1 84 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 



we should be making soundings, and finding how the 

 channels lay against the coming in of the Saxon or the 

 gunboat. 



After I had finished the work with the prismatic 

 compass, and all the entries in my route-book, which 

 always took up much of my time, I told Uano we would 

 move to Scharok. 



We left at about four o'clock in the afternoon. For 

 good-bye the women said 'prostee,' which is the common 

 Samoyed formula. It may be Samoyed, but it sounds 

 like a corruption of the Russian ' pra-schei ' or ' pra- 

 scheite.' 



We crossed in the order named, the Tinyan, the 

 Barakova and the Peinmur rivers, all running- throuQ-h 

 the same flat, and then came upon a really fine lake. 

 This Uano told us they called ' Solnoi Toh,' which is to 

 say, Solnoi Lake. The Russians, he added, called it 

 Solnoida or Soldonoida Lake ('ozero'). 



Soon after seven o'clock we made the passage of 

 the Baroshika, the largest river, said Uano, after the 

 Pesanka, on this coast. 



An hour and a half later we rose a slight hill, and 

 there, some four miles off, were a row of little huts, 

 plainly visible against a background of ice. They w r ere 

 not much to look at, but even after these few days of our 

 wanderings seemed about as strange as though in the 

 middle of Gobi you should come upon a modern hotel. 



Here the men pulled up the reindeer, flung down the 



