282 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 



fill it in for yourselves. For scene you have a raised 

 plateau of the tundra, a line of red-and-blue cotton gipsy 

 tents, a birch-bark covered choom, a troop of quarrelling 

 dogs, a confusion of boats, sleighs, tubs, and nameless 

 paraphernalia, a herd of deer scattered round over the 

 waste, and a team or two of five fastened up. Put in the 

 middle a circle of men, women, girls and boys, standing 

 or squatting round the dead body of a fresh-killed 

 smoking deer, cutting, tearing and feeding, and then you 

 have all. 



They were astonished beyond measure that I did 

 not join them. Hyland ate some and pronounced it 

 excellent, and I really don't know why it should not be 

 so ; but I prefer my food cooked. The Samoyeds were 

 especially fond of the windpipe, the sinews, the lungs, the 

 outside of the bones, and the velvety vascular part of 

 the horns. All these they dipped in the blood before 

 eating. 



' Good, very good,' says old Ustynia, offering me a 

 most tempting bit of lights, fresh from the blood. I made 

 a face which expressed disgust, but they only thought 

 it meant that I wasn't hungry. 'Oh, not hungry,' 1 they 

 said ; and ' Oh, not hungry,' went the round of the ring, 

 in a series of intermittent ejaculations between the 

 mouthfuls. They were hungry, it seemed, for they 

 gorged away. If any one in this country could have 

 eaten so much at a go he would have fallen asleep. But 



1 Yangho ormiingawum. 



