When the storm was over, we harnessed the dogs and continued our journey. Seven days of ideal sledging brought us to Kaminaw, a Korak village at the extreme northern point of the northeastern arm of the Okhotsk Sea, where I was to discharge my Russian dog-teams, and secure others from the natives. My first view of the village was from the summit of a hill half a mile away. I saw what resembled fifty huge hour-glasses set on the plain, which, on a nearer approach, turned out to be ten or twelve feet high. As we drew near, the village came swarming out with a pack of mongrel curs at their heels; and over the edge of each hour-glass house appeared the heads of the women and children, all eager to get a glimpse of such a novel sight as a foreign face. Over each house was suspended a frozen dog. These were impaled under the chin on the sharp end of a pole, and lifted high in the air. I learned later that this was a form of sacrifice to the Fish God, and was intended to insure a good run of fish the next season. As I tumbled out of my sledge, I was surrounded by the filthiest lot of natives I had yet seen. Their furs were old and mangy, and the hair was worn off in spots. The people were kind and pleasant, and seemed bent on shaking hands with me. I was pressed on all sides with invitations to enter one and another of the curious houses. As I stood there, debating what I should do, the chief of the village elbowed his way through the crowd, took me by the hand, and led me to the largest of the huts. In order to enter we had to go up a ladder to the height of ten feet or more. This ladder was a log of driftwood, split down the center, and provided with little holes in which to put the toes in ascending. These natives have very small feet, and I found the holes in the ladder too small to insert my toes, but I managed to scramble to the top. I was now standing on the edge of an inverted octagonal cone, made of logs lashed together, the inside or crater of the affair, which was eighteen feet across, sloping down at an angle of about fifteen degrees to the center. At that point there was a hole leading down to the interior of the house. The hole also sufficed for a chimney, and to enter the house one had to go down a ladder through the smoke. Santa Claus is said to come from the north, and it is evidently among this people that he originated, for here everybody enters his house by way of the chimney. [Illustration: Upper View of Underground Hut--Home of the Dog Korak.]