They were now in the country of the Tongusy, a people who have no fixed dwellings, but roam at pleasure through the woods, erecting where they make any stay a few spars, inclining to each other above, and covering them with pieces of birchen bark sewed together, with a small hole at the top. The men, however, are brave, and the women virtuous. They practise tattooing. Their religion consists in the worship of the sun and moon. Their dress is of fur. Their arms, the bow and arrow, the lance, and a species of hatchet. In winter they travel over the frozen snow with shoes, the soles of which are of wood, and about five feet in length, and five or six inches broad, inclining to a point before and square behind. The feet are slipped into a thong fastened in the middle; and with these they can move over the deepest snow without sinking. But as these are suited only to the plains, they have a different kind for ascending the hills, with the skins of seals glued to the boards, having the hair inclining backwards, which prevents the sliding of the shoes. With these they climb hills with the greatest facility, and having reached the summit, dart down the opposite slope with astonishing rapidity. Such are the great sable hunters of Siberia, who feed indifferently on the bear, the fox, and the wolf. The sables, says Bell, are not caught in the same manner as other animals. The fur is so tender, that the least mark of an arrow, or ruffling of the hair, spoils the sale of the skin. In hunting them they only use a little dog and a net. When a hunter discovers the track of a sable upon the snow, he follows it sometimes for several days unintermittingly, until the poor animal, quite tired, takes refuge in some tall tree, for it can climb like a cat. The hunter then spreads his net round the tree, and kindles a fire, when the sable, unable to endure the smoke, immediately descends, and is caught in the net. These hunters, when hard pressed by hunger, have recourse to a practice analogous to that of many South Sea islanders under similar circumstances: taking two thin pieces of board, they place one on the pit of the stomach, the other on the back, and gradually drawing together the extremities, allay in some degree the cravings of appetite. The winters here are long, and the cold so intense that the earth never thaws, even in summer, beyond two feet and a half below the surface. When they dig to the depth of three feet for the purpose of burying their dead, they find the earth frozen; and in these graves the bodies remain unconsumed, and will do so, says the traveller, to the day of judgment.