and “left.”  The dogs, quick to observe any lack of attention on the part of their driver, now took encouragement from my silence and exhibited a doggish propensity to stop and rest, which was in direct contravention of all discipline, and which they would not have dared to do with an experienced driver.  Determined to vindicate my authority by more forcible measures, I launched my spiked stick like a harpoon at the leader, intending to have it fall so that I could pick it up as the sledge passed.  The dog however dodged it cleverly, and it rolled away ten feet from the road.  Just at that moment three or four wild reindeer bounded out from behind a little rise of ground three or four hundred yards away, and galloped across the steppe toward a deep precipitous ravine, through which ran a branch of the Mikina River.  The dogs, true to their wolfish instincts, started with fierce, excited howls in pursuit.  I made a frantic grasp at my spiked stick as we rushed past, but failed to reach it, and away we went over the tundra toward the ravine, the sledge half the time on one runner, and rebounding from the hard sastrugi (sas-troo’-gee) or snow-drifts with a force that suggested speedy dislocation of one’s joints.  The Korak, with more common sense than I had given him credit for, had rolled off the sledge several seconds before, and a backward glance showed a miscellaneous bundle of arms and legs revolving rapidly over the snow in my wake.  I had no time, however, with ruin staring me in the face, to commiserate his misfortune.  My energies were all devoted to checking the terrific speed with which we were approaching the ravine.  Without the spiked stick I was perfectly helpless, and in a moment we were on the brink.  I shut my eyes, clung tightly to the arch, and took the plunge.  About half-way down, the descent became suddenly steeper, and the lead-dog swerved to one side, bringing the sledge around like the lash of a whip, overturning it, and shooting me like a huge living meteor through the air into a deep soft drift of snow at the bottom.  I must have fallen at least eighteen feet, for I buried myself entirely, with the exception of my lower extremities, which, projecting above the snow, kicked a faint signal for rescue.  Encumbered with heavy furs, I extricated myself with difficulty; and as I at last emerged with three pints of snow down my neck, I saw the round, leering face of my late driver grinning at me through the bushes on the edge of the bluff.  “Ooma,” he hailed.  “Well,” replied the snowy figure standing waist-high in the drift.—­“Amerikanski nyett dobra kaiur, eh?” [American no good driver].  “Nyett sofsem dobra” was the melancholy reply as I waded out.  The sledge, I found, had become entangled in the bushes near me, and the dogs were all howling in chorus, nearly wild with the restraint.  I was so far satisfied with my experiment that I did not desire to repeat it at present, and made no objections to the Korak’s assuming again his old position.  I was fully convinced, by the logic of circumstances, that the science of dog-driving demanded more careful and earnest consideration than I had yet given to it; and I resolved to study carefully its elementary principles, as expounded by its Korak professors, before attempting again to put my own ideas upon the subject into practice.