saddles, modelled after the gables of an angular house; stirrups about twelve inches in length, patched up from discarded remnants of sealskin thongs; cruppers of bearskin, and halters of walrus hide twisted around the animals’ noses.  The excitement which prevailed when we proceeded to mount was unparalleled I believe in the annals of that quiet settlement.  I don’t know how the Major succeeded in getting upon his horse, but I do know that a dozen long-haired Kamchadals seized Dodd and me, regardless of our remonstrances, hauled us this way and that until the struggle to get hold of some part of our unfortunate persons resembled the fight over the dead body of Patroclus, and finally hoisted us triumphantly into our saddles in a breathless and exhausted condition.  One more such hospitable reception would forever have incapacitated us for the service of the Russian American Telegraph Company!  I had only time to cast a hurried glance back at the Major.  He looked like a frightened landsman straddling the end of a studdingsail-boom run out to leeward on a fast clipper, and his face was screwed up into an expression of mingled pain, amusement, and astonishment, which evidently did not begin to do justice to his conflicting emotions.  I had no opportunity of expressing my sympathetic participation in his sufferings; for an excited native seized the halter of my horse, three more with reverently bared heads fell in on each side, and I was led away in triumph to some unknown destination!  The inexpressible absurdity of our appearance did not strike me with its full force until I looked behind me just before we reached the village.  There were the Major, Viushin, and Dodd, perched upon gaunt Kamchadal horses, with their knees and chins on nearly the same level, half a dozen natives in eccentric costumes straggling along by their sides at a dog-trot, and a large procession of bareheaded men and boys solemnly bringing up the rear, punching the horses with sharp sticks into a temporary manifestation of life and spirit.  It reminded me faintly of a Roman triumph—­the Major, Dodd, and I being the victorious heroes, and the Kamchadals the captives, whom we had compelled to go sub jugum, and who now graced our triumphal entry into the Seven-hilled City.  I mentioned this fancy of mine to Dodd, but he declared that one would have had to do violence to his imagination to make “victorious heroes” out of us on that occasion, and suggested “heroic victims” as equally poetical and more in accordance with the facts.  His severely practical mind objected to any such fanciful idealisation of our misery.  The excitement increased rather than diminished as we entered the village.  Our motley escort gesticulated, ran to and fro, and shouted unintelligible orders in the most frantic manner; heads appeared and disappeared with startling kaleidoscopic abruptness at the windows of the houses; and three hundred dogs contributed to the general confusion by breaking out into an infernal