140 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



the arrow was destined. Usually they are set for foxes, and with 

 hardly less success for wolves, or even for elk and reindeer, while 

 the automatic cross-bow is arranged for smaller game, especially 

 ermine and squirrels. For both of these, bait is spread which can 

 only be got at when the animal creeps through a narrow hole in 

 front of the lower part of the set cross-bow. In so doing the 

 creature touches a trigger, and is forthwith crushed by a broad, 

 chisel-like arrow which the cross-bow shoots forcibly down on its 

 appointed course. 



As an important addition to these old-fashioned contrivances, 

 fire-arms have recently come more and more into vogue among the 

 natives of Western Siberia, but they do not displace the bow and 

 arrow. Powder and bullets are dear, and the people prefer small- 

 bored matchlocks and flint-locks, which are exceedingly bad; but they 

 use these defective weapons with remarkable skill. A fork fastened 

 in front to the barrel, and used as a rest, is to be seen on every gun, 

 and even the educated sportsmen use it as indispensable to the 

 effective use of the matchlock. Fowling-pieces are used by the officials 

 and well-to-do townsfolk, but not by the natives, who have to make 

 a profit by the chase, and to measure their powder, as it were, by the 

 grain. They fill a small horn with the expensive material, wind a 

 ■leaden wire of the diameter of their bore twice or thrice round their 

 waists, and thus equipped set out on the chase. The leaden wire 

 serves for making bullets, which are not cast but simply cut, or, 

 even more simply, bitten off the wire; the resulting peg-like shot is 

 laid without any wad directly on the powder, and thus the gun is 

 loaded. Of course the native huntsmen do not shoot from a distance 

 except when forced to, but to the height of medium-sized trees their 

 aim is so sure that they take the eye of the sable or squirrel for 

 their mark and seldom miss it. 



The various species of grouse are more generally hunted than any 

 other creatures, and are caught and killed in hundreds of thousands. 

 During the pairing season capercaillie and black-grouse are almost 

 everywhere left unmolested. The sportsman's joy as we know it 

 when the pairing grouse take wing can scarcely be experienced in 

 Siberia, owing to the inaccessibility of the woodland; not even for 



