village of Berél, where we expected to leave the valley of the Búkhtarmá, was only about twenty versts, and the road lay, as before, along the river. The foothills that bounded it were higher and steeper than in the part of the valley through which we had passed, and here and there, along their bases, were enormous masses of loose rocks and boulders which looked as if they might have been brought down into the valley by tremendous avalanches or landslides. About half-past four o'clock we crossed, on rude corduroy bridges, two or three turbid, milky arms of the Búkhtarmá River, and rode into the little hamlet of Berél—the most remote Russian settlement in that part of the Altái and the settlement where we expected to make our final arrangements for the long and difficult ride across the mountains to the Katúnski Alps.
The Cossack atamán at the Altái Station had given us a letter of introduction to one of his acquaintances in Berél—a peasant farmer named Bielaüsof—and we therefore went directly to the latter's house. He proved to be an intelligent man, fifty-five or sixty years of age, and an excellent type of the hardy Siberian pioneers who seek to escape from the burdensome restraints of government by migration to remote and unexplored regions. He was a nonconformist in religion, and had come to this wild corner of the Altái partly to enjoy freedom of religious worship and partly to find, if possible, the mythical Bielovódye or uninhabited land of peace and plenty which certain Russian dissenters believe to exist somewhere on the Mongolian frontier in the far East. He had not found the Siberian Eden which was the main object of his quest, but he had found the valley of the Búkhtarmá, and, tempted by its beauty and fertility, he had built a log house for himself at the intersection of the Búkhtarmá River and the Berél and in course of time had become prosperous and contented as a peasant farmer and a breeder of the marál or great Altái deer [Cervus elephas]. The horns of the marál, when
