constructed of squared logs, the interstices stuffed
with moss and dry clay. Their dogs are trained
to hunt, to guard their flocks, and to rock their
children's cradles.

The Sirian's gun requires more powder for
the priming than for the charge, and it is of so
small a calibre that its report is no louder than
the crack of a whip, and does not scare the
game. At thirty yards or so, the Sirians can hit
a quarter rouble piece; but they seldom fire at a
moving object, and usually take advantage of a
rest. Their guns are rifled, and they do not cast
their bullets, but hammer them out of solid
lead, using a mallet to force them down the
greased barrels.

The Sirian women attach great value to the
paws of the glutton: an animal of extreme
ferocity, that preys on the elk and the reindeer.
Its skin is glossy-black, and its paws, which
are white, are worn by the women as ornaments
for the head. These fetch a great price in Sweden
and Norway. But the glutton is exceptional—
the grey squirrel is the great object of pursuit,
This beautiful little animal lives on pine-cones
and mushrooms. In hard seasons he has to
resort to the seeds of the fir, which often fill his
mouth and eyes with resin, until at last they
seal up his jaws, and force him to die of hunger.
In some seasons the squirrels are found in the
ravines; they are then caught in plank-traps,
to which they are attracted by baits of salt or
smoked fish. At other times, they are only to
be seen on the highest trees, and are by no
means to be tempted down. In dry weather,
the squirrel flies from branch to branch, gaily
trusting to his bushy tail to act as a parachute
and break his fall; but when the rain comes
and mats his hair, destroying its buoyancy, he
grows timid, and hides in his nest.

Grey squirrels are extraordinarily cunning in
hiding; but the fur-hunter has stratagems by
which to baffle them. The Sirians go in couples;
one places himself in ambuscade, while the other
kicks the tree with his foot. The squirrel
instantly mounts and hides. Then the second hunter
whistles; the squirrel stops, and turns his head;
that moment the cruel shot is fired, and down
the grey-skin drops upon the snow. Squirrels are,
however, so numerous in Oriental Siberia, that,
in spite of their little artifices, no less than a
hundred are sometimes secured by a fur-hunter
in a single day. They migrate through the forests,
moving from east to west, and leaving no trace.
They spring from bough to bough, and, almost
without touching the ground, traverse the woods
from Siberia to Finland. The Sirians say that
squirrels, when they want to cross a river, form a
raft of branches and birch bark, their expanded
tails serving them for sails. Their enemies are
the polecat and martens, who follow their
migrations with as cruel a perseverance, and as
evil intentions, as wolves follow a conqueror's
army. Martens are, however, too gluttonous,
murderous, and carnivorous, to be very
common, and, of the two million of skins annually
furnished by the district of Kirensk, only six
hundred are those of the marten.

Martens and ermines are generally caught
by snares. The fur-hunter throws a dead tree
across a brook—it is just the bridge the marten
will need in following the squirrel. In the
middle, a barrier is placed, with but one opening,
and in that opening is a running noose,
weighted at the end by a loose stone, which falls
when the captured animal begins to struggle.
The larger animals, such as wolves and bears,
are caught in pitfals, covered over with boughs
and approached by a walled way, narrowing to
the end, and pierced here and there with holes.

The skins, when cleaned, are arranged in
packets of forty; one of these packets of grey
squirrel-skins brings the hunter two silver
roubles and ten kopecks. The fur-hunter's
life is not all pleasure; he is not always skimming
along on his snow-shoes, or singing round
his bivouac fire. The sudden snow-storms of
Siberia are both terrible and dangerous. The
hunter has then but one means of escape, and
that is to turn his sledge and cower under it until
the snow has passed. There have been known
on the Tartar steppes whirlwinds so violent as
to drive horses into lakes, where they perished.
In the woods these storms are even more
dangerous than on the plains, as the heavy winds
are sure to bring down all trees whose roots
are rotten, and to snap asunder those whose
trunks are already dead.

In one of these storms a fur-hunter who had
lost his way, and was half blinded with snow,
fell into a pitfal, upon the sharp stakes placed
there to kill the bears. His snow-shoes saved
his life and helped to break his fall. He was,
nevertheless, wounded in two places, though
he had fractured no limbs. The man's first
anxiety was to ascertain if the pitfal were a
new one, or an abandoned one. If a new one,
he would be discovered and saved; if an old
one, he would perish of hunger. He thought
he would light a match and look about him;
but his matches were all in his bag, and the
strings of the bag had broken in his fall, and
it was lost. Presently, in feeling about, he
came upon his carbine. And now his wounds
grew every moment more painful, and he needed
light to see how to bind them and to stanch the
blood, which he could feel streaming down his
leg. After a few minutes' rest, he continued
his search, fortunately found his bag, lighted a
match, and bound his wounds with strips from
his handkerchief and shirt. Then he counted
his cigars, lighted one to beguile the time and
soothe his hunger, and thanked God for saving
his life. "After all," he thought, "should the
worst come to the worst, I can pull out the
stakes, thrust them into the wall of the pit, and
by that means climb up and escape."

This hunter was nearly benumbed with the
cold, rain, and loss of blood, when suddenly
there was a noise overhead, and a heavy body
fell on the stakes close to him. A bear had
broken through the trellis-work of the branches,
and, to judge by its groans, it was severely
injured. The next moment it came towards the
hunter, its shining eyes reflecting the flame of