SAMOYEDE CHOOMS 63 



brass ring is seen on the head-piece, and sometimes 

 tassels of plain leather, shaped like luggage labels and 

 stained vermilion, ornament it. 



The chooms were shaped like ordinary regulation 

 tents, about twelve feet in diameter and height ; they 

 were supported inside by some thirty slender birch poles, 

 converging to a cone, tied together in a bunch at the 

 top. This skeleton was covered with old, dirty, and 

 much-patched reindeer-skins, sewn together and lined 

 with coarse and half-rotten canvas, probably old sails. 

 Some cords of twisted reindeer-sinew strengthened the 

 structure, and an opening about a foot wide was left at 

 the summit of the tent to serve as a chimney. We drew 

 back the covering overlapping the opening used as a 

 door and entered. Snow, heaped up to the height of 

 about a foot, protected the choom from bottom draughts. 

 A wood fire burned in the centre upon a thin metal plate ; 

 an ordinary gipsy kettle was suspended over it by a 

 simple arrangement. Mats of slender birch-bark, woven 

 together every six inches by a warp of string, were placed 

 on either side of the fire ; over these were stretched 

 another mat made of some kind of rushy grass. Around 

 were packed various articles of clothing, wooden bowls 

 and spoons of Russian origin, a Russian box containing 

 a china tea-service ; a heap of reindeer giblets, part of 

 which were doubtless stewing in the kettle, and sundry 

 other articles. Exactly opposite the door there hung one 

 of the Onega bronze bas-reliefs of saints or virgins, 

 framed in a rudely carved piece of wood, shaped some- 

 what like a cross. 



After purchasing some reindeer harness, we were 

 invited to drink a cup of tea and to eat a kind of spiral 

 biscuit. Our hostess had just been sewing ; a steel 

 needle, a tailor's thimble, and thread of reindeer-sinew 



