The hay is like New England hay from natural meadows, and is delivered at Nicolayevsk for six or eight dollars a ton.  Cattle and horses thrive upon it, if I may judge by the condition of the stock I saw.  For its transportation two flat-bottomed boats are employed, and held about twelve feet apart by timbers.  A floor on these timbers and over the boats serves to keep the hay dry.  Men are stationed at both ends of the boats, and when once in the stream there is little to do beside floating with the current.  A mile distant one of these barges appears like a haystack which an accident has set adrift.

We saw many Gilyak boats descending the river with the current or struggling to ascend it.  The Gilyaks form the native population in this region and occupy thirty-nine villages with about two thousand inhabitants.  The villages are on both banks from the mouth of the river to Mariensk, and out of the reach of all inundations.  Distance lends enchantment to the view of their houses, which will not bear close inspection.

[Illustration:  A GILYAK VILLAGE.]

Some of the houses might contain a half dozen families of ordinary size, and were well adapted to the climate.  While we took wood at a Gilyak village I embraced the opportunity to visit the aboriginals.  The village contained a dozen dwellings and several fish-houses.  The buildings were of logs or poles, split in halves or used whole, and were roofed with poles covered with a thatch of long grass to exclude rain and cold.  Some of the dwelling houses had the solid earth for floors, while others had floorings of hewn planks.

The store houses were elevated on posts like those of an American ‘corn barn,’ and were wider and lower than the dwellings.  Each storehouse had a platform in front where canoes, fishing nets, and other portable property were stowed.  These buildings were the receptacles of dried fish for the winter use of dogs and their owners.  The elevation of the floor serves to protect the contents from dogs and wild animals.  I was told that no locks were used and that theft was a crime unknown.

The dwellings were generally divided into two apartments; one a sort of ante room and receptacle of house-keeping goods, and the other the place of residence.  Pots, kettles, knives, and wooden pans were the principal articles of household use I discovered.  At the storehouses there were several fish-baskets of birch or willow twigs.  A Gilyak gentleman does not permit fire carried into or out of his house, not even in a pipe.  This is not owing to his fear of conflagrations, but to a superstition that such an occurrence may bring him ill luck in hunting or fishing.

It was in the season of curing fish, and the stench that greeted my nostrils was by no means delightful.  Visits to dwellings or magazines would have been much easier had I possessed a sponge saturated with cologne water.  Fish were in various stages of preparation, some just hung upon poles, while others were nearly ready for the magazine.  The manner of preparation is much the same as in Kamchatka, save that the largest fish are skinned before being cut into strips.  The poorest qualities go to the dogs, and the best are reserved for bipeds.