him with a revolver, and swore indignantly by all the evil spirits in the Korak theogony, that if he upset me in that way again I would kill him without benefit of clergy, and carry mourning and lamentation to the houses of all his relatives.  But it was of no use.  He did not know enough to be afraid of a pistol, and could not understand my murderous threats.  He merely squatted down upon his heels on the snow, puffed his cheeks out with smoke, and stared at me in stupid amazement, as if I were some singular species of wild animal, which exhibited a strange propensity to jabber and gesticulate in the most ridiculous manner without any apparent cause.  Then, whenever he wanted to ice his sledge-runners, which was as often as three times an hour, he coolly capsized the pavoska, propped it up with his spiked stick, and I stood on my head while he rubbed the runners down with water and a piece of deerskin.  This finally drove me to desperation, and I succeeded, after a prolonged struggle, in getting out of my coffin-shaped box, and seated myself with indignant feelings and murderous inclinations by the side of my imperturbable driver.  Here my unprotected nose began to freeze again, and my time, until we reached Shestakova, was about equally divided between rubbing that troublesome feature with one hand, holding on with the other, and picking myself up out of snow-drifts with both.

The only satisfaction I had was in seeing the state of exasperation to which the Major was reduced by the stupidity and ugliness of his driver.  Whenever he wanted to go on, the driver insisted upon stopping to take a smoke; when he wanted to smoke, the driver capsized him skilfully into a snow-drift; when he wanted to walk down a particularly steep hill, the driver shouted to his dogs and carried him to the bottom like an avalanche, at the imminent peril of his life; when he desired to sleep, the driver intimated by impudent gestures that he had better get out and walk up the side of a mountain; until, finally, the Major called Kerrillof and made him tell the Korak distinctly and emphatically, that if he did not obey orders and show a better disposition, he would be lashed on his sledge, carried to Gizhiga, and turned over to the Russian governor for punishment.  He paid some attention to this; but all our drivers exhibited an insolent rudeness which we had never before met with in Siberia, and which was very provoking.  The Major declared that when our line should be in process of construction and he should have force enough to do it, he would teach the Kamenoi Koraks a lesson that they would not soon forget.

We travelled all the afternoon over a broken country, perfectly destitute of vegetation, which lay between a range of bare white mountains and the sea, and just before dark reached the settlement of Shestakova, which was situated on the coast, at the mouth of a small wooded stream.  Stopping there only a few moments to rest our dogs, we pushed on to another Korak village called Mikina (Mee-kin-ah), ten miles farther west, where we finally stopped for the night.