After nearly exhausting my powers of persuasion, and paying a round sum, I secured six of these horses. I hired a competent Russian guide and prepared to take my first trip across the tundra, to examine a locality where the Russians had reported that gold had been discovered a few years before. With my horses came little Russian pack-saddles or rather combinations of pack- and riding-saddles. They have the faculty of turning with their loads about once an hour all day long. This I had discovered at Petropaulovsk, but when I expressed my determination to use my American pack-saddles, I found myself confronted by the opposition of Russians and natives alike. They viewed my saddles with amusement and contempt. The double cinches and the breast and back cinches puzzled them completely, and they refused to have anything to do with them. As fast as my Koreans would get the packs on, the Russians would take them off when our backs were turned. I soon discovered that the Russians were determined to use their own saddles, and no argument would move them. I unbuckled a Russian saddle and threw it to the ground, substituting one of my own for it. I turned to a second horse to do likewise, when, looking over my shoulder, I saw a Russian quietly unfastening the first. Stepping up to him, I gave him a slap with the open hand on the jaw. Instantly, the whole matter assumed a new aspect. I was not to be trifled with. They saw it. Their objections were at once withdrawn, and never after that did I have occasion to strike a man. [Illustration: House in Ghijiga occupied by Mr. Vanderlip and his Party.] My guide was an old man of sixty-five, but a noted sledge-driver and hunter. His name was Theodosia Chrisoffsky, a half-caste. He was a dried-up and wizened old man, but I found him as active as a youth of twenty. He was always the first up in the morning, and the last to bed at night. He owned the best dogs in northeastern Siberia, and could get more work out of a dog-team than any other man. His reputation reached from the Okhotsk Sea to the Arctic Ocean, and he was considered among the dog-men to be about the wealthiest of his class. He owned a hundred dogs, valued at from three to one hundred roubles each. Perhaps ten of them were worth the maximum price, and the rest averaged about ten roubles apiece. He also owned five horses. Not the least part of his wealth were twelve strapping sons and daughters, all of whom, with their wives and husbands, lived under the paternal roof--or, rather, under a clump of paternal roofs. There were some sixty souls in all, and they formed a little village by themselves about twenty miles up the river from Ghijiga. I had to load the horses very light on account of the marshy condition of the tundra. Each pack was a hundred pounds only. On this trip I took only one of my Koreans. CHAPTER VI OFF FOR THE TUNDRA--A NATIVE FAMILY