374 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 



perhaps I may yet write the story of our travels from the 

 Kolokolkova gulf to old England itself. 



How we lived with the natives, and the friends we 

 made, how we attended a peasant wedding-, and of the 

 quaint ceremonies that followed on it, how we crossed 

 the Petchora and took the horses over the half-frozen 

 Tsilma river, how we wandered in the forests, and how 

 we slept at nights, how we crossed a deep stream on 

 trees which were thrown from bank to ice, how the 

 wolves came and carried off a pony, how a midnight row 

 came about on the ice of the Volga — all these and many 

 other incidents would be there particularly described. 



And now I take my leave. My honest companion, 

 Thomas Hyland, is once more at home and happily 

 united to the girl of his choice, with my very best 

 wishes for his future success. It would take more than 

 ten thousand reindeer, I think, to get him again to 

 Kolouev. 



Old Sailor, too, has done with travelling. Happy and 

 safe in an English kennel, he is doubtless proving a 

 mine of yarns to his poor untravelled companions. 

 Sometimes when he lies asleep he will yap and growl 

 amazingly, while curious twitchings take him. And 

 then I think he is holding his own with the wolf-like 

 dogs ol Kolguev. 



It is May in England as I write these closing words. 

 It would be hard to conceive a greater contrast than that 

 of Kolguev (with its fog-swept wastes, its wild life — half 



