278 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 



labour. The old man led off by splitting them with his 

 axe, the women and elder girls gutted them ; then they 

 threw them on to the children, who took out the gizzards 

 and chopped off the beaks. These were carefully pre- 

 served threaded on strings. Some were then used as 

 necklaces and ornaments for the hair ; some as beads for 

 the little dolls, or, as they call them, 'ooquoh.' These 

 are made to imitate fathers and mothers of a family, 

 sons, babies, and so on. 



Why does Nordenskiold put these Samoyeds at the 

 bottom of the Arctic Mongol group ? He makes them 

 the lowest. And why does Carlyle, casting about for 

 an instance of hopeless barbarity, pitch on the poor 

 Samoyed ? This book, if it shows anything, will surely 

 reveal the Samoyed as an extremely intelligent man, far 

 and away more so than the Red Indian. 



Take Mekolka. Mekolka had been born and bred on 

 Kolguev. He was now about seventeen, and until last 

 year had not known how to read or write. Then with the 

 Russians in the summer crossed the Prophet, Onaska, who 

 had learnt in the Archangel school. Through the winter 

 he taught the boy Mekolka, and now this lad could not 

 only spell out Russian slowly, but write quite fairly well. 

 His father, who had always used the notched stick for 

 his calculations, now trusted much to Mekolka's powers. 



I used sometimes to have a sense (which I never had 

 with the Indians) that these were, so to say, our own 

 natives, just English yeomen families, or so. The very 



