Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/186

 138 But the life of the Siberian in the sub-Arctic forest is by no means confined to fur-trading with the Finns. He, too, by force of circumstances, adopts the customs and habits of the Samoyedes and Ostiaks. Frequently, during the autumn, he goes off to the forests alone to hunt squirrels and the cheaper fur-bearing animals which are caught with specially trained dogs. He is generally wise enough, however, to make use of the valuable hunting instincts of the natives, whose knowledge of the chase and forest craft he knows by experience to be superior even to his own. I remember a Siberian fur trader, whom I met in Krasnoyarsk, telling me that in the Turukhansk district he hunted furs only in those districts where the native Finns never go, for, he said, it paid him better to let them do the hunting and to barter with them for their furs in the autumn. When, therefore, the hunting after the second fall of snow is over, and the native encampments have been brought to the lower reaches of the river, the Siberian traders who have there built their huts and have their stores, get their best chance. At that season of the year one may not infrequently see priceless black sable exchanged for a few pounds of tea, or a dozen squirrel-skins given for a little bag of flour. The Siberians in trading generally keep to particular districts and to special native encampments. Thus one has his hut and stores at the mouth of one river, where he monopolizes the fur products of a certain encampment of natives, who winter there, while fifty miles beyond, separated by great expanses of flat forest and swamp, is his neighbour's sphere of influence.

But during the summer, when the natives have