h the
shifting areas of available pasturage, but which are kept as nearly
as possible equidistant from one another in a direct line across the
Stanavoi range.

We hoped to make the first post-station on the third day after our
departure; but the soft freshly fallen snow so retarded our progress
that it was nearly dark on the fourth day before we caught sight of
the little group of Tunguse tents where we were to exchange our dogs
for reindeer. If there be, in "all the white world," as the Russians
say, anything more hopelessly dreary than one of the Tunguse mountain
settlements in winter, I have never seen it. Away up above the
forests, on some elevated plateau, or desolate, storm-swept height,
where nothing but berry bushes and arctic moss will grow, stand the
four or five small, grey reindeerskin tents which make up the nomad
encampment. There are no trees or shrubs around them to shut out a
part of the sky, limit the horizon, or afford the least semblance of
shelter to the lonely settlement, and there is no wall or palisade to
fence in and domesticate for finite purposes a little corner of the
infinite. The grey tents seem to stand alone in the great universe of
God, with never-ending space and unbounded desolation stretching away
from their very doors. Take your stand near such an encampment and
look at it more closely. The surface of the snowy plain around you,
as far as you can see, has been trampled and torn up by reindeer in
search of moss. Here and there between the tents stand the large
sledges upon which the Tunguses load their camp-equipage when they
move, and in front is a long, low wall, made of symmetrically piled
reindeer packs and saddles. A few driving deer wander around, with
their noses to the ground, looking for something that they never
seem to find; evil-looking ravens--the scavengers of Tunguse
encampments--flap heavily past with hoarse croaks to a patch of
blood-stained snow where a reindeer has recently been slaughtered;
and in the foreground, two or three grey, wolfish dogs with cruel,
light-coloured eyes, are gnawing at a half-stripped reindeer's head.
The thermometer stands at forty-five degrees below zero, Fahrenheit,
and the breasts of deer, ravens, and dogs are white with frost. The
thin smoke from the conical fur tents rises perpendicularly to a great
height in the clear, still air; the ghostly mountain peaks in
the distance look like white silhouettes on a background of dark
steel-blue