ame. The word "road," in north-eastern Siberia, is only a verbal
symbol standing for an abstraction. The thing symbolised has no more
real, tangible existence than a meridian of longitude. It is simply
lineal extension in a certain direction. The country back of Okhotsk,
for a distance of six hundred miles, is an unbroken wilderness of
mountains and evergreen forests, sparsely inhabited by Wandering
Tunguses, with here and there a few hardy Yakut squirrel hunters.
Through this wilderness there is not even a trail, and the so-called
"road" is only a certain route which is taken by the government
postilion who carries the yearly mail to and from Kamchatka. The
traveller who starts from the Okhotsk Sea with the intention of going
across Asia by way of Yakutsk and Irkutsk must make up his mind to be
independent of roads;--at least for the first fifteen hundred miles.
The mountain passes, the great rivers, and the post-stations, will
determine his general course; but the wilderness through which he
must make his way has never been subdued by the axe and spade of
civilisation. It is now, as it always has been, a wild, primeval land
of snowy mountains, desolate steppes, and shaggy pine forests, through
which the great arctic rivers and their tributaries have marked out
the only lines of intercommunication.

The worst and most difficult part of the post-route between Okhotsk
and Yakutsk, viz., the mountainous part, is maintained by a half-wild
tribe of arctic nomads known to the Russians as Tunguses. Living
originally, as they did, in skin tents, moving constantly from place
to place, and earning a scanty subsistence by breeding reindeer, they
were easily persuaded by the Russian Government to encamp permanently
along the route, and furnish reindeer and sledges for the
transportation of couriers and the imperial mails, together with
such travellers as should be provided with government orders, or
"podorozhnayas." In return for this service they were exempted from
the annual tax levied by Russia upon her other Siberian subjects; were
supplied with a certain yearly allowance of tea and tobacco; and were
authorised to collect from the travellers whom they carried a fare to
be computed at the rate of about two and a half cents per mile for
every reindeer furnished. Between Okhotsk and Yakutsk, along the line
of this post-route, there are seven or eight Tunguse encampments,
which vary a little in location, from season to season, wit