TO THE HOLY HILLS 337 



' Nonsense,' I said ; ' of course they have bolvans. 

 Every Samoyed has bolvans.' 



' My son's bolvan buried ! Yes, yes, buried. No 

 good,' persists the old man. 



Oh, very well, I told them, then all engagements were 

 off. 



I need not continue. Those who know anything of 

 the ways of savages or native people can fill in the 

 details for themselves. It was a long palaver. Then I 

 said good-day and turned to my writing. I suppose I 

 wrote on for half-an-hour in a dead silence, then they 

 began to mutter among themselves, and the old man left. 

 At last it seemed they had come to some agreement. 

 The youngest son — I saw it out of the corner of my eye 

 — fumbled about in his clothes and produced a little 

 coloured doll, which he brought to me, and said, ' I good 

 Christian. My bolvan, your bolvan. Yes, yes.' I 

 looked at it. There was a shiver of protest when I 

 raised the hood from the face. It was apparently quite 

 new, but he said he had made it twenty years ago. 

 ' No,' I said, 'too clean ; I want dirty bolvan.' 



Well, after an incredible time and much jabbering, the 

 eldest son brought me a second bolvan. There was no 

 doubt about its dirt or its antiquity. The face, although 

 it had always been covered up, was so worn that the 

 features were all but lost. The wood, originally light 

 coloured, was now quite black. He told me that his 

 father gave him this bolvan thirty years before ; that 



