184 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cuap. 



ouo-bt to be profitable there. After the ice had broken up, and 

 crosses with inscriptions giving information of their movements 

 had been erected on the shore, they sailed on. On the |jSt July 

 they sighted Vaygats. They landed at a headland marked with 

 two crosses, and there fell in with a native, clad in much the 

 same way as a Kilduin Lapp, who soon took to flight. Other 

 headlands marked with crosses were afterwards visited, and 

 places where idols were found set up by hundreds. Linschoten 

 also landed on that Idol Cape which was visited during the 

 voyage of the Vega. There were then from three to four 

 hundred wooden idols, which, according to Linschoten's descrip- 

 tion, were very similar in appearance to those we saw. They 

 were so ill made, says he, that one could scarcely guess that 

 they were intended to represent men. The visage was very 

 broad, the nose projecting, there were two holes in place of the 

 eyes, and another hole represented the mouth. Five, six, or 

 seven faces were often found carved on one and the same stock 

 " perhaps intended to represent a whole family." Many Russian 

 crosses were also erected there. Some days later they found on 

 the south shore of the sound a small house filled with idols, 

 much better made than the former, with eyes and paps 

 of metal. While the Dutch were employed in examining this 

 collection of idols, a reindeer sleds^e was driven forward in which 

 sat a man armed with a bow. When he saw the foreigners, he 

 called loudly, on which a number of sledges with about thirty 

 men drove out of a valley and endeavoured to surround the 

 Dutch. They now fled in haste to their boat, and when it had 

 left the beach the Samoyeds shot at it with their arrows, but 

 without hitting it. This bloodless conflict is, so far as we know, 

 the only one that took place between the natives and the 

 north-east voyagers. The latter are thus free from the great 

 bloodguiltiness which attaches to most of those, who in the 

 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries made voyages of discovery in 

 southern regions. 



Some days later, on the '3';^'';^/*, the Dutch had a friendly 

 meeting with the Samoyeds, who gave them very correct in- 

 formation concerning the state of the land and the sea, telling 

 them that " after ten or twelve days they would meet with no 

 more ice, and that summer would last six or seven weeks 

 longer." After the Dutch had learned all they could from these 

 " barbarians, who had greater skill in managing their bow than 

 a nautical gnomon, and could give better information regarding 

 their hunting than about the navigable water," they took their 

 departure. When one of the sailors hereupon blew a horn, the 

 savages were so frightened, that they began to take to flight, 

 but, quieted by the assurance that the blast of the horn was 

 only a sign of friendship, they returned and on the beach 



