s 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.

[Illustration: Women's Knives used in making clothing]

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 wa