we began collecting dogs from
the neighbouring settlements of Kinkil and Polan for another trip
across the Samanka Mountains. Snow had fallen everywhere to a depth of
two feet, the weather had turned clear and cold, and there was nothing
except the Major's illness to detain us longer at Lesnoi. On the 28th
he declared himself able to travel, and we packed up for a start. On
November 1st we put on our heavy fur clothes, which turned us into
wild animals of most ferocious appearance, bade good-by to all the
hospitable people of Lesnoi, and set out with a train of sixteen
sledges, eighteen men, two hundred dogs, and forty days' provisions,
for the territory of the Wandering Koraks. We determined to reach
Gizhiga this time, or, as the newspapers say, perish in the attempt.

Late in the afternoon of November 3d, just as the long northern
twilight was fading into the peculiar steely blue of an arctic night,
our dogs toiled slowly up the last summit of the Samanka Mountains,
and we looked down from a height of more than two thousand feet upon
the dreary expanse of snow which stretched away to the far horizon. It
was the land of the Wandering Koraks. A cold breeze from the sea swept
across the mountain-top, soughing mournfully through the pines as
it passed, and intensifying the loneliness and silence of the white
wintry landscape. The faint pale light of the vanishing sun still
lingered upon the higher peaks; but the gloomy ravines below us,
shaggy with forests of larch and dense thickets of trailing-pine, were
already gathering the shadows and indistinctness of night. At the foot
of the mountains stood the first encampment of Koraks. As we rested
our dogs a few moments upon the summit, before commencing our descent,
we tried to discern through the gathering gloom the black tents which
we imagined stood somewhere beneath our feet; but nothing save the
dark patches of trailing-pine broke the dead white of the level
steppe. The encampment was hidden by a projecting shoulder of the
mountain.

[Illustration: WANDERING KORAKS WITH THEIR REINDEER AND SLEDGES
From a painting by George A. Frost]

The rising moon was just throwing into dark, bold relief the shaggy
outlines of the peaks on our right, as we roused up our dogs and
plunged into the throat of a dark ravine which led downward to the
steppe. The deceptive shadows of night, and the masses of rock which
choked up the narrow defile made the descent extremely dangerous; and