Illustration: A GILYAK VILLAGE.]

Some of the houses might contain a half dozen families of ordinary
size, and were well adapted to the climate. While we took wood at a
Gilyak village I embraced the opportunity to visit the aboriginals.
The village contained a dozen dwellings and several fish-houses. The
buildings were of logs or poles, split in halves or used whole, and
were roofed with poles covered with a thatch of long grass to exclude
rain and cold. Some of the dwelling houses had the solid earth for
floors, while others had floorings of hewn planks.

The store houses were elevated on posts like those of an American
'corn barn,' and were wider and lower than the dwellings. Each
storehouse had a platform in front where canoes, fishing nets, and
other portable property were stowed. These buildings were the
receptacles of dried fish for the winter use of dogs and their owners.
The elevation of the floor serves to protect the contents from dogs
and wild animals. I was told that no locks were used and that theft
was a crime unknown.

The dwellings were generally divided into two apartments; one a sort
of ante room and receptacle of house-keeping goods, and the other the
place of residence. Pots, kettles, knives, and wooden pans were the
principal articles of household use I discovered. At the storehouses
there were several fish-baskets of birch or willow twigs. A Gilyak
gentleman does not permit fire carried into or out of his house, not
even in a pipe. This is not owing to his fear of conflagrations, but
to a superstition that such an occurrence may bring him ill luck in
hunting or fishing.

It was in the season of curing fish, and the stench that greeted my
nostrils was by no means delightful. Visits to dwellings or magazines
would have been much easier had I possessed a sponge saturated with
cologne water. Fish were in various stages of preparation, some just
hung upon poles, while others were nearly ready for the magazine. The
manner of preparation is much the same as in Kamchatka, save that the
largest fish are skinned before being cut into strips. The poorest
qualities go to the dogs, and the best are reserved for bipeds.

Though the natives do the most of the fishing on the Amoor, they do
not have a monopoly of it, as some of the Russians indulge in the
sport. One old fellow that I saw had a boat so full of salmon, that
there was no room for more. Now and then a fish went overboard,
causing an expression on