the brushes snapped off
like brittle glass. I had to put on fur gloves to hold a brush, and
work with swift, energetic strokes--as the rough appearance of some of
my paintings bears evidence."

All of Borissoff's paintings were done in the ice zone beyond the 70th
parallel of north latitude, in the district between Archangel and the
Yalmal Peninsula. He never tires of telling of the peculiar
color-tones of this region, and the curious psychological effects of
its distance, silence, and isolation. Living amid its singular light
phenomena, where the spring-time snow turns pink against blue
icebergs, and the boggy midsummer tundra swims in a sea of orange-red
against a sky of aquamarine, even the Samoyed becomes a color
worshiper.

"Why does that man sit in a scarlet cloak on rose-colored snow against
a solid background of dark blue?" I asked, examining one of
Borissoff's paintings.

"The deep blue is an iceberg," he laughed. "Yes, and the snow is
really that color--by reflection. The man is a Samoyed who
bartered everything he owned--reindeer, walrus, ivory, dogs, and
sledges--to an adventurous dealer from the nearest settlements for
a robe of scarlet woolen stuff. Then, in his scarlet cloak, he
wandered about in the sunlight for ten days, in an ecstatic trance,
silent, good-for-nothing, living on his family, drunk with the glory
of that scarlet garment!"

_Traveling With a Woman Scout_

The man was Danillo, the brother-in-law of Ireena, a woman scout of
whom Borissoff speaks frequently in his reminiscences, and whose
wonderful gift of "seeing" by atmospheric signs the country beyond the
horizon and divining where the trails lay gave her a position of
peculiar dignity among her tribesfolk. This woman was their sole and
undisputed guide through the monotonous flat wastes of snow. Among the
last of the pagans of Europe woman's place is certainly higher than it
is supposed to have been before the dawn of Christianity. A woman like
Ireena may hold the tribal-family together; revive courage in dire
surroundings; decide momentous debates as to reindeer-speculation;
practise medicine and surgery; withstand the redoubtable devils of
blizzard and thaw; serve the bad Siadey in his bloody sanctuary; and
even dare the unmentionable good god's isolating stretches of white
cold, to serve an inquisitive painter from the South.

It was Ireena and Danillo who took Borissoff to the last pagan shrines
of Europe, never visited be