his bottle, deposit in it the last mouthful of
liquor which he had _not_ swallowed, and return in a few-moments to
thank us for our hospitality--and our vodka. This manoeuvre he had
been practising at our expense for an unknown length of time, and had
finally accumulated nearly a pint. He then had the unblushing audacity
to set this half-swallowed vodka before us in an old pepper-sauce
bottle, and pretend that it was some that he had reserved since
the previous fall for cases of emergency! Could human impudence go
farther?

I will relate one other incident which took place during the first
month of our residence at Gizhiga, and which illustrates another phase
of the popular character, viz. extreme superstition. As I was sitting
in the house one morning, drinking tea, I was interrupted by the
sudden entrance of a Russian Cossack named Kolmagorof. He seemed to
be unusually sober and anxious about something, and as soon as he had
bowed and bade me good-morning, he turned to our Cossack, Viushin,
and began in a low voice to relate to him something which had just
occurred, and which seemed to be of great interest to them both. Owing
to my imperfect knowledge of the language, and the low tone in which
the conversation was carried on, I failed to catch its purport; but
it closed with an earnest request from Kolmagorof that Viushin should
give him some article of clothing, which I understood to be a scarf or
tippet. Viushin immediately went to a little closet in one corner of
the room, where he was in the habit of storing his personal effects,
dragged out a large sealskin bag, and began searching in it for the
desired article. After pulling out three or four pair of fur boots,
a lump of tallow, some dogskin stockings, a hatchet, and a bundle of
squirrelskins, he finally produced and held up in triumph one-half
of an old, dirty, moth-eaten woollen tippet, and handing it to
Kolmagorof, he resumed his search for the missing piece. This also he
presently found, in a worse state of preservation, if possible, than
the other. They looked as if they had been discovered in the bag of
some poor rag-picker who had fished them up out of a gutter in the
Five Points. Kolmagorof tied the two pieces together, wrapped them up
carefully in an old newspaper, thanked Viushin for his trouble, and,
with an air of great relief, bowed again to me and went out. Wondering
what use he could make of such a worn, dirty, tattered article of
clothing as tha