tudinal runners, and a primitive domestic still. The latter, which was used to distil an intoxicating liquor known as arrack, consisted of a large copper kettle, mounted on a tripod and furnished with a tight-fitting cover, out of the top of which projected a curving wooden tube intended to serve as a condenser, or worm. The whole apparatus was of the rudest possible construction, and the thin, acrid, unpleasant-looking, and vile-tasting liquor made in it was probably as intoxicating and deadly as the poison-toadstool cordial of the wandering Koráks. The interior of every Tatár habitation that we inspected was so cheerless, gloomy, and dirty that we decided to take our lunch out of doors on the snow; and while we ate it Mr. Safiánof persuaded some of the Tatár women to put on their holiday dresses and let Mr. Frost photograph them. It will be seen from the illustration on page 403 that the Káchinski feminine type is distinctively Indian, and there are suggestions of the Indian even in the dress. All of the Káchinski Tatárs that we saw in the Minusínsk district, if they were dressed in American fashion, would be taken in any Western State for Indians without hesitation or question. They number in all about ten thousand, and are settled, for the most part, on what is known as the Káchinski Steppe, a great rolling plain on the left or western bank of the Yeniséi above Minusínsk, where the climate is temperate and the snowfall light, and where they find excellent pasturage, both in summer and in winter, for their flocks and herds.
Late in the afternoon, when Mr. Frost had made an end of photographing the women of the settlement, all of whom were eager to put on their good clothes and "have their pictures taken," we set out on our return to Minusínsk, and before dark we were refreshing ourselves with caravan tea and discussing Káchinski Tatárs under the shadow of our own vine and oleander in Soldátof's second-story-front bower.
It must not be supposed that we had become so absorbed in museums, archæological relics, and Káchinski Tatárs
