VI.] LOST. 235 



down. Instead they removed into a tent of reindeer skin. 

 These Samoyeds appear to have been Christians in name, 

 though they must have had strange ideas of their new God. 

 When, for instance, they saw a seal and missed shooting it, they 

 shot at the sun, because they believed that God was angry 

 with them. They hved in a sort of marriage, but if the man 

 became unfriendly to the woman, or tired of her, he could 

 take another; they had no clocks, but, notwithstanding, had a 

 tolerably good idea of time by the help of the stars and the 

 sun ; instead of an almanac they used a piece of wood, in which 

 for every day they cut a notch. Although they sometimes 

 quarrelled with and threatened one another, they were, however, 

 on the whole friendly, and reasonable, and showed much kind- 

 ness to the four shipwrecked men, whom they provided with 

 warm skin clothes, and during the whole time with food in 

 abundance, according to their circumstances, so that they did 

 not suffer any want. 



Ole Andreas Olsen and Henrik Nilsen had, when they were 

 separated in the snowstorm from the sledge party, half a pound 

 of flesh and their guns, and nothing more. They did not 

 succeed in finding any game, and though they were not very 

 far from the house, they required three days and a half to get 

 back to it. In the meantime, also, these two comrades in mis- 

 fortune had been separated. Henrik Nilsen found the house 

 first, Hghted a fire, roasted and ate some pieces of fox flesh that 

 he found remaining. Ole Andreas Olsen, who in desperation 

 had endeavoured to quench his thirst with sea-water, was so 

 weak that, when late at night he came to the boat, he could not 

 crawd up to the house. He had kept himself in life by eating 

 snow and devouring large pieces of his " pesk," which was 

 made of the raw hides of reindeer he had previously shot. 

 After having lain a while in the boat he crept up to the house, 

 where he found Henrik sleeping by the fire, which was not yet 

 quite extinguished. The following day they both began to 

 make arrangements for a lengthened stay in the house. But 

 here they found nothing, neither food, household furniture, nor 

 aught else. Nor did they succeed at first in getting any game ; 

 and for more than a fortnight they sustained life by boiling and 

 gnawing the flesh from the bones of the reindeer, the seal, and 

 the bear, that lay under the snow, remains from the Russian 

 hunting excursions of the preceding year. Finally, befor(j 

 Christmas they succeeded in killing a reindeer. Their lucifors 

 were now done, but they lighted a fire by loading their guns with 

 a mixture of which gunpowder formed a part, and firing into 

 old ropes, left behind by the Russians, which they picked 

 asunder and dried. One of the Russian huts they tore down 

 and used as fuel. They had neither axe nor saw, but they split 



