1 1 8 KA MSGHA TKA . [chap. 



thing they can kill, but they are also said to eat berries, and even 

 fish. There are, indeed, but few animals, apparently, which do not 

 live on salmon in Kamschatka. They have only one litter during 

 the year, generally in the month of April, and bring forth four or 

 five young at a birth in a nest in the holes of trees. When the 

 hunter is bitten for the first time by one of these animals, the bite 

 is almost invariably followed by severe illness ; but on subsequent 

 occasions no ill effects, with the exception possibly of slight 

 inflammation of the wound, are produced. 



There are various methods employed in catching sables, but a 

 less number are trapped now than used formerly to be the case. 

 Dogs are almost invariably employed, to run them down in the 

 deep snow or to tree them ; and they are also smelt out by these 

 trained animals in their holes at the roots of trees. The great 

 object is to tree the sable if possible. The hunter then surrounds 

 the base of the tree with nets, and either shakes down his quarry 

 or knocks it off the boughs with sticks. If it does not fall into 

 the net it is run down by the dogs, or compelled again to take 

 refuge in a tree. Should the tree be too high for this method to 

 be successful, it is cut down, or the sable is shot ; but the hunters 

 generally avoid the use of the gun if possible, as it is apt to spoil 

 the skin. 



The hunters usually start on their winter's expedition towards 

 the end of September, if their destination be a distant one. If it 

 be in better known country and closer at hand they wait until the 

 first snows have fallen, and do not leave before the middle of 

 November. They train dogs especially for the purpose, and a good 

 sable dog is one of the most valuable of a Kamschatkan hunter's 

 possessions. A catch of twenty sables in a season is considered ex- 

 ceptionally good. Jacof Ivanovitch and one of our horse-boys, in 

 company with two other hunters, had on the preceding winter tried 

 some new ground on the shores of the Kronotsky Lake, and had been 

 particularly successful. Jacof had only succeeded in killing fifteen, 

 but our horse-boy had bagged no less than forty ; and the total 



