the people are single-roomed, square, wooden structures, very strangely
built, with flat roofs consisting of about two feet of earth. Against
and over these structures in winter the frozen snow piles itself until
they have the appearance of mere mounds, impossible to locate except for
the smoke which escapes from a few long crevices left open under the
eaves of what is intended to be the front of the house. These
smoke-escapes perform the double duty of chimneys and also keep clear
the way by which the inhabitants go in and out. Their herds are either
disposed of before the winter begins or are housed in grass-covered
dug-outs, which in winter, when the snow is piled over them, take the
form of immense underground caverns, and are quite warm and habitable by
both man and beast. The one I entered had over two hundred beautiful
little foals housed in it, and others similar in character had cows and
sheep and poultry all as snug as you please. The entrance was lighted
with a quaint old shepherd's lantern, not unlike those I had seen used
by shepherds in Hampshire when I was a boy. The entrance was guarded all
night by a number of dogs, and curled up in a special nook was the
herdsman, with a gun of a kind long since discarded in Europe. Such are
the conditions under which these people live half the year, but they
make up for this underground life when in April they start their cattle
on the move by first allowing them to eat their shelters.

Near the edge of this plain we began to encounter a few sand dunes with
outcrops, very similar to those on the coast line of our own country.
Over these we gently ran day after day until we could see vast fields of
sand and scrub that it must have taken thousands of years of gale and
hurricane to deposit in the quaint pyramidal fashion in which they stand
to-day. Even yet they are not fixed; occasionally a tree falls exposing
the naked sand to the action of the wind, which swirls around the hole
and moves the sand into a spiral whirlpool, lifting and carrying it away