18 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEl 



brought offerings to liim. The Influential Person was 

 very pleased with the gifts, which were small but 

 practical, and consisted of a jar of honey and a green 

 pocket-handkerchief. 



With Yenesiesk, we left some of the formalities of 

 life behind us. Nicolai, the saloon steward, who, for 

 four broiling days, had endured a crumpled white shirt 

 front as a sort of insignia of office, now ran about in 

 collarless comfort for the rest of the trip ; and Captain 

 Ello paced the bridge in a sort of semi-lay attire, some- 

 thing like that of a Wesleyan minister. 



Now that the last of the towns was left behind, it 

 became a little easier to realise this wonderful river 

 down which we were travelling. The Yenesei — " the 

 wide water" as it was called by its first navigators 

 (beetle-browed and hairy -jerkined folk, who launched 

 their catamarans upon its upper reaches when history 

 was dim) — is the fifth longest river in the world. It is 

 the second of the three stately rivers that flow north- 

 wards from the central watershed of Asia, and drains 

 an area of 970,000 square miles. The sources of the 

 Yenesei, the Bei-Kem, Khua-Kem, and the rest, rise 

 in the mountains of Mongolia and flow for 3000 miles 

 before they reach the Arctic Ocean. All the great 

 tributaries — the Angara, which comes from Lake Baikal, 

 the Podkammenaya Tunguska, and Lower Tunguska — 

 enter it from the east. Even at Yenesiesk, the great 

 river is a verst in width, and it gradually grows, until 

 just below Dudinka it sweeps out into one of the most 

 magnificent estuaries in the world. What energy, as 

 it seems, is here poured profitlessly into the Arctic 



