ely 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.

CHAPTER XXII

FIRST ATTEMPT AT DOG-DRIVING--UNPREMEDITATED PROFANITY--A
RUNAWAY--ARRIVAL AT GIZHIGA--HOSPITALITY OF THE ISPRAVNIK--PLANS FOR
THE WINTER

We left Mikina early, November 23d, and started out upon another great
snowy plain, where there was no vegetation whatever except a little
wiry grass and a few meagre patches of trailing-pine.

Ever since leaving Lesnoi I had been studying attentively the art,
or science, whichever it be, of dog-driving, with the fixed but
unexpressed resolution that at some future time, when everything
should be propitious, I would assume the control of my own team, and
astonish Dodd and the natives with a display of my skill as a _kaiur_
(kai-oor).

[Illustration: SETTLED KORAKS IN A TRIAL OF STRENGTH]

I had found by some experience that these unlettered Koraks estimated
a man, not so much by what he knew which they did not, as by what
he knew concerning their own special and peculiar pursuits; and I
determined to demonstrate, even to their darkened understandings, that
the knowledge of civilisation was universal in its application, and
that the white man, notwithstanding his disadvantage in colour, could
drive dogs better by intuition than they could by the aggregated
wisdom of centuries; that in fact he could, if necessary, "evolve
the principles of dog-driving out of the depths of his moral
consciousness." I must confess, however, that I was not a thorough
convert to my own ideas; and I did not disdain therefore to avail
myself of the results of native experience, as far as they coincided
with my own convictions, as to the nature of the true and beautiful
in dog-driving. I had watched every motion of my Korak driver; had
learned theoretically the manner of thrusting the spiked stick between
the-uprights of the runners into the snow, to act as a brake;
had committed to memory and practised assiduously the guttural
monosyllables which meant, in dog-language, "right" and "left,"