0^6 THE JEANNETTE ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 



24th we reached a place now known as Spiridon's Village, 

 where we waited a while, and a native was sent away to 

 bring further assistance and some more food. While here I 

 got a few ptarmigan. Spiridon gave our party five geese, 

 packed one inside the other, and all of them boned ; and 

 lie also gave me a pair of moccasins, which were very handy 

 as my old ones were much worn and too small. 



In consequence of the last two days' paddling, Bushielle's 

 left arm. which had been previously hit by a bullet at the 

 elbow, gave out, and prevented his going any further ; and so 

 AVC took another man in his place and pushed on for the 

 Tunguse village of Geemovialocke, Avhich we reached on 

 the forenoon of Monday, September 26th. A number of 

 men paddled out to meet us before we landed. Among them 

 we noticed one who proved afterward to be a Russian exile, 

 named Efim Kopiloff, and a very good-hearted fellow he was. 

 Through his assistance we procured numbers of fish and 

 geese. Quite a party, including men, women, and children, 

 assembled on shore to meet us, and most droll-looking people 

 they were. The women were short, and almost all of them 

 very homely ; but they had good-natured faces, and afterwards 

 proved to be very good friends to us. They assisted in pull- 

 ing up our boat,*making signs that if we did not do so it 

 would become injured, as the river would soon freeze. Then 

 they brought sleds and dragged some of our men who were 

 unable to walk to the hut of the commandant of the place, 

 whose name we afterwards learned was Nicolai Shagra. Here 

 we got a good supper, the first for a long time. After this 

 we had a real good smoke of Russian tobacco, and a lot of 

 tea with sugar, something which we had not tasted for a long 

 time. We were also given as a special delicacy, a little dried 

 reindeer meat with a little fat cut up in small lumps ; it was 

 very palatable. Besides this, they also cooked another 

 mess of fish for us, thinking that we might not have enough 

 without it. 



Two huts were subsequently assigned to us, and we en- 

 joyed the first comfortable night's rest we had had for a long 



