This was my first trial of reindeer travel, and I was a little disappointed to find that it did not quite realise the expectations that had been excited in my boyish days by the pictures of galloping Lapland deer in the old geographies. The reindeer were there, but they were not the ideal reindeer of early fancy, and I felt a vague sense of personal injury and unjustifiable deception at the substitution of these awkward, ungainly beasts for the spirited and fleet-footed animals of my boyish imagination. Their trot was awkward and heavy, they carried their heads low, and their panting breaths and gaping mouths were constantly suggestive of complete exhaustion, and excited pity for their apparently laborious exertions, rather than admiration for the speed which they really did exhibit. My ideal reindeer would never have demeaned himself by running with his mouth wide open. When I learned, as I afterward did, that they were compelled to breathe through their mouths, on account of the rapid accumulation of frost in their nostrils, it relieved my apprehensions of their breaking down, but did not alter my firm conviction that my ideal reindeer was infinitely superior in an aesthetic point of view to the real animal. I could not but admit, however, the inestimable value of the reindeer to his wandering owners. Besides carrying them from place to place, he furnishes them with clothes, food, and covering for their tents; his antlers are made into rude implements of all sorts; his sinews are dried and pounded into thread, his bones are soaked in seal oil and burned for fuel, his entrails are cleaned, filled with tallow, and eaten; his blood, mixed with the contents of his stomach, is made into _manyalla_; his marrow and tongue are considered the greatest of delicacies; the stiff, bristly skin of his legs is used to cover snow-shoes; and finally his whole body, sacrificed to the Korak gods, brings down upon his owners all the spiritual and temporal blessings which they need. It would be hard to find another animal which fills so important a place in the life of any body of men, as the reindeer does in the life and domestic economy of the Siberian Koraks. I cannot now think of one which furnishes even the four prime requisites of food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. It is a singular fact, however, that the Siberian natives--the only people, so far as I know, who have ever domesticated the reindeer, except the Laps--do not use in any way the animal's milk. Why so important and desirable an article of food should be neglected, when every other part of the deer's body is turned to some useful account, I cannot imagine. It is certain, however, that no one of the four great wandering tribes of north-eastern Siberia, Koraks, Chukchis, Tunguses, and Lamutkis, uses in any way the reindeer's milk.