equivalent, is with us. BEAR-TRAP. ed of four tents, pitched in a forest of larch. The snow all around was trodden down by deer, about forty of whom made a charge upon us, but were easily driven off. having left him at Ghijigha, and gone northward to Behring's Sea in search of Macrae's party, who were supposed to have landed at the mouth of the Anadyr River. We had no difficulty in engaging fresh deer from Ivan. But when, as here, they are in large herds, they become half wild, and it is no easy task to catch them. Ours had to be selected from a herd of three hundred, and it took all -men, women, and children to effect this. However, at last it was done, and on the 24th of February we were once more on our way. The village consist- | Four Tungusians went with us to relieve each other in breaking a road. These, with Abasa's Cossack and his native interpreter, joined to our own party, formed quite a considerable caravan. Although the snow was deep, and the weather cold (on the 28th the thermometer went down to -40°), we got along very well, and at last, on the 30th of March, reached Okhotsk, where we found Major Abasa awaiting us. It was more than six months since we had parted at Petropaulovski. Of these nearly five had been occupied in the journey from Nikolayefsk, although the actual distance is only Ivan received us kindly, and conducted us to one of the tents, excusing himself for not offering us his own, for the valid reason that he had been made a great-grandfather the night before. An animated conversation ensued, though carried on under some difficulties, as every question and answer had to be translated into four languages before reaching its destination. Swartz rendered our English into Rus-about 1200 miles. sian, Ivan (not the starasta, but a Cossack who For a considerable time we had been travelhad come with us all the way from Oudskoi) ing on the borders of the country of the Yaput the Russian into Yakout, which Egory ren-kouts, the most superior and numerous tribe of dered into Tungusian. The starasta was especially anxious to learn about America and the Americans. As we were seating ourselves at tea he bowed his head, murmured a short prayer, and crossed himself. Seeing that we did not do the same, he sat silent for a time; then asked, "Do the Americans have a God?" We replied in the affirmative. Again he pon-importance. dered a few moments; then asked, "Do the which he started on his voyage of discovery. French have a God?" Our answer, "Yes," Since the founding of Nikolayefsk it has fallen seemed to puzzle him still more. We after- into decay. Most of the former houses have ward discovered that the natives here have a been pulled down for fire-wood. It now convery bad opinion of the French, based upon tains thirty dwellings and three hundred inhabexaggerated reports which have reached them itants, Russians, Cossacks, and Yakouts. of the barbarities of the French during the Crimean war. Eastern Siberia. They dwell in permanent Okhotsk was once a place of considerable April 3.-We had expected to remain at Okhotsk until spring-that is, the first of June We decided to remain a while at Ivan's, for-awaiting the arrival of vessels, but in ten days we were confident that Abasa's messenger would learn that he had passed us, and would return on his track. He came on the third day, bringing dispatches. Abasa had been alone at Okhotsk for several weeks, Kennan Major Abasa decided to return to Ghijigha, to hurry on preparations for building the telegraph as soon as materials and men should arrive there. He asked Bush to accompany him. The distance, 800 miles, was to be performed by dog sleds. Those provided for this jour- ing in and out of a pile of wood. We were asney were of a kind here called "pavoshkas," tonished at being told that this was the ermine, so long that the passenger can lie in them at whose fur figures so largely as a royal adornfull length; the back has a cover which can be ment. Here they are of so little account that raised or lowered at pleasure, and to this may a skin is worth only six cents, and they are be fastened a curtain reaching to the front, so only taken to pay the church taxes. They are that the traveler can shut himself completely caught in an ingenious kind of trap. It is a in, the driver being entirely without protec- square frame, with a cross-bar sliding in grooves tion. Fifteen or twenty dogs are required for at the sides; to this is attached a string consuch a sled. The rate of speed is evinced by nected with a light bow in such a manner that the fact that on the first day we made about when the string is touched the bow is loosed, seventy-two miles in twelve hours. I shall and the bar is brought against the end of the note but a few incidents of this journey. One frame. This is placed over the ermine's hole; day, while sitting in a yourt, we saw a little in coming out he springs the bow, and is caught white animal, looking much like a weasel, dart- by the neck without injuring the skin. YAKOUT WOMAN. At one place the chiefs assembled to hear the major's proposition for building the telegraph. They looked dubious. He explained that it consisted of a line of poles across the country, with a wire along their tops. One asked in what direction the line would go. Upon being told, they were still more gloomy. At last one asked how far apart the poles would be. Upon being informed of the distance, their countenances brightened at once. They knew that the line would cross their usual routes of travel, and supposed that the poles would be so close together that deer could not pass between. Their fears were now dispelled, ERMINE-TRAP. 7 and they promised us two hundred deer in the spring at two and a half rubles ($1 87) each. One day we met a native riding one deer and leading another. Our whole pack of dogs, YAKOUT MAN. two hundred in number, dashed after the deer in spite of all efforts to restrain them, though some of the drivers turned their sleds bottom upward to check their speed. A dozen dogs sprang upon the deer, and pulled it to the ground. The drivers leaped among them, and belabored them with their heavy clubs. The deer, recovering from its fright, leaped into the crowd of dogs, springing into the air and striking out with all its feet at once. The dogs were driven off, and the deer trotted off to join its companion. In a moment another pack of the dogs were upon it, and before they could be driven off the deer was killed. We satisfied the owner by a liberal compensation for his loss. On the 3d of April we came in sight of a considerable settlement on a river-bank. This was Ghijigha, the end of our present journey, and the entrepôt of the surrounding region. Here we were provided with comfortable quarters in a large log-house belonging to a fur-trader, of which we had hardly taken possession when the door was thrown open, and several fur-clad figures rushed in. It was only by their voices that we could in two of them recognize Kennan and Macrae. Their adventures are worth telling; but Kennan has already told them. TO BE CONTINUED. OUT from his palace home LOVING, BUT UNLOVED. He came to my cottage door : Few were his looks and words, But they linger for evermore. The smile of his sad blue eyes Was tender as smile could be; Yet I was nothing to him, Though he was the world to me! Fair was the bride he won, Yet her heart was never his own: Her beauty he had and held, But his spirit was ever alone. I would have been his slave, With a kiss for my life-long fee; But I was nothing to him, While he was the world to me! To-day, in his stately home, On a flower-strewn bier he lies, How will it be with our souls Must the sorrow repeated be, While he dims heaven for me? T is sometimes a matter of curious interest, though partaken of with childish desultoriness Ind oven of much utility, to and indiscrimination, can be no a what manner and in what degree achieved mental greatness sows its thought in new and immature soil. Memory takes me back twenty years to a midsummer morning passed in a favorite room. It had an oriel-window looking to the east, over an unblemished lawn, to a river glimmering at isolated intervals through intervening foliage. On one side of the room were books from floor to ceiling-a display without ostentation, every book by virtue of its excellence giving honor to, and taking none from, the place it occupied. I remember that room as holding an august company. Poet, historian, moralist, scientist, and romancer contributed to the shelves the strongest meat of their several literatures. These treasures belonged to me in the measure that I was able and chose to possess myself of them. While yet living among us great authors have, and generally use, unqualified option in their choice of society; but in their works they give freely of their company, and one has only to say to whom he will hearken, and he or she steps forward, and the rest await their turn. Not Maria "del Occidente," but so much of her as shines in "The Bride of Seven," looked at me by the side of "Anastasius" and "Zanoni." I knew something of Plutarch, "The Spectator," and "The Fool of Quality," and the strange fascination of "Frankenstein.' These spoke not in utterly unknown tongues to the child nine years old. I knew "Undine" and "The White Lady" by heart; had felt the thrall of Zschokke, the differing yet equal charm of Marmontel's "Incas of Peru." I had even peeped among the pages of ostracized Tom Paine, and had felt the pulse of thought quicken in the pure certain strength and appreciation were acquired; the coloring of the mind was saved from too tamely blending with itself; so that "Waverley" brought me better fare, not than it contained, but than I could possibly have enjoyed but for just such a preceding repast. All the richness and inspiration of that earlier book-devouring streamed to the illumination of the unread. On that midsummer morning I went down on my knees before a mysterious row of volumes sheathed in thick brown paper. Out of these unpromising chrysalides the Waverley novels, in chastely elegant binding, tumbled into my lap. It was the illustrated Abbotsford edition, not the American reprint, and their mere outward appearance was an infection of delight. Selecting "Ivanhoe," and curling up in the oriel-window seat, the enchantments of Waverley began for me. I read all these novels, and then re-read "Kenilworth," "The Pirate," "Ivanhoe," "Anne of Geierstein," "Heart of Mid-Lothian," and "Bride of Lammermoor." These were the favorites. So far as is possible the child-mind theatrizes all of which it reads or is told. Memory serves me with many instances, one or two of which will show my meaning. At the turn of an evergreen avenue, which seemed the special haunt of wind-gusts, I used to sit with "The Pirate" lying on my knee. Poring over the weird picture of Old Norna of the Fitful Head, I would close my eyes and fancy the increased rushing of the breeze was the rustling mantle of Old Norna, as she glided past. There was a pleasing terror in this delusion, answering as it did to my summons with the vividness of actuality. In other phases of the same enchantment, wrapped and hooded in an old shawl, and crutch in hand, I have flitted by that same corner personating Old Norna; pale, I doubt not, with the self-deluding phantasm, and glaring at the imaginary child in my usual seat as if she were there palpable, and trembling at the vision. Again, I was Jeanie Deans, with sore heart and undaunted spirit journeying to the queen, pleading for a beloved young sister's life, and trusting more to the queen's royal heart of womanhood than to her royal crown of state. In a rose-vined balcony, which imagination readily converted into giddy battlements, I leaned upon its verge (fresh from the reading of "Ivanhoe"), and dared Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert to advance a step; and yet again sorrowed, as Rebecca did not, over the haughty Templar's bitter fate. Jealous for Rebecca, I did not like Rowena; and, with the childlike audacity that does not know it is bold, I shaped that portion of the novel more to my own mind, and, with an equal hardihood, changed about the characteristics of Ivanhoe and Sir Brian, giving of what seemed the softness and inconsequence | latter, since he was dead and could not miss of the former to Sir Brian, and taking from the them, some of the stern, brave elements for JEANIE DEANS. which he could have no further use, and grafting them upon Ivanhoe. I enjoyed this greatly, with impunity, and that beautiful indifference to such sacrilege peculiar to childhood. "Anne of Geierstein" left a less complex but more grave impression; but it was "Kenilworth" that cut its features most sharply in my remembrance; and it is chiefly by the effect produced by one event in it that the whole remains so clear. Without reasoning upon it, I felt that the love of Amy Robsart for the Earl of Leicester was a I fine and genuine emotion. experienced a mental breathlessness as the plot unfolded by which that high - spirited but true and gentle creature was to be sacrificed. The readers of "Kenilworth" will remember that the earl, who was in great favor with the reigning prude of England, feared to risk Elizabeth's partiality by the disclosure of his |