middle of the great steppe. It was like coming to an island after
having been long at sea. Our dogs stopped and curled themselves up
into little round balls on the snow, as if conscious that the long
day's journey was ended, while our drivers proceeded to make rapidly
and systematically a Siberian half-faced camp. Three sledges were
drawn up together, so as to make a little semi-enclosure about ten
feet square; the snow was all shovelled out of the interior, and
banked up around the three closed sides, like a snow fort, and a huge
fire of trailing-pine branches was built at the open end. The bottom
of this little snow-cellar was then strewn to a depth of three or four
inches with twigs of willow and alder, shaggy bearskins were spread
down to make a warm, soft carpet, and our fur sleeping-bags arranged
for the night. Upon a small table extemporised out of a candle-box,
which stood in the centre, Yagor soon placed two cups of steaming
hot tea and a couple of dried fish. Then stretching ourselves out in
luxurious style upon our bearskin carpet, with our feet to the fire
and our backs against pillows, we smoked, drank tea, and told stories
in perfect comfort. After supper the drivers piled dry branches of
trailing-pine upon the fire until it sent up a column of hot ruddy
flame ten feet in height, and then gathering in a picturesque group
around the blaze, they sang for hours the wild melancholy songs of the
Kamchadals, and told never-ending stories of hardship and adventure on
the great steppes and along the coast of the "Icy Sea." At last the
great constellation of Orion marked bedtime. Amid a tumult of snarling
and fighting the dogs were fed their daily allowance of one dried fish
each, fur stockings, moist with perspiration, were taken off and dried
by the fire, and putting on our heaviest fur _kukhlankas_ we crawled
feet first into our bearskin bags, pulled them up over our heads, and
slept.

A camp in the middle of a clear, dark winter's night presents a
strange, wild appearance. I was awakened, soon after midnight, by cold
feet, and, raising myself upon one elbow, I pushed my head out of my
frosty fur bag to see by the stars what time it was. The fire had died
away to a red heap of smouldering embers. There was just light enough
to distinguish the dark outlines of the loaded sledges, the fur-clad
forms of our men, lying here and there in groups about the fire, and
the frosty dogs, curled up into a hundred little ha