OUR RETURN 157 
so that I chafed much and frightened them unnecessarily ; 
for you can no more change the nature of a Samoyed 
than that of any other man, though you rave never so 
much, To-day you may gain your point and will, but 
to-morrow you shall have it all over again; so that in 
the end you are no better off, only more exhausted. 
This is the particular way of these people to which 
I now refer. 
The reindeer are feeding, scattered far away ; but they 
will not make a move to bring them in until the tent 
or choom is struck, and every article packed on the 
sleighs. This done, the whipper-in, who rides on the 
adliurs, goes out for the deer. It sometimes takes an 
hour—it took an hour this time—to find them and 
bring them in. 
Then they have to be corralled, sorted out and har- 
nessed up, and then at last—no, even yet we do not 
start. 
First of all they all sit down on the ground for twenty 
minutes or so, and snuff. Snuff-taking is a considerable 
feature in the life of a Samoyed. The snuff they buy 
from the Russians, or sometimes the vile tobacco, called 
‘mahorka,’ which they pound up to that end. And their 
snuff-boxes are very ingeniously made. Usually they 
are of a cow’s horn, the larger end filled with a plug, 
and the tip bored for the exit of the snuff, which is 
shaken out on to the thumb-nail. Sometimes they con- 
trive a snuff-box out of wood or metal, but even then 
