korak bill of fare. Everything that you see or touch bears the distinguishing marks of Korak origin—grease and smoke. Whenever any one enters the yurt, you are apprised of the fact by a total eclipse of the chimney hole and a sudden darkness, and as you look up through a mist of reindeer hairs, scraped off from the coming man's fur coat, you see a thin pair of legs descending the pole in a cloud of smoke. The legs of your acquaintances you soon learn to recognise by some peculiarity of shape or covering; and their faces, considered as means of personal identification, assume a secondary importance. If you see Ivan's legs coming down the chimney, you feel a moral certainty that Ivan's head is somewhere above in the smoke; and Nicolai's boots, appearing in bold relief against the sky through the entrance hole, afford as satisfactory proof of Nicolai's identity as his head would, provided that part of his body came in first. Legs, therefore, are the most expressive features of a Korak's countenance, when considered from an interior standpoint. When snow drifts up against the yurt, so as to give the dogs access to the chimney, they take a perfect delight in lying around the hole, peering down into the yurt, and snuffing the odours of boiling fish which rise from the huge kettle underneath. Not unfrequently they get into a grand comprehensive free fight for the best place of observation; and just as you are about to take your dinner of boiled salmon off the fire, down comes a struggling, yelping dog into the kettle, while his triumphant antagonist looks down through the chimney hole with all the complacency of gratified vengeance upon his unfortunate victim. A Korak takes the half-scalded dog by the back of the neck, carries him up the chimney, pitches him over the edge of the yurt into a snow-drift, and returns with unruffled serenity to eat the fish-soup which has thus been irregularly flavoured with dog and thickened with hairs. Hairs, and especially reindeer's hairs, are among the indispensable ingredients of everything cooked in a Korak yurt, and we soon came to regard them with perfect indifference. No matter what precautions we might take, they were sure to find their way into our tea and soup, and stick persistently to our fried meat. Some one was constantly going out or coming in over the fire, and the reindeerskin coats scraping back and forth through the chimney hole shed a perfect cloud of short grey hairs, which sifted down over and into everything of an eatable nature underneath. Our first meal in a Korak yurt, therefore, at Kamenoi, was not at all satisfactory.



We had not been twenty minutes in the settlement before the yurt that we occupied was completely crowded with stolid, brutal-looking men, dressed in spotted deerskin clothes, wearing strings of coloured beads in their ears, and carrying heavy knives two feet in length in sheaths tied around their legs. They were evidently a different class of natives from any we had yet seen, and their savage animal faces did not inspire us with much confidence. A good-looking Russian, however, soon made his appearance, and coming up to us with uncovered head, bowed and introduced himself as a Cossack from Gizhiga, sent to meet us by the Russian governor at that place. The courier who had preceded us from Lesnoi had reached Gizhiga ten days before us, and the governor had despatched a Cossack at once to meet us at Kamenoi, and conduct us through the settled Korak villages around the head of Penzhinsk Gulf. The Cossack soon cleared the yurt of natives, and the Major proceeded to question him about the character of the country north and west of Gizhiga, the distance from Kamenoi to the Russian outpost of Anadyrsk, the facilities for winter travel, and the time necessary for the journey. Fearful for the safety of the party of men which he presumed to have been landed by the engineer-in-chief at the mouth of the Anadyr River, Major Abaza had intended to go directly from Kamenoi to Anadyrsk himself in search of them, and to send Dodd and me westward along the coast of the Okhotsk Sea to meet Mahood and Bush. The Cossack, however, told us that a party of men from the Anadyr River had arrived at Gizhiga on dog-sledges just previous to his departure, and that they had brought no news of any Americans in the vicinity of Anadyrsk or on the river. Col. Bulkley, the chief-engineer of the enterprise, had promised us, when we sailed from San Francisco, that he would land a party of men with a whale boat at or near the mouth of the Anadyr River, early enough in the season so that they could ascend the river to the settlement of Anadyrsk and open communication with us by the first winter road. This he had evidently failed to do; for, if a party had been so landed, the Anadyrsk people would certainly have heard something about it. The unfavourable nature of the country around Bering Strait, or the lateness of the season when the Company's vessels reached that point, had probably compelled the abandonment of this part of the original plan. Major Abaza had always disapproved the idea of leaving a party near Bering Strait; but he could not help feeling a little disappointment when he found that no such party had been landed, and that he was left with only four men to explore the eighteen hundred miles of country between the strait and the Amur River. The Cossack said that no difficulty would be experienced in getting dog-sledges and men at Gizhiga to explore any part of the country west or north of that place, and that the Russian governor would give us every possible assistance.



Under these circumstances there was nothing to be done but to push on to Gizhiga, which could be reached, the Cossack said, in two or three days. The Kamenoi Koraks were ordered to provide a dozen dog-sledges at once, to carry us on to the next settlement of Shestakova; and the whole village was soon engaged, under the Cossack's superintendence, in transferring our baggage and provisions from the deer-sledges of the Wandering Koraks to the long, narrow dog-sledges of their settled relations. Our old drivers were then paid off in tobacco, beads, and showy calico prints, and after a good deal of quarrelling and disputing about loads between the Koraks and our new Cossack Kerrillof, everything was reported ready. Although it was now almost noon, the air was still keen as a knife; and, muffling up our faces and heads in great tippets, we took seats on our respective sledges, and the fierce Kamenoi dogs went careering out of the village and down the bluff in a perfect cloud of snow, raised by the spiked oerstels of their drivers.

The Major, Dodd, and I were travelling in covered sledges, known to the Siberians as "pavoskas" (pah-voss'-kahs), and the reckless driving of the Kamenoi Koraks made us wish, in less than an hour, that we had taken some other means of conveyance, from which we could escape more readily in case of accident or overturn. As it was, we were so boxed up that we could hardly move without assistance. Our pavoskas resembled very much long narrow coffins, covered with sealskin, mounted on runners, and roofed over at the head by a stiff hood just large enough to sit up in. A heavy curtain was fastened to the edge of this top or hood, and in bad weather it could be pulled down and buttoned so as to exclude the air and flying snow. When we were seated in these sledges our legs were thrust down into the long coffin-shaped boxes upon which the drivers sat, and our heads and shoulders sheltered by the sealskin hoods. Imagine an eight-foot coffin mounted on runners, and a man sitting up in it with a bushel basket over his head, and you will have a very correct idea of a Siberian pavoska. Our legs were immovably fixed in boxes, and our bodies so wedged in with pillows and heavy furs that we could neither get out nor turn over. In this helpless condition we were completely at our drivers' mercy; if they chose to let us slide over the edge of a precipice in the mountains, all we could do was to shut our eyes and trust in Providence. Seven times in less than three hours my Kamenoi driver, with the assistance of fourteen crazy dogs and a spiked stick, turned my pavoska exactly bottom side up, dragged it in that position until the hood was full of snow, and then left me standing on my head, with my legs in a box and my face in a snow-drift, while he took a smoke and calmly meditated upon the difficulties of mountain travel and the versatility of dog-sledges! It was enough to make Job curse his grandmother! I threatened him with a revolver, and swore indignantly by all the evil spirits in the Korak theogony, that if he upset me in that way again I would kill him without benefit of clergy, and carry mourning and lamentation to the houses of all his relatives. But it was of no use. He did not know enough to be afraid of a pistol, and could not understand my murderous threats. He merely squatted down upon his heels on the snow, puffed his cheeks out with smoke, and stared at me in stupid amazement, as if I were some singular species of wild animal, which exhibited a strange propensity to jabber and gesticulate in the most ridiculous manner without any apparent cause. Then, whenever he wanted to ice his sledge-runners, which was as often as three times an hour, he coolly capsized the pavoska, propped it up with his spiked stick, and I stood on my head while he rubbed the runners down with water and a piece of deerskin. This finally drove me to desperation, and I succeeded, after a prolonged struggle, in getting out of my coffin-shaped box, and seated myself with indignant feelings and murderous inclinations by the side of my imperturbable driver. Here my unprotected nose began to freeze again, and my time, until we reached Shestakova, was about equally divided between rubbing that troublesome feature with one hand, holding on with the other, and picking myself up out of snow-drifts with both.

The only satisfaction I had was in seeing the state of exasperation to which the Major was reduced by the stupidity and ugliness of his driver. Whenever he wanted to go on, the driver insisted upon stopping to take a smoke; when he wanted to smoke, the driver capsized him skilfully into a snow-drift; when he wanted to walk down a particularly steep hill, the driver shouted to his dogs and carried him to the bottom like an avalanche, at the imminent peril of his life; when he desired to sleep, the driver intimated by impudent gestures that he had better get out and walk up the side of a mountain; until, finally, the Major called Kerrillof and made him tell the Korak distinctly and emphatically, that if he did not obey orders and show a better disposition, he would be lashed on his sledge, carried to Gizhiga, and turned over to the Russian governor for punishment. He paid some attention to this; but all our drivers exhibited an insolent rudeness which we had never before met with in Siberia, and which was very provoking. The Major declared that when our line should be in process of construction and he should have force enough to do it, he would teach the Kamenoi Koraks a lesson that they would not soon forget.

We travelled all the afternoon over a broken country, perfectly destitute of vegetation, which lay between a range of bare white mountains and the sea, and just before dark reached the settlement of Shestakova, which was situated on the coast, at the mouth of a small wooded stream. Stopping there only a few moments to rest our dogs, we pushed on to another Korak village called Mikina (Mee-kin-ah), ten miles farther west, where we finally stopped for the night.



Mikina was only a copy of Kamenoi on a smaller scale. It had the same hour-glass houses, the same conical balagans elevated on stilts, and the same large skeletons of sealskin baideras (bai'-der-ahs') or ocean canoes were ranged in a row on the beach. We climbed up the best-looking yurt in the village—over which hung a dead disembowelled dog, with a wreath of green grass around his neck—and slid down the chimney into a miserable room filled to suffocation with blue smoke, lighted only by a small fire on the earthen floor, and redolent of decayed fish and rancid oil. Viushin soon had a teakettle over the fire, and in twenty minutes we were seated like cross-legged Turks on the raised platform at one end of the yurt, munching hardbread and drinking tea, while about twenty ugly, savage-looking men squatted in a circle around us and watched our motions. The settled Koraks of Penzhinsk Gulf are unquestionably the worst, ugliest, most brutal and degraded natives in all north-eastern Siberia. They do not number more than three or four hundred, and live in five different settlements along the seacoast; but they made us more trouble than all the other inhabitants of Siberia and Kamchatka together. They led, originally, a wandering life like the other Koraks; but, losing their deer by some misfortune or disease, they built themselves houses of driftwood on the seacoast, settled down, and now gain a scanty subsistence by fishing, catching seals, and hunting for carcasses of whales which have been killed by American whaling vessels, stripped of blubber, and then cast ashore by the sea. They are cruel and brutal in disposition, insolent to everybody, revengeful, dishonest, and untruthful. Everything which the Wandering Koraks are they are not. The reasons for the great difference between the settled and the Wandering Koraks are various. In the first place, the former live in fixed villages, which are visited very frequently by the Russian traders; and through these traders and Russian peasants they have received many of the worst vices of civilisation without any of its virtues. To this must be added the demoralising influence of American whalers, who have given the settled Koraks rum and cursed them with horrible diseases, which are only aggravated by their diet and mode of life. They have learned from the Russians to lie, cheat, and steal; and from whalers to drink rum and be licentious. Besides all these vices, they eat the intoxicating Siberian toadstool in inordinate quantities, and this habit alone will in time debase and brutalise any body of men to the last degree. From nearly all these demoralising influences the Wandering Koraks are removed by the very nature of their life. They spend more of their time in the open air, they have healthier and better-balanced physical constitutions, they rarely see Russian traders or drink Russian vodka, and they are generally temperate, chaste, and manly in their habits. As a natural consequence they are better men, morally, physically, and intellectually, than the settled natives ever will or can be. I have very sincere and hearty admiration for many Wandering Koraks whom I met on the great Siberian tundras but their settled relatives are the worst specimens of men that I ever saw in all northern Asia, from Bering Strait to the Ural Mountains.