from horse to horse.  This effectively sweeps the whole space as the trawler sweeps the sea.  No wolf can hope to escape the trained eye of the Tartar near the horse where the strain of the line lifts it high off the ground, and no wolf will allow the line to pass near him, hence the herdsman gets both sport and profit out of his occupation.  Having fed off the grass and herbs in one place, the whole Tartar tribe moves forward at regular periods on what appears to be an endless crawl across the world, but what is really an appointed round, settled and definite, within the territorial lands of the race to which it belongs.  Their women and children journey with them and hunt and ride with the men, free as the plains over which they travel.  In spite of this community of interests the men seem to place but very little value upon their women except as a sort of communist coolie attachment for carrying the camp from one place to another, for preparing the rude meals, and for the care of the boys, of whom the tribe is very proud.

Over this featureless wilderness we progressed day after day, each stopping-place marked by a few aspen trees mixed up with a few others that look very much like mountain ash but are not.  The winter houses of the people are single-roomed, square, wooden structures, very strangely built, with flat roofs consisting of about two feet of earth.  Against and over these structures in winter the frozen snow piles itself until they have the appearance of mere mounds, impossible to locate except for the smoke which escapes from a few long crevices left open under the eaves of what is intended to be the front of the house.  These smoke-escapes perform the double duty of chimneys and also keep clear the way by which the inhabitants go in and out.  Their herds are either disposed of before the winter begins or are housed in grass-covered dug-outs, which in winter, when the snow is piled over them, take the form of immense underground caverns, and are quite warm and habitable by both man and beast.  The one I entered had over two hundred beautiful little foals housed in it, and others similar in character had cows and sheep and poultry all as snug as you please.  The entrance was lighted with a quaint old shepherd’s lantern, not unlike those I had seen used by shepherds in Hampshire when I was a boy.  The entrance was guarded all night by a number of dogs, and curled up in a special nook was the herdsman, with a gun of a kind long since discarded in Europe.  Such are the conditions under which these people live half the year, but they make up for this underground life when in April they start their cattle on the move by first allowing them to eat their shelters.