FAR away up in the north, on the shores of that great frozen ocean lying beyond Europe and Asia, you may sometimes catch sight (as I did once) of a huge, gray, pointed thing, standing all alone in the midst of the snowy plain, just like an immense pear with the stalk upward. I should have been puzzled had I not seen a thin curl of smoke creeping from the top of it; but that let me into the secret. This queer-looking thing was a Samoiede tent!

The tent of a Samoiede is almost as simple an affair as that of an Arab. All you have to do is to plant a dozen long poles in the ground, slanted so as to let their tops meet; cover this framework with reindeer skins, leaving a hole at the top to let out the smoke; pile the snow high up around the lower part to keep off the wind—the “house” is complete.

But, outlandish as it looks, this little burrow is worth something in a real Russian frost, which freezes the very breath on one’s moustache; so I go right up to the door, (which is simply a thick skin hanging over a hole in the side,) lift it, and step in.

The inside is certainly warm enough—rather too warm, in fact, being almost as hot and choky as a bake-house. There is a fire burning in the middle, the smoke going anywhere and everywhere; and beside it sat three things, (one can hardly call them human figures) one a deal larger than the other two.

There being no light but the glare of the fire, it is not easy for me to see where I am going; and the first thing I do is to stumble over something which seems like a skin bag, unusually full. But it is not—it is a child, wrapped or rather tied up in a huge cloak of deer-skin, and rolling about the floor like a ball.

In these out-of-the-way places, where a man may go for days without seeing a human face except his own, people call upon each other without waiting to be introduced; and my sudden entrance does not seem to disturb my new friends in the least. They greet me cordially enough, and bid me welcome in Russian, which most of the Samoiedes speak a little; and, seating myself on a chest, I look about me.

As my eyes get used to the half-light, I see that the group by the fire consists of a woman and two little girls, muffled in skins from head to foot. Papa is away somewhere with his sledge and his reindeer, leaving mamma to mind the house and take care of the children. Funny little things they are, with great round heads, and dark-brown skins, and small, restless black eyes, and faces as flat as if somebody had sat down upon them; but, queer as they look, they have learned to make themselves useful already, for they are hard at work stitching their own clothes. They are not a bit shy, and in another minute I have them scrambling up into my lap, and wondering at the ticking of my watch, which I take out to show them, while they clap their hands and shout “Pai, pai!” which is their word for “good.”

The tent is not a very large one, but every inch of its space has certainly been made the most of. The floor is carpeted with thick sheets of gray felt, and littered with chests, sacks, baskets, bark shoes, and bits of harness; while hanging from the tent poles, or thrust into the folds of the skins that cover them, are a perfect museum of things of every sort—caps, pouches, fish-spears, knives, hatchets, whips—and last, but certainly not least, the face of a baby, which has been thrust into a kind of pocket in the skin, like a knife into the sheath. I stoop to stroke the little brown face, while the round eyes stare wonderingly at me out of the folds of the skin.

Meanwhile the lady of the house (or rather tent) hospitable like all Samoiedes, hastens to set before me some black bread mixed with bark, and a lump of terrifically strong cheese, made of reindeer milk.

The reindeer supplies the Samoiedes with plenty of other things beside cheese; indeed, almost everything that they have got comes from it in some form or other. They eat reindeer meat, they drink reindeer milk; their fish-spears are tipped with reindeer horn; their clothes, and the very tents in which they live, are made of reindeer skin; the needles wherewith they stitch them are of reindeer bone, and the thread of reindeer sinew; and when they wish to move from place to place, it is the reindeer that draws them along—the Samoiede would be as badly off without his reindeer, as the Arab without his camel.