20 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 



the first of its kind that we had seen. All the villages 

 of the Yenesei are built after the same plan. They vary 

 only in size. Each consists of a manure heap with a few 

 wooden huts on the top. Sometimes it is a small manure 

 heap with one or two huts, and such a place smells 

 only a little. Nasimorokoya was a large manure heap 

 with about fifty huts, and it smelt a great deal. It was 

 very hot, so we went into a little shop to buy something 

 to drink. They brought us quass from an underground 

 store. It was a kind of small beer distilled from 

 bread, and I thought that the taste was very bitter 

 and nasty, but my companions liked it. When we 

 returned to the ship, we found that the crew were in 

 the act of slaughtering two young calves beside the 

 gangway. Somehow none of us felt inclined for the 

 veal that came on to the table for supper ! 



That night it was so hot that we could scarcely sleep, 

 but on the following morning we awoke to find weather 

 like that of an English March, with a chilly northerly 

 breeze. In the course of the day we went ashore at 

 Vorogovo, another village that almost deserves the 

 name of town in this part of the world. I went for a 

 ramble along the banks of a long-stagnant backwater 

 which lay between the river and the forest. It was the 

 haunt of innumerable reed-warblers, and also of innumer- 

 able mosquitoes. A great spotted woodpecker popped 

 his scarlet poll round a stump, and a widgeon duck 

 malingered beside a willow-grown island. In the 

 meadows at the back of the village a flock of fifty 

 common gulls were resting on their journey to the 

 north, all turned heads to wind in ranks like a squad of 



