which the inhabitants go in and out. Their herds are either
disposed of before the winter begins or are housed in grass-covered
dug-outs, which in winter, when the snow is piled over them, take the
form of immense underground caverns, and are quite warm and habitable by
both man and beast. The one I entered had over two hundred beautiful
little foals housed in it, and others similar in character had cows and
sheep and poultry all as snug as you please. The entrance was lighted
with a quaint old shepherd's lantern, not unlike those I had seen used
by shepherds in Hampshire when I was a boy. The entrance was guarded all
night by a number of dogs, and curled up in a special nook was the
herdsman, with a gun of a kind long since discarded in Europe. Such are
the conditions under which these people live half the year, but they
make up for this underground life when in April they start their cattle
on the move by first allowing them to eat their shelters.

Near the edge of this plain we began to encounter a few sand dunes with
outcrops, very similar to those on the coast line of our own country.
Over these we gently ran day after day until we could see vast fields of
sand and scrub that it must have taken thousands of years of gale and
hurricane to deposit in the quaint pyramidal fashion in which they stand
to-day. Even yet they are not fixed; occasionally a tree falls exposing
the naked sand to the action of the wind, which swirls around the hole
and moves the sand into a spiral whirlpool, lifting and carrying it away
to be deposited again on the lea side of a distant valley, choking the
pines and silver birch and sometimes destroying large woods and forests.
It is surprising that though we travelled for hundreds of miles along
the edge of this huge sand plateau we did not see a single rivulet or
stream coming from its direction, though there were the traces of a
river far out on the plain. Sunset on these sand-hills was quite
entrancing. The occasional break in these conical formations, when the
sun was low down, gave one the impression of a vast collection of human
habitations, with gable ends to the highest of the buildings. The fact
is, however, that, so far as we saw or could make out, no human
habitation exists over the whole face of this sea of sand, though men
live quite calmly around the craters of volcanoes and other equally
dangerous and impossible places. The fear created by legends of human
disaster attaching to