In the extreme north deposits of food are in much greater danger from four-footed beasts than from men. In the first place, the beasts are much more numerous than men, and consequently want more to eat. Men are not very likely, in those wild countries, to come near the deposits, especially in arctic explorations; and even when they find them they are not generally in the habit of stealing. The Esquimaux of the region where Dr. Kane made his explorations are somewhat thievish when they have the opportunity, but the natives of Northern Asia have a high reputation for honesty. There are some tribes that have never learned to steal; they have had very little intercourse with white men, and are thoroughly uncivilized. As an illustration of this barbarous honesty, I will give my own experience among the Koraks of North-eastern Siberia. My first acquaintance with them was on the shores of the Okhotsk Sea, where they had assembled with their herds of reindeer. When we went ashore we managed somehow to wet our blankets, and I hung mine up to dry. I expressed my fears that the blankets would be stolen by some of the Koraks, but was told that everything would be safe. When we camped at night, my blankets were dry, and I slept in them. But I forgot the blanket-straps, and there they hung in the open air all night, and all the next day. Now, it is a moral or an immoral certainty that a pair of leather straps, new, and in good condition, in almost any other country would have been taken in hand by somebody who couldn’t bear to see them unused. But when I finally thought of my straps, I found them hanging where I had left them thirty hours before, in full view of a dozen or more natives, who were dressed in skins, and didn’t know anything more about civilization and the customs of fashionable society than a horse knows about running a sewing-machine. [Sidenote: EXPERIENCE WITH A CACHE.] On our western plains the custom of concealing articles in the ground prevails over any other mode. The Indians have long practised it, and they manage it so skilfully that it is next to impossible to detect them. The early French settlers and explorers learned the practice from the Indians, and the name they gave to a place of concealment—“_cache_,” from _cacher_, to conceal—has been adopted into the language of all plainsmen, of whatever nationality. So well is this word known that many frontier Americans use it in preference to words in their own language having the same meaning. A frontiers-man will speak of finding a place where a squirrel had _cached_ a peck of nuts, or will tell you that he _cached_ his bowie knife in his boot-leg rather than carry it at his waist-belt.