v.] SALMON-SHEDS. 93 



were to pay seven roubles each. The Ispravnik and the King had 

 not done badly ; their charge had been exactly quadruple ! 



In company with our English-speaking friend we went to in- 

 spect the fish. These were drying in open sheds, much as tobacco 

 is dried in the Southern States of America. Split in half as far as 

 the tail, cleaned, washed, and deprived of its head, the salmon is 

 hung across a stick in company with fifty or sixty others. These 

 sticks are then placed a few inches apart, with their ends resting 

 upon other poles which run from end to end of the shed. The fish 

 are thus freely exposed to the air, but protected from the sun. 

 They are not hung lower than about eight feet from the ground, on 

 account of the dogs, who are occasionally seen gazing at them with 

 longing eyes and watering mouths, experiencing the tortures of 

 Tantalus. Excepting for a sledge -dog, however, the sight is not 

 a tempting one. Swarming with countless millions of maggots, 

 which distil in a gentle but unceasing rain upon the ground be- 

 neath, whitening it as with a shower of powdery snow, the fish 

 seem to be so rapidly disappearing that one wonders how any 

 remain till winter. Another sense beside that of sight causes the 

 same reflection, but neither the dogs nor their masters are particular 

 as to these little matters. The latter, indeed, prefer their fish in 

 an advanced stage of decomposition, and have the same method of 

 preparing it as I have seen in some parts of Lapland. The salmon 

 are buried for three or four months in pits, and any difficulty in 

 extracting them at the end of that time is overcome by means of a 

 ladle ! 



It was late in the afternoon before we were again en route, our 

 course lying north-west through the valley of the river. This bears 

 in many places distinct evidence of the latter having been, at some 

 period, of very much larger size. We then ascended the bluff of 

 the old left bank, and rode through an interminable forest of birch- 

 trees, which were here larger than I have ever seen them elsewhere. 

 Many of them must have been at least a hundred feet in height. 



We began the next day with a more than usually exasperating 



