Here is a story of Mekolka, a little boy whose home is in the far northern part of Russia. Mekolka is a Samoyad; that is, a dweller on the northern coast of Russia or Siberia. The Tundra is a wide, almost level plain without any trees.

As you read, make a list of the things Mekolka can do with his hands.

What do you think a disha must be? What is a toor?

Mekolka does not know how to read print, but he can read in the book of "all out-doors". What is the lesson he knows best?

Mekolka's clothes have queer Russian names. See if you can tell, from the way each is described, what is a militza, what is a soveek, and what are pimmies?

How does Mekolka keep track of the months and days?

If you were a little Samoyad boy, it is more than likely that you would not go to school, unless you were one of a family that went off in a procession of sleighs at the beginning of every winter to some small town on the Petchora, or even farther on to Mezen or Archangel on the White Sea. Then there would be some small school for you to go to while the days were dark, till the approach of spring brought with it a new packing up and long sleigh drive back to the haunts of seal and walrus. But it is just as likely that there would be no school and no lessons. Mekolka, for instance, though he has picked up a little learning—a very little—from the Russian traders, and from friends who have traveled over the Tundra, knows very few of the things you know.

But he can use his fingers with great skill, and if he cannot write much, he can make a beautiful pattern with one knife on the horn handle of another one. In fact, he is quite skilful in carving the reindeer horns. He is always on the lookout for a good piece of horn, and whenever he finds the shed antlers of a reindeer—for the deer cast off their antlers and grow new ones every spring—he picks them up and puts them to "season". There are regular piles of these antlers about. It is the custom for everyone to put the ones he finds on to one of these heaps, and to take the horn he wants to work from the more seasoned pieces at the bottom of the heap. Mekolka always chooses his piece with great care, cuts it down to the right shape, and as often as not decorates it with a metal pattern. For this he has to cut his design in a regular groove all over the horn. Having got his grooves deep and wide enough he puts some white-looking metal on the fire in a piece of wood scooped out like a cup. The metal soon melts, and Mekolka pours it into the groove and prevents it from running off by holding a piece of paper tight round the horn. The metal cools, and the edges are cut away. Then he polishes it with sand, after which he possesses a beautiful knife-handle.

Sometimes Mekolka goes in for ornaments without regard to use, and makes himself a ring. This time he makes the groove in a round piece of wood, which he has pared down to the right size, and runs in the same metal as before, with the piece of paper held tight, to support the metal on the under side. Then he cuts away the wood, and brings out knife and sand for the finishing; at the end he puts it on his finger with a look of proud content. Some of the patterns he makes on the knife-handles are really very beautiful, so that the Russian traders are glad to take them away in return for snuff and tobacco.

Mekolka can make a sleigh and mend it when required, throw the disha when he wants to catch a reindeer, and bring it round its horn at the first throw. He can harness a team of five correctly, and drive them like the wind. At the gullies he is splendid; he puts the deer to a gallop when he sees the ravine ahead; then over they go, sleigh and all, Mekolka sitting there, proud and unmoved. Sometimes the ravine cannot be treated this way. Then Mekolka brings the team up to the edge and holds his toor—the long driving pole—across them to make them stand evenly. Then he dexterously removes the pole and shouts to the deer; at once they leap together across the cleft and climb up the steep snow wall on the other side by the grip of their outspread hoofs. They are not long at the top with the sleigh before Mekolka has slithered down and scrambled up the walls of the ravine, where they are less steep and where the ravine is not quite so narrow. He is quickly on to his sleigh again while the deer race forwards.

It is cold work racing through the chill air, which is frequently thick with an icy mist; but Mekolka is clad from head to foot in fur. His militza of reindeer-skin with fur inside often has a hood and mittens attached to it and covers him like a smock from head to knees. On his feet he wears pimmies, which reach up to the militza, and are generally made of sealskin with the fur cut into strips to form an attractive pattern. Over the militza he sometimes puts a soveek, the Samoyad overcoat. Here the fur is worn outside, and the garment is big and roomy.

After a long journey the reindeer must be unharnessed for feeding. They find their own food, of course, and Mekolka seizes the chance to go to sleep. He always goes to sleep in the same queer way; he sits down on the ground, pulls his arms out of the sleeves, and then lies flat on his back. The empty sleeves stretch out stiffly by his side, and look, of course, as though the arms are in them, though the hands have found a warmer spot inside on his chest.

The air on the Tundra, and, indeed, in all the Arctic region has a curious way of deceiving the traveler. It makes things look like something else. Take a day when the sunshine lights up the scene and the grey, lichen-covered mounds take wonderful colors in the distance from the blue sky and the haze. Though lakes of water appear to grow and fill the far-off hollows, Mekolka knows they are not lakes, but little snowdrifts. It is the mirage that plays these little tricks. So when he sees mighty ships sailing over the sea, he knows it is nothing more than blocks of ice, while what looks like a great headland on the coast is nothing but a little mound thirty or forty feet high. And if, when alone, he sees half a dozen other Samoyads come to the river-bank within a couple of hundred yards and then stop while one sits on a stone, he doesn't call out or walk toward them; he knows quite well that in a minute or two they will form themselves into a group of bernacle geese, or a family of snow buntings; in fact, he is quite prepared to hear one suddenly burst into song (for the snow bunting is the gayest warbler of the Arctic), and to find a cleft in the peat where there will be a nest, lined with dead grasses and the white feathers of the willow-grouse, and holding half a dozen eggs.

He knows every bird that flies overhead, and can name them, too, though his names are very different from ours. He knows that the snow bunting arrives about the middle of April, and he begins to watch for its appearance as soon as the days are getting long. He has no calendar of months and days to look at, but he makes notches on a stick—one for each day, with an extra cut at the seventh—and he is just as quick in glancing at his stick and telling you the date as an American boy would be with his printed calendar. He will watch for the purple sandpiper in May, and find its eggs in June, though they are very hard to find for anyone with eyes less trained than Mekolka's. The nest is always built in some hollow among the Arctic willow or lichen, and the eggs are difficult enough to see, as is the bird itself when sitting on them—they all look so exactly like the ground. And the bird will let you come ever so close to her—in fact, almost tread on her—before she will leave her cherished eggs.

Mekolka can tell you about the behavior of the little stint when he came upon her nest one day. It had four precious eggs in it. When the old bird found she was really discovered, she jigged about like an acrobat, squeaked like a mouse, and did everything she could to take off Mekolka's attention from the nest. As that did not work, the little bird twittered and pretended to be lame, running about as though asking to be caught; but all she wanted was that no one should notice that deep hole in the ground half full of dried birch-leaves where her four cherished eggs were laid. The little stint had been into a creek in Scotland early in June, and wanted to get back there with four chicks before the end of July. She did not want to lose those eggs and go back all that long journey without any little ones. Not that she is very kind to them after they begin to grow, for on the very earliest opportunity she kicks them out of the nest to teach them self-reliance!

Imagine that you have been for a long visit to Mekolka. Your teacher will call on some one to come to the front of the class to tell about each of the following experiences:

1. Helping Mekolka make a horn knife-handle.

2. A ride with Mekolka.

3. Being fooled by a mirage.

4. Some birds I saw with Mekolka.