the stereotyped but indefinite answer of “cheimuk,” near, or occasionally the encouraging assurance that we would arrive in a minute.  Now we knew very well that we should not arrive in a minute, nor probably in forty minutes; but it afforded temporary relief to be told that we would.  My frequent inquiries finally spurred my driver into an attempt to express the distance arithmetically, and with evident pride in his ability to speak Russian, he assured me that it was only “dva verst,” or two versts more.  I brightened up at once with anticipations of a warm fire and an infinite number of cups of hot tea, and by imagining prospective comfort, succeeded in forgetting the present sense of suffering.  At the expiration, however, of three-quarters of an hour, seeing no indication of the promised encampment, I asked once more if it were much farther away.  One Korak looked around over the steppe with a well assumed air of seeking some landmark, and then turning to me with a confident nod, repeated the word “verst” and held up four fingers!  I sank back upon my sledge in despair.  If we had been three-quarters of an hour in losing two versts, how long would be we in losing versts enough to get back to the place from which we started.  It was a discouraging problem, and after several unsuccessful attempts to solve it by the double rule of three backwards, I gave it up.  For the benefit of the future traveller, I give, however, a few native expressions for distances, with their numerical equivalents:  “cheimuk”—­near, twenty versts; “bolshe nyet”—­there is no more, fifteen versts; “sey chas priyedem”—­we will arrive this minute, means any time in the course of the day or night; and “dailoko”—­far, is a week’s journey.  By bearing in mind these simple values, the traveller will avoid much bitter disappointment, and may get through without entirely losing faith in human veracity.  About six o’clock in the evening, tired, hungry, and half-frozen, we caught sight of the sparks and fire-lit smoke which arose from the tents of the second encampment, and amid a general barking of dogs and hallooing of men we stopped among them.  Jumping hurriedly from my sledge, with no thought but that of getting to a fire, I crawled into the first hole which presented itself, with a firm belief, founded on the previous night’s experience, that it must be a door.  After groping about some time in the dark, crawling over two dead reindeer and a heap of dried fish, I was obliged to shout for assistance.  Great was the astonishment of the proprietor, who came to the rescue with a torch, to find a white man and a stranger crawling around aimlessly in his fish storehouse.  He relieved his feelings with a ty-e-e-e of amazement, and led the way, or rather crawled away, to the interior of the tent, where I found the Major endeavouring with a dull Korak knife to cut his frozen beard loose from his fur hood and open communication with his mouth through a sheet of ice and hair.  The teakettle was soon simmering and spouting over a brisk fire, beards were thawed out, noses examined for signs of frost-bites, and in half an hour we were seated comfortably on the ground around a candle-box, drinking tea and discussing the events of the day.