FIRST FROST-BITE—THE SETTLED KORAKS HOUR-GLASS YURTS—CLIMBING DOWN CHIMNEYS—YURT INTERIORS—LEGS AS FEATURES—TRAVELLING BY "PAVOSKA"—BAD CHARACTER OF SETTLED KORAKS

On the morning of November 23d, in a clear, bracing atmosphere of twenty-five degrees below zero, we arrived at the mouth of the large river called the Penzhina, which empties into Penzhinsk Gulf, at the head of the Okhotsk Sea. A dense cloud of frozen mist, which hung over the middle of the gulf, showed the presence there of open water; but the mouth of the river was completely choked up with great hummocks, rugged green slabs, and confused masses of ice, hurled in by a south-westerly storm, and frozen together in the wildest shapes of angular disorder. Through the grey mist we could see dimly, on a high bluff opposite, the strange outlines of the X-shaped yurts of the Kamenoi Koraks.

Leaving our drivers to get the reindeer and sledges across as best they could, the Major, Dodd, and I started on foot, picking our way between huge irregular blocks of clear green ice, climbing on hands and knees over enormous bergs, falling into wide, deep crevices, and stumbling painfully across the chevaux-de-frise of sharp splintered fragments into which the ice had been broken by a heavy sea. We had almost reached the other side, when Dodd suddenly cried out, "Oh, Kennan! Your nose is all white; rub it with snow—quick!" I have not the slightest doubt that the rest of my face also turned white at this alarming announcement; for the loss of my nose at the very outset of my arctic career would be a very serious misfortune. I caught up a handful of snow, however, mixed with sharp splinters of ice, and rubbed the insensible member until there was not a particle of skin left on the end of it, and then continued the friction with my mitten until my arm ached. If energetic treatment would save it, I was determined not to lose it that time. Feeling at last a painful thrill of returning circulation, I relaxed my efforts, and climbed up the steep bluff behind Dodd and the Major, to the Korak village of Kamenoi.

The settlement resembled as much as anything a collection of titanic wooden hour-glasses, which had been half shaken down and reduced to a state of rickety dilapidation by an earthquake. The houses—if houses they could be called—were about twenty feet in height, rudely constructed of driftwood which had been brought down by the river, and could be compared in shape to nothing but hour-glasses. They had no doors, or windows of any kind, and could be entered only by climbing up a pole on the outside, and sliding down another pole through the chimney—a mode of entrance whose practicability depended entirely upon the activity and intensity of the fire which burned underneath. The smoke and sparks, although sufficiently disagreeable, were trifles of comparative insignificance. I remember being told, in early infancy, that Santa Claus always came into a house through the chimney; and although I accepted the statement with the unreasoning faith of childhood, I could never understand how that singular feat of climbing down a chimney could be safely accomplished. To satisfy myself, I felt a strong inclination, every Christmas, to try the experiment, and was only prevented from doing so by the consideration of stove-pipes. I might succeed, I thought, in getting down the chimney; but coming out into a room through an eight-inch stove-pipe and a narrow stove-door was utterly out of the question. My first entrance into a Korak yurt, however, at Kamenoi, solved all my childish difficulties, and proved the possibility of entering a house in the eccentric way which Santa Claus is supposed to adopt. A large crowd of savage-looking fur-clad natives had gathered around us when we entered the village, and now stared at us with stupid curiosity as we made our first attempt at climbing a pole to get into a house. Out of deference for the Major\'s rank and superior attainments, we permitted him to go first. He succeeded very well in getting up the first pole, and lowered himself with sublime faith into the dark narrow chimney hole, out of which were pouring clouds of smoke; but at this critical moment, when his head was still dimly visible in the smoke, and his body out of sight in the chimney, he suddenly came to grief. The holes in the log down which he was climbing were too small to admit even his toes, covered as they were with heavy fur boots; and there he hung in the chimney, afraid to drop and unable to climb out—a melancholy picture of distress. Tears ran out of his closed eyes as the smoke enveloped his head, and he only coughed and strangled whenever he tried to shout for help. At last a native on the inside, startled at the appearance of his struggling body, came to his assistance, and succeeded in lowering him safely to the ground. Profiting by his experience, Dodd and I paid no attention to the holes, but putting our arms around the smooth log, slid swiftly down until we struck bottom. As I opened my tearful eyes, I was saluted by a chorus of drawling "zda-ro\'-o-o-va\'s" from half a dozen skinny, greasy old women, who sat cross-legged on a raised platform around the fire, sewing fur clothes.

The interior of a Korak yurt—that is, of one of the wooden yurts of the settled Koraks—presents a strange and not very inviting appearance to one who has never become accustomed by long habit to its dirt, smoke, and frigid atmosphere. It receives its only light, and that of a cheerless, gloomy character, through the round hole, about twenty feet above the floor, which serves as window, door, and chimney, and which is reached by a round log with holes in it, that stands perpendicularly in the centre. The beams, rafters, and logs which compose the yurt are all of a glossy blackness, from the smoke in which they are constantly enveloped. A wooden platform, raised about a foot from the earth, extends out from the walls on three sides to a width of six feet, leaving an open spot eight or ten feet in diameter in the centre for the fire and a huge copper kettle of melting snow. On the platform are pitched three or four square skin pologs, which serve as sleeping apartments for the inmates and as refuges from the smoke, which sometimes becomes almost unendurable. A little circle of flat stones on the ground, in the centre of the yurt, forms the fireplace, over which is usually simmering a kettle of fish or reindeer meat, which, with dried salmon, seal\'s blubber, and rancid oil, makes up the Korak bill of fare. Everything that you see or touch bears the distinguishing marks of Korak origin—grease and smoke. Whenever any one enters the yurt, you are apprised of the fact by a total eclipse of the chimney hole and a sudden darkness, and as you look up through a mist of reindeer hairs, scraped off from the coming man\'s fur coat, you see a thin pair of legs descending the pole in a cloud of smoke. The legs of your acquaintances you soon learn to recognise by some peculiarity of shape or covering; and their faces, considered as means of personal identification, assume a secondary importance. If you see Ivan\'s legs coming down the chimney, you feel a moral certainty that Ivan\'s head is somewhere above in the smoke; and Nicolai\'s boots, appearing in bold relief against the sky through the entrance hole, afford as satisfactory proof of Nicolai\'s identity as his head would, provided that part of his body came in first. Legs, therefore, are the most expressive features of a Korak\'s countenance, when considered from an interior standpoint. When snow drifts up against the yurt, so as to give the dogs access to the chimney, they take a perfect delight in lying around the hole, peering down into the yurt, and snuffing the odours of boiling fish which rise from the huge kettle underneath. Not unfrequently they get into a grand comprehensive free fight for the best place of observation; and just as you are about to take your dinner of boiled salmon off the fire, down comes a struggling, yelping dog into the kettle, while his triumphant antagonist looks down through the chimney hole with all the complacency of gratified vengeance upon his unfortunate victim. A Korak takes the half-scalded dog by the back of the neck, carries him up the chimney, pitches him over the edge of the yurt into a snow-drift, and returns with unruffled serenity to eat the fish-soup which has thus been irregularly flavoured with dog and thickened with hairs. Hairs, and especially reindeer\'s hairs, are among the indispensable ingredients of everything cooked in a Korak yurt, and we soon came to regard them with perfect indifference. No matter what precautions we might take, they were sure to find their way into our tea and soup, and stick persistently to our fried meat. Some one was constantly going out or coming in over the fire, and the reindeerskin coats scraping back and forth through the chimney hole shed a perfect cloud of short grey hairs, which sifted down over and into everything of an eatable nature underneath. Our first meal in a Korak yurt, therefore, at Kamenoi, was not at all satisfactory.

We had not been twenty minutes in the settlement before the yurt that we occupied was completely crowded with stolid, brutal-looking men, dressed in spotted deerskin clothes, wearing strings of coloured beads in their ears, and carrying heavy knives two feet in length in sheaths tied around their legs. They were evidently a different class of natives from any we had yet seen, and their savage animal faces did not inspire us with much confidence. A good-looking Russian, however, soon made his appearance, and coming up to us with uncovered head, bowed and introduced himself as a Cossack from Gizhiga, sent to meet us by the Russian governor at that place. The courier who had preceded us from Lesnoi had reached Gizhiga ten days before us, and the governor had despatched a Cossack at once to meet us at Kamenoi, and conduct us through the settled Korak villages around the head of Penzhinsk Gulf. The Cossack soon cleared the yurt of natives, and the Major proceeded to question him about the character of the country north and west of Gizhiga, the distance from Kamenoi to the Russian outpost of Anadyrsk, the facilities for winter travel, and the time necessary for the journey. Fearful for the safety of the party of men which he presumed to have been landed by the engineer-in-chief at the mouth of the Anadyr River, Major Abaza had intended to go directly from Kamenoi to Anadyrsk himself in search of them, and to send Dodd and me westward along the coast of the Okhotsk Sea to meet Mahood and Bush. The Cossack, however, told us that a party of men from the Anadyr River had arrived at Gizhiga............