FIRST ATTEMPT AT DOG-DRIVING—UNPREMEDITATED PROFANITY—A RUNAWAY—ARRIVAL AT GIZHIGA—HOSPITALITY OF THE ISPRAVNIK—PLANS FOR THE WINTER

We left Mikina early, November 23d, and started out upon another great snowy plain, where there was no vegetation whatever except a little wiry grass and a few meagre patches of trailing-pine.

Ever since leaving Lesnoi I had been studying attentively the art, or science, whichever it be, of dog-driving, with the fixed but unexpressed resolution that at some future time, when everything should be propitious, I would assume the control of my own team, and astonish Dodd and the natives with a display of my skill as a kaiur (kai-oor).
I had found by some experience that these unlettered Koraks estimated a man, not so much by what he knew which they did not, as by what he knew concerning their own special and peculiar pursuits; and I determined to demonstrate, even to their darkened understandings, that the knowledge of civilisation was universal in its application, and that the white man, notwithstanding his disadvantage in colour, could drive dogs better by intuition than they could by the aggregated wisdom of centuries; that in fact he could, if necessary, "evolve the principles of dog-driving out of the depths of his moral consciousness." I must confess, however, that I was not a thorough convert to my own ideas; and I did not disdain therefore to avail myself of the results of native experience, as far as they coincided with my own convictions, as to the nature of the true and beautiful in dog-driving. I had watched every motion of my Korak driver; had learned theoretically the manner of thrusting the spiked stick between the-uprights of the runners into the snow, to act as a brake; had committed to memory and practised assiduously the guttural monosyllables which meant, in dog-language, "right" and "left," as well as many others which meant something else, but which I had heard addressed to dogs; and I laid the flattering unction to my soul that I could drive as well as a Korak, if not better. To my inexperienced eye it was as easy as losing money in California mining stocks. On this day, therefore, as the road was good and the weather propitious, I determined to put my ideas, original as well as acquired, to the test of practice. I accordingly motioned my Korak driver to take a back seat and deliver up to me the insignia of office. I observed in the expression of his lips, as he handed me the spiked stick, a sort of latent smile of ridicule, which indicated a very low estimate of my dog-driving abilities; but I treated it as knowledge should always treat the sneers of ignorance—with silent contempt; and seating myself firmly astride the sledge back of the arch, I shouted to the dogs, "Noo! Pashol!" My voice failed to produce the startling effect that I had anticipated. The leader—a grim, bluff Nestor of a dog—glanced carelessly over his shoulder and very perceptibly slackened his pace. This sudden and marked contempt for my authority on the part of the dogs did more than all the sneers of the Koraks to shake my confidence in my own skill. But my resources were not yet exhausted, and I hurled monosyllable, dissyllable, and polysyllable at their devoted heads, shouted "Akh! Te shelma! Proclataya takaya! Smatree! Ya tibi dam!" but all in vain; the dogs were evidently insensible to rhetorical fireworks of this description, and manifested their indifference by a still slower gait. As I poured out upon them the last vial of my verbal wrath, Dodd, who understood the language that I was so recklessly using, drove slowly up, and remarked carelessly, "You swear pretty well for a beginner." Had the ground opened beneath me I should have been less astonished. "Swear! I swear! You don\'t mean to say that I\'ve been swearing?"—"Certainly you have, like a pirate." I dropped my spiked stick in dismay. Were these the principles of dog-driving which I had evolved out of the depths of my moral consciousness? They seemed rather to have come from the depths of my _im_moral _un_consciousness. "Why, you reckless reprobate!" I exclaimed impressively, "didn\'t you teach me those very words yourself?"—"Certainly I did," was the unabashed reply; "but you didn\'t ask me what they meant; you asked how to pronounce them correctly, and I told you. I didn\'t know but that you were making researches in comparative philology—trying to prove the unity of the human race by identity of oaths, or by a comparison of profanity to demonstrate that the Digger Indians are legitimately descended from the Chinese. You know that your head (which is a pretty good one in other respects) always was full of such nonsense."—"Dodd," I observed, with a solemnity which I intended should awaken repentance in his hardened sensibilities, "I have been betrayed unwittingly into the commission of sin; and as a little more or less won\'t materially alter my guilt, I\'ve as good a notion as ever I had to give you the benefit of some of your profane instruction." Dodd laughed derisively and drove on. This little episode considerable dampened my enthusiasm, and made me very cautious in my use of foreign language. I feared the existence of terrific imprecations in the most common dog-phrases, and suspected lurking profanity even in the monosyllabic "Khta" and "Hoogh," which I had been taught to believe meant "right" and "left." The dogs, quick to observe any lack of attention on the part of their driver, now took encouragement from my silence and exhibited a doggish propensity to stop and rest, which was in direct contravention of all discipline, and which they would not have dared to do with an experienced driver. Determined to vindicate my authority by more forcible measures, I launched my spiked stick like a harpoon at the leader, intending to have it fall so that I could pick it up as the sledge passed. The dog however dodged it cleverly, and it rolled away ten feet from the road. Just at that moment three or four wild reindeer bounded out from behind a little rise of ground three or four hundred yards away, and galloped across the steppe toward a deep precipitous ravine, through which ran a branch of the Mikina River. The dogs, true to their wolfish instincts, started with fierce, excited howls in pursuit. I made a frantic grasp at my spiked stick as we rushed past, but failed to reach it, and away we went over the tundra toward the ravine, the sledge half the time on one runner, and rebounding from the hard sastrugi (sas-troo\'-gee) or snow-drifts with a force that suggested speedy dislocation of one\'s joints. The Korak, with more common sense than I had given him credit for, had rolled off the sledge several seconds before, and a backward glance showed a miscellaneous bundle of arms and legs revolving rapidly over the snow in my wake. I had no time, however, with ruin staring me in the face, to commiserate his misfortune. My energies were all devoted to checking the terrific speed with which we were approaching the ravine. Without the spiked stick I was perfectly helpless, and in a moment we were on the brink. I shut my eyes, clung tightly to the arch, and took the plunge. About half-way down, the descent became suddenly steeper, and the lead-dog swerved to one side, bringing the sledge around like the lash of a whip, overturning it, and shooting me like a huge living meteor through the air into a deep soft drift of snow at the bottom. I must have fallen at least eighteen feet, for I buried myself entirely, with the exception of my lower extremities, which, projecting above the snow, kicked a faint signal for rescue. Encumbered with heavy furs, I extricated myself with difficulty; and as I at last emerged with three pints of snow down my neck, I saw the round, leering face of my late driver grinning at me through the bushes on the edge of the bluff. "Ooma," he hailed. "Well," replied the snowy figure standing waist-high in the drift.—"Amerikanski nyett dobra kaiur, eh?" [American no good driver]. "Nyett sofsem dobra" was the melancholy reply as I waded out. The sledge, I found, had become entangled in the bushes near me, and the dogs were all howling in chorus, nearly wild with the restraint. I was so far satisfied with my experiment that I did not desire to repeat it at present, and made no objections to the Korak\'s assuming again his old position. I was fully convinced, by the logic of circumstances, that the science of dog-driving demanded more careful and earnest consideration than I had yet given to it; and I resolved to study carefully its elementary principles, as expounded by its Korak professors, before attempting again to put my own ideas upon the subject into practice.

As we came out of the ravine upon the open steppe I saw the rest of our party a mile away, moving rapidly toward the Korak village of Kuil (Koo-eel\'). We passed Kuil late in the afternoon, and camped for the night in a forest of birch, poplar, and aspen trees, on the banks of the Paren River.

We were now only about seventy miles from Gizhiga. On the following night we reached a small log yurt on a branch of the Gizhiga River, which had been built there by the government to shelter travellers, and Friday morning, November 25th, about eleven o\'clock, we caught sight of the red church-steeple which marked the location of the Russian settlement of Gizhiga. No one who has not travelled for three long months through a wilderness like Kamchatka, camped out in storms among desolate mountains, slept for three weeks in the smoky tents, and yet smokier and dirtier yurts of the Koraks, and lived altogether like a perfect savage or barbarian—-no one who has not experienced this can possibly understand with what joyful hearts we welcomed that red church steeple, and the civilisation of which it was the sign. For almost a month we had slept every night on the ground or the snow; had never seen a chair, a table, a bed, or a mirror; had never been undressed night or day; and had washed our faces only three or four times in an equal number of weeks! We were grimy and smoky from climbing up and down Korak chimneys; our hair was long and matted around our ears; the skin had peeled from our noses and cheek-bones where it had been frozen; our cloth coats and trousers were grey with reindeer hairs from our fur kukhlankas; and we presented, generally, as wild and neglected an appearance as men could present, and still retain any lingering traces of better days. We had no time or inclination, however, to "fix up"; our dogs dashed at a mad gallop into the village with a great outcry, which awakened a responsive chorus of howls from two or three hundred other canine throats; our drivers shouted "Khta! khta! hoogh! hoogh!" and raised clouds of snow with their spiked sticks as we rushed through the streets, and the whole population came running to their doors to ascertain the cause of the infernal tumult. One after another our fifteen sledges went careering through the village, and finally drew up before a large, comfortable house, with double glass windows, where arrangements had been made, Kerrillof said, for our reception. Hardly had we entered a large, neatly swept and scrubbed room, and thrown off our heavy frosty furs, than the door again opened, and in rushed a little impetuous, quick-motioned man, with a heavy auburn moustache, and light hair cut short all over his head, dressed in neat broadcloth coat a............