INTERIOR OF A KORAK YURT.

A WOMAN ENTERING A YURT OF THE SETTLED KORAKS SETTLED KORAKS IN A TRIAL OF STRENGTH AN OLD MAN OF THE SETTLED KORAKS From a photograph in The American Museum of Natural History.

YURT AND DOG-TEAM OF THE SETTLED KORAKS From a painting by George A. Frost.

INTERIOR OF A YURT OF THE SETTLED KORAKS DOG-TEAMS DESCENDING A STEEP MOUNTAIN SLOPE CHUKCHIS ASSEMBLING AT ANADYRSK FOR THE WINTER FAIR ANADYRSK IN WINTER A MAN OF THE YUKAGIRS A MAN OF THE WANDERING CHUKCHIS TUNGUSE MAN AND WOMAN IN BEST

A YURT OF THE SETTLED KORAKS IN MIDWINTER AN ARCTIC FUNERAL THE YURT IN THE "STORMY GORGE OF THE VILIGA" From a painting by George A. Frost.

A YURT OF THE SETTLED KORAKS IN MIDWINTER AN ARCTIC FUNERAL THE YURT IN THE "STORMY GORGE OF THE VILIGA" From a painting by George A. Frost.

Before dark, however, we had reached the site of our second day's camp, and about midnight we arrived at the ruined yurt where we had eaten lunch five days before.

The location of the little pure air which the yurt afforded made the boyish feat of standing upon one's head a very desirable accomplishment; and as the pungent smoke filled my eyes to the exclusion of everything else except tears, I suggested to Dodd that he reverse the respective positions of his head and feet, and try ithe would escape the smoke and sparks from the fire, and at the same time obtain a new and curious optical effect.

The law of compensation, however, which pervades all Nature, makes itself felt even in the pologs of a Korak yurt, and for the greater degree of warmth is exacted the penalty of a closer, smokier atmosphere.

It was not without what I supposed to be a well-founded apprehension of suffocation, that I slept for the first time in a Korak yurt; but my uneasiness proved to be entirely groundless, and gradually wore away.

A voice in another part of the yurt was singing a low, melancholy air in a minor key as I closed my eyes, and the sad, oft-repeated refrain, so different from ordinary music, invested with peculiar loneliness and strangeness my first night in a Korak tent.

We had seen no wood since leaving the yurt on the Malmofka River, and, not daring to camp without a fire, we travelled for five hours after dark, guided only by the stars and a bluish aurora which was playing away in the north.

We lowered our bedding, pillows, camp-equipage, and provisions down through the chimney hole of the largest yurt in the small village, arranged them as tastefully as possible on the wide wooden platform which extended out from the wall on one side, and made ourselves as comfortable as darkness, smoke, cold, and dirt would permit.

I ventured to the top of the chimney hole once, but I was nearly blown over the edge of the yurt, and, blinded and choked by snow, I hastily retreated down the chimney, congratulating myself that I was not obliged to lie out all day on some desolate plain, exposed to the fury of such a storm.

Dodd sprang up in great excitement, kicked over the teakettle, dropped his cup and saucer, and made a frantic rush for the chimney pole; but before he could reach it we saw somebody's legs coming down into the yurt, and in a moment a tall man in a spotted reindeerskin coat appeared, crossed himself carefully two or three times, as if in gratitude for his safe arrival, and then turned to us with the Russian salutation, "Zdrastvuitia.""At

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A YURT OF THE SETTLED KORAKS] There were no signs yet of the Penzhina sledges, and we spent another night and another long dreary day in the smoky yurt at Shestakóva, waiting for transportation.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A YURT OF THE SETTLED KORAKS] There were no signs yet of the Penzhina sledges, and we spent another night and another long dreary day in the smoky yurt at Shestakóva, waiting for transportation.

We went up on the roof of the yurt and listened for several minutes, but hearing nothing but the wind, we concluded that Yagór had either been mistaken, or that a pack of wolves had howled in the valley east of the settlement.

Yagór however was right; he had heard dogs on the Penzhina road, and in less than ten minutes the long-expected sledges drew up, amid general shouting and barking, before our yurt.

Owing to deep snow our progress had not been so rapid as we had anticipated, and we were only able to reach on the fifth night a small yurt built to shelter travellers, near the mouth of a river called the Topólofka, thirty versts from the Viliga.

I could not see either the impossibility or the danger, and as there was another yurt or shelter-house on the other side of the ravine, I determined to go on and make the attempt at least to cross.

Along this there extended a narrow strip of dense timber, and in this timber, somewhere, stood the yurt of which we were in search.

About an hour before dark, tired and chilled to the bone, we drew up before a little log hut in the woods, which our guide said was the Viliga yurt.

As there was not room enough for all to sleep inside the yurt, the Koraks camped out-doors on the snow, and before morning were half buried in a drift.

[Illustration: THE YURT IN THE "STORMY GORGE OF THE VILIGA" From a painting by George A. Frost] All night the wind roared a deep, hoarse bass through the forest which sheltered the yurt, and at daylight on the following morning there was no abatement of the storm.