or 25 deg.  Fahr., and as constant exposure to such a degree of cold would be at least very disagreeable, the Koraks construct around the inner circumference of the tent small, nearly air-tight apartments called pologs, which are separated one from another by skin curtains, and combine the advantages of exclusiveness with the desirable luxury of greater warmth.  These pologs are about four feet in height, and six or eight feet in width and length.  They are made of the heaviest furs sewn carefully together to exclude the air, and are warmed and lighted by a burning fragment of moss floating in a wooden bowl of seal oil.  The law of compensation, however, which pervades all Nature, makes itself felt even in the pologs of a Korak yurt, and for the greater degree of warmth is exacted the penalty of a closer, smokier atmosphere.  The flaming wick of the lamp, which floats like a tiny burning ship in a miniature lake of rancid grease, absorbs the vital air of the polog, and returns it in the shape of carbonic acid gas, oily smoke, and sickening odours.  In defiance, however, of all the known laws of hygiene, this vitiated atmosphere seems to be healthful; or, to state the case negatively, there is no evidence to prove its unhealthfulness.  The Korak women, who spend almost the whole of their time in these pologs, live generally to an advanced age, and except a noticeable tendency to angular outlines, and skinniness, there is nothing to distinguish them physically from the old women of other countries.  It was not without what I supposed to be a well-founded apprehension of suffocation, that I slept for the first time in a Korak yurt; but my uneasiness proved to be entirely groundless, and gradually wore away.

[Illustration:  A MAN OF THE WANDERING KORAKS]

With a view to escape from the crowd of Koraks, who squatted around us on the earthen floor, and whose watchful curiosity soon became irksome, Dodd and I lifted up the fur curtain of the polog which the Major’s diplomacy had secured, and crawled in to await the advent of supper.  The inquisitive Koraks, unable to find room in the narrow polog for the whole of their bodies, lay down to the number of nine on the outside, and poking their ugly, half-shaven heads under the curtain, resumed their silent supervision.  The appearance in a row of nine disembodied heads, whose staring eyes rolled with synchronous motion from side to side as we moved, was so ludicrous that we involuntarily burst into laughter.  A responsive smile instantly appeared upon each of the nine swarthy faces, whose simultaneous concurrence in the expression of every emotion suggested the idea of some huge monster with nine heads and but one consciousness.  Acting upon Dodd’s suggestion that we try and smoke them out, I took my brier-wood pipe from my pocket and proceeded to light it with one of those peculiar snapping lucifers which were among our most cherished