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CHAPTER VI
WAITING TO GO ON
Unsuccessful sport in swamps : An unpleasant winter, and a
spring flood : Disappointed traders : A frozen mammoth :
How were the mammoths frozen ? : Visit to Lebiashiy Ostrov :
Strong mirage : Yenisei-Samoyedes and Yuraks : The Yurak
chief and his two wives : The Yuraks’ taxes : Dolgans and
Tunguses : Sledge-dogs : The Omul arrives : Russian steam
boats arrive
THE day after our arrival, Friday, August 29, I
took a longish walk over the flat, marshy island
to look for ptarmigan and geese, and I had with me
Christensen’s pointer bitch, who was not much use.
The Scotch cook’s mate, Campbell, went with me to
carry all the game I didn’t get. The whole of this
Nosdnovski Island is nothing but a low, perfectly flat
sand and mud bank, which does not rise many yards
above the river. It is not easy to make one’s way
over these flat marshes, one sinks in up to the knees.
Only along the shore and along an arm of the river
which curved across the island, was there more or less
dry going ; for there the water could run away down
the steep river bank.
Here and there inland were stretches with osier
scrub, which might reach as high as one’s chest. In
some places there was also some alder. Between them
were long flats with grass and swamp. One could
manage in places to get on from tuft to tuft, but soon
came to the soft bog, where one might sink in up to the
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