distinctive features of both winter and summer--snow and roses, bare granite and brilliantly coloured foliage--blended into so harmonious a picture as that presented by the Genal valley on a sunshiny day in early autumn. Dodd and I devoted most of our leisure time during the afternoon to picking and eating berries. Galloping furiously ahead until we had left the caravan several miles behind, we would lie down in a particularly luxuriant thicket by the river bank, tie our horses to our feet, and bask in the sunshine and feast upon yellow honeyed "moroshkas" (mo-ro'-shkas) and the dark purple globes of delicious blueberries, until our clothes were stained with crimson spots, and our faces and hands resembled those of a couple of Comanches painted for the war-path. The sun was yet an hour high when we approached the native village of Genal. We passed a field where men and women were engaged in cutting hay with rude sickles, returned their stare of amazement with unruffled serenity, and rode on until the trail suddenly broke off into a river beyond which stood the village. Kneeling upon our saddles we succeeded in fording the shallow stream without getting wet, but in a moment we came to another of about the same size. We forded that, and were confronted by a third. This we also passed, but at the appearance of the fourth river the Major shouted despairingly to Dodd, "Ay! Dodd! How many _pagánni_ rivers do we have to wade through in getting to this beastly village?" "Only one," replied Dodd composedly. "One! Then how many times does this one river run past this one settlement?" "Five times," was the calm response. "You see," he explained soberly, "these poor Kamchadals haven't got but one river to fish in, and that isn't a very big one, so they have made it run past their settlement five times, and by this ingenious contrivance they catch five times as many salmon as they would if it only passed once!" The Major was surprised into silence, and seemed to be considering some abstruse problem. Finally he raised his eyes from the pommel of his saddle, transfixed the guilty Dodd with a glance of severe rebuke, and demanded solemnly, "How many times must a given fish swim past a given settlement, in order to supply the population with food, provided the fish is caught every time he goes past?" This _reductio ad absurdum_ was too much for Dodd's gravity; he burst into a laugh, and digging his heels into his horse's ribs, dashed with a great splatter into the fourth arm or bend of the river, and rode up on the other side into the village of Genal.