REINDEER AND DOG TRAVEL 293 



captain's merchandise to take with us, so we required 

 six sledges, each drawn by one horse. The first stage 

 was on land, wearisomely long, with bad roads and 

 worse horses ; the second stage was on the river, a 

 much better road, but, in consequence of bad horses, 

 very slow. The baggage was packed as before, on 

 three one-horse sledges. To each of our three sledges, 

 containing also a fair share of baggage, were harnessed 

 six dogs. They went splendidly, never seemed tired, 

 and never shirked their work. The pace was not rapid, 

 but at the next stage we had to wait an hour for the 

 horses with the baggage. The harness was simple in 

 the extreme, consisting merely of a padded belt across 

 the small of the back, and passing underneath between 

 the hind legs. 



The two last stages were travelled with reindeer. 

 We had six sledges, as before, for ourselves and the 

 baggage, and four sledges for our drivers. Each sledge 

 was drawn by a pair of reindeer, so that we required 

 twenty reindeer to horse our caravan. This was by far our 

 fastest mode of travelling. Sometimes the animals seemed 

 to iiy over the snow. During the last stage the reindeer 

 that drew my sledge galloped the whole way without a 

 pause ! The journey from Turukansk to the Kureika is 

 138 versts, and occupied about twenty-two hours. 



We reached the winter quarters of the Thames on 

 Monday, April 23rd, at three o'clock in the afternoon, 

 delio-hted once more to be amono^st English voices and 

 English cooking. We had sledged from Nishni Nov- 

 gorod to the Kureika, a distance of 4860 versts, or 

 3240 English miles. Including stoppages, we had been 

 forty-six days on the road, during which we had made 

 use of about a thousand horses, eighteen dogs, and forty 

 reindeer. The total number of stages was 229. My 



