The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-09-04

toes and flies: and when they return
in August and September they are fat
and strong.
The deer move southwark in great
droVes consisting of several thousand
to a drove. These droves are sub
divided into smaller herds of a few
hundred animals to a herd, but the
herds are so close to each other that
the whole moves like one immense
army.
Often such a drove of reindeer COW
eres an area of seventy-five miles in
length and thirty-five miles in width.
The animals follow almost the same
trail year by year, and their favorite
crossing places at the river are we'll
known to all the hunters.
There then, the men lie in wait I'M
der the banks, in cranky canoes which
are so small and light that the occu-
pant can keep them upright only by
being exceptionally skillful. They are
only seven feet long and barely wide
enough to give room for the hunter
to sit down
into the water. AS soon as he is in,
the rest press down the bank after
him. The hunters wait till the river
is full of deer swimming side by side
and pressed together so closely that
there is no room for them to escape.
Then the light canoes dash among
them and the hunters strike at the
deer with their seven-fOot spears.
The stays fight desperately when at
tackled, and even the does will try to
tip the canoes by throwing their fore
feet into them. But the hunters are
SO skillful that, although they drive
their crazy boats right among the ter
rified animals and dart here and there
in the midst of the madly plunging
a1alx
While the men are in the water
spearing the deer, the women and chill
dren on the bank make all the noise
possible, i'll order to brighten the ami
mails so that they will stay in the river
instead of climbing ashore and run
ming away. The women do not con-
fine themselves to making noise alone
They attack any deer that swims close
to the shore and cut the threats of
such animals as are wounded.
Frequently these queer deer hunts
with spears in the water last until not
a deer is left alive out of herds that
may number five hundred.
The slain animals are skinned and
cleaned and then stored away in rude
structures to wait till the winter
makes it possible to transport flesh
and hides by sledge up and down the
frozen river.
Part of this reindeer flesh will travel
up the river in a few months to where
the stream, becoming as wide as a sea,
opens into the icy Bering sea. There.
on a little barren peninsula, is the
| loneliest and most desolate postal sta
ton in the world. It is the station of
Marinsky Post, the most northern
official station of Russia in Siberia
This imperial postoffice is hut
| built from clay and mud. 1t has three
windows. so small that they are hard
ly more than peep holes. Here these
Cossacks are the sole representatives
of the Car for eight months in the
year. A few earth huts and Eskimo
tents made of skins stick out from the
snow that lies like sheet as far as
the eye can see.
Within two months from now, while
America still is in the beauty of au-
tumn, Marinsky Post will be beaten
by tremendous Arctic storms. the
winds of which are so cutting that not
a sign of life can be seen for days and
even weeks at time in the little set
Element. because no man dares to
crawl out of his shelter.