annot 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 bee