, avoided these
dangers. They soon reached a vast plain three hundred miles across,
utterly deserted by the human race; a desert composed half of barren
rock and half of swampy quagmire, soft above, but at a foot deep
solid and perpetual ice. Fortunately, it was now frozen hard, and the
surface was fit to bear the horses. But for this the party must have
halted and waited for a severe frost. The rivers were not frozen
when large in volume, and the Aldana had to be crossed in the usual
flat-bottomed boat kept for travelers. At night they halted, and with
a bush and some deer-skins made a tent. Kolina cooked the supper, and
the men searched for some fields of stunted half-frozen grass to let
the horses graze. This was the last place where even this kind of food
would be found, and for some days their steeds would have to live on a
stinted portion of hay.

On they went over the arid plain, which, however, affords nourishment
for some trees, fording rivers, floundering through marshes, and still
meeting some wretched apology for grass, when, on the third day, down
came the snow in a pelting cloud, and the whole desert changed in an
instant from somber gray to white. The real winter was come. Now all
Sakalar's intelligence was required. Almost every obvious sign by
which to find his way had disappeared, and he traversed the plain
wholly guided by distant hills, and by observing the stars at night.
This Sakalar did assiduously, and when he had once started under the
guidance of the twinkling lights of the heavens, rarely was he many
yards out at the next halt. He always chose the side of a hillock
to camp, where there was a tree or two, and half-rotten trunks with
bushes to make a huge fire.

It was nearly dawn on the fifth morning after entering the plain,
and Ivan and Kolina yet slept. But Sakalar slept not. They had
nearly reached the extremity of the horrible desert, but a new danger
occupied the thoughts of the hunter. They were now in the track of
the wild and savage Tchouktchas, and their fire might have betrayed
them. Had Sakalar been alone, he would have slept in the snow without
fire; for he knew the peril of an encounter with the independent
Tchouktchas, who have only recently been nominally brought into
subjection to Russia.

The heavy fall of snow of the two previous days rendered the danger
greater. Sakalar sat gravely upon a fallen tree--a pipe in his mouth,
and his eye fixed on the distant horizon. For som