To be awakened in the morning by a paroxysm of coughing, caused by the thick, acrid smoke of a low-spirited fire—­to crawl out of a skin bedroom six feet square into the yet denser and smokier atmosphere of the tent—­to eat a breakfast of dried fish, frozen tallow, and venison out of a dirty wooden trough, with an ill-conditioned dog standing at each elbow and disputing one’s right to every mouthful, is to enjoy an experience which only Korak life can afford, and which only Korak insensibility can long endure.  A very sanguine temperament may find in its novelty some compensation for its discomfort, but the novelty rarely outlasts the second day, while the discomfort seems to increase in a direct ratio with the length of the experience.  Philosophers may assert that a rightly constituted mind will rise superior to all outward circumstances; but two weeks in a Korak tent would do more to disabuse their minds of such an erroneous impression than any amount of logical argument.  I do not myself profess to be preternaturally cheerful, and the dismal aspect of things when I crawled out of my fur sleeping-bag, on the morning after our arrival at the first encampment, made me feel anything but amiable.  The first beams of daylight were just struggling in misty blue lines through the smoky atmosphere of the tent.  The recently kindled fire would not burn but would smoke; the air was cold and cheerless; two babies were crying in a neighbouring polog; the breakfast was not ready, everybody was cross, and rather than break the harmonious impression of general misery, I became cross also.  Three or four cups of hot tea, however, which were soon forthcoming, exerted their usual inspiriting influence, and we began gradually to take a more cheerful view of the situation.  Summoning the taiyon, and quickening his dull apprehension with a preliminary pipe of strong Circassian tobacco, we succeeded in making arrangements for our transportation to the next Korak encampment in the north, a distance of about forty miles.  Orders were at once given for the capture of twenty reindeer and the preparation of sledges.  Snatching hurriedly a few bites of hardbread and bacon by way of breakfast, I donned fur hood and mittens, and crawled out through the low doorway to see how twenty trained deer were to be separated from a herd of four thousand wild ones.

[Illustration:  TENTS AND REINDEER OF THE WANDERING KORAKS]

Surrounding the tent in every direction were the deer belonging to the band, some pawing up the snow with their sharp hoofs in search of moss, others clashing their antlers together and barking hoarsely in fight, or chasing one another in a mad gallop over the steppe.  Near the tent a dozen men with lassos arranged themselves in two parallel lines, while twenty more, with a thong of sealskin two or three hundred yards in length, encircled a portion of the great herd, and with shouts and waving lassos began driving it through the narrow