taken their encampments far away to the recesses of the forests or have trekked to the toundras bordering the Arctic, then the Siberians either return to their nearest market town along the main rivers, where they exchange their goods and visit their friends, or turn their hands to fishing in the rivers and lakes near their trading posts. Here again they find the natives useful as a means of attaining their ends. Certain tribes of Samoyedes and Ostiaks, who keep no flocks of reindeer and do not live by hunting, engage largely in fishing. Some of these natives have fishing reserves on certain lakes, and here they turn their religion to practical account by holding these waters sacred to their shamman spirits. The Siberians respect these native traditions, and so the fishing here is only done by natives, from whom the Siberians purchase their fish. Along the desolate shores of these lakes the traveller can see in summer the little native encampments with the rafts and nets of the fishermen. Here and there are little huts visited by the Siberians once or twice a year, when they come to offer the little necessaries of life in exchange for the native catches of fish.
But there are other parts of Siberia besides the sub-Arctic forests and the toundras which are favourable to the isolated life of the trader and hunter. Those physical conditions which in the far north of Siberia create fur-bearing forests, and rivers and lakes abounding in fish, produce the same effects in more southern latitudes along the Siberian-Mongolian frontier. Where the great plains of Western and Central Siberia rise on to the first step of the Central Asiatic plateau, the hardy Siberian frontiersman and
