learn; but the music alone will bring the tears near one’s eyes, and has an indescribable effect upon the singers, whose excitable feelings it sometimes works up almost to the pitch of frenzy.  The dancing tunes of the Kamchadals are of course entirely different in character, being generally very lively, and made up of energetic staccato passages, repeated many times in succession, without variation.  Nearly all the natives accompany themselves upon a three-cornered guitar with two strings, called a ballalaika (bahl-lah-lai’-kah), and some of them play quite well upon rude home-made violins.  All are passionately fond of music of every kind.

The only other amusements in which they indulge are dancing, playing football on the snow in winter, and racing with dog-teams.

The winter travel of the Kamchadals is accomplished entirely upon dog-sledges, and in no other pursuit of their lives do they spend more time or exhibit their native skill and ingenuity to better advantage.  They may even be said to have made dogs for themselves in the first place, since the present Siberian animal is nothing more than a half-domesticated arctic wolf, and still retains all his wolfish instincts and peculiarities.  There is probably no more hardy, enduring animal in the world.  You may compel him to sleep out on the snow in a temperature of 70 deg. below zero, drive him with heavy loads until his feet crack open and stain the snow with blood, or starve him until he eats up his harness; but his strength and his spirit seem alike unconquerable.  I have driven a team of nine dogs more than a hundred miles in a day and a night, and have frequently worked them hard for forty-eight hours without being able to give them a particle of food.  In general they are fed once a day, their allowance being a single dried fish, weighing perhaps a pound and a half or two pounds.  This is given to them at night, so that they begin another day’s work with empty stomachs.

The sledge, or nart, to which they are harnessed is about ten feet in length and two in width, made of seasoned birch timber, and combines to a surprising degree the two most desirable qualities of strength and lightness.  It is simply a skeleton framework, fastened together with lashings of dried sealskin, and mounted on broad, curved runners.  No iron whatever is used in its construction, and it does not weigh more than twenty pounds; yet it will sustain a load of four or five hundred pounds, and endure the severest shocks of rough mountain travel.  The number of dogs harnessed to this sledge varies from seven to fifteen, according to the nature of the country to be traversed and the weight of the load.  Under favourable circumstances eleven dogs will make from forty to fifty miles a day with a man and a load of four hundred pounds.  They are harnessed to the sledge in successive couples by a long central thong of sealskin, to which each individual dog is attached by a collar and a short trace.  They are