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The Wandering Chukchis had soon found out their situation and frequently visited them on reindeer-sledges, and brought them fresh meat, and blubber which they used for lamp-oil; but these natives, on account of a superstition which I have previously mentioned, refused to sell them any living reindeer, so that all their efforts to procure transportation were unavailing.

No one can fully understand the pleasure that these columns of fire-lighted smoke gave us until he has ridden on dog- or reindeer-sledges, or walked on snowshoes, for twenty interminable days, through an arctic wilderness.

Only seven more Kamchadal towns lay between us and the steppes of the Wandering Koraks, and we had not yet been able to think of any plan of crossing these inhospitable wastes before the winter's snows should make them passable on reindeer-sledges.

We experienced in turn the pleasures and discomforts of whale-boats, horses, rafts, canoes, dog-sledges, reindeer-sledges, and snow-shoes; and no sooner did we begin to tire of the pleasures and ascertain the discomforts of one, than we were introduced to another.

In a monotonous routine of walking on snowshoes, riding on reindeer-sledges, camping in the open, or sleeping in smoky Tunguse tents, day after day and week after week passed, until at last we approached the valley of the Aldan one of the eastern tributaries of that great arctic river the Lena.