A JOURNEY IN SIBERIA. 413 



hurried to and fro among the dead and dying beasts, seeking with 

 mad eagerness to save whatever was possible. Although not un- 

 aware of the dreadful danger to which they exposed themselves if 

 the minutest drop of blood or a particle of the infected foam should 

 enter their system, knowing well that hundreds of their race had 

 died in agony from the incurable plague, they worked with all 

 their strength skinning the poisoned corpses. A blow from a 

 hatchet ended the sufferings of the dying deer, an arrow killed the 

 calves, and in a few minutes the skin — which for weeks is quite 

 capable of spreading the infection — was off and lying beside the 

 others. With blood-stained hands the men dipped morsels cut 

 from the bodies of the calves into the blood collected in the chest- 

 cavity, and swallowed them raw. The men seemed like execution- 

 ers, the women like horrible harpies, and both like blood-smeared 

 hyaenas wallowing in carrion. Careless of the sword of death 

 which hung over their heads, rather by a gossamer thread than by 

 a hair, they grubbed and wallowed, helped even by their children, 

 from half-grown boys down to a little girl hardly more than a 

 suckling. 



The tshums were shifted to an adjacent hill. The unfortunate 

 herd, which had started from the Ural two thousand strong, and had 

 now dwindled to a couple of hundred, whose path was marked by a 

 line of carcasses, was collected afresh around the tshum; but next 

 morning there were again forty corpses around the resting-place. 



We knew the danger of infection from animals with splenic 

 fever or anthrax, but we had not adequately appreciated its extent. 

 Thus we bought some fresh, apparently quite healthy reindeer, 

 harnessed them to three sledges, loaded these with our baggage, 

 and striding beside them went on our way lightened. The plague 

 forbade us from getting reindeer flesh to eat, as we had hoped, 

 and we began to look around more carefully and anxiously for some 

 small game, a willow grouse, a great snipe, a golden plover, or a 

 duck. Sparing our slender supplies to the utmost, we crouched 

 around the miserable fire, whenever the least of Diana's nymphs had 

 been propitious, and collectively roasted our paltry spoil as best we 

 might. Of satisfying our hunger there was no longer any possibility. 



