A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 



CHAPTEE I. 



The "Gillissy" — Departure from London — Warsaw — Contretemps at 

 Moscow — Krasnoyarsk — Vassilli Ivanovitch — We embark for the 

 north — The Angara River — Yenesiesk — The Oryol and her captain 

 — Fellow-passengers — The "wide water" — Nasimorokoya — Voro- 

 govo — The Kauiin Pass — Midnight in the forest. 



The first allusion to the Yenesei River that I can 

 find in literature dates from 1595. In that year 

 Willem Barentz, the Dutchman, sailed up to the Kara 

 Sea, and while his ship was fast in the ice, some 

 Muscovy hunters came on board. They told him a 

 tale how that each summer ten small smacks sailed 

 eastwards from Kholmorgori on the White Sea, " through 

 the Sea of Tartary right past the river Obi, to another 

 river, the Gillissy," where they carried on a trade in 

 cloth and other stuff's. 



Now Willem Barentz, that practical old adven- 

 turer, knew well enough from the quaint charts of his 

 day that the Gillissy River flowed into the northern 

 ocean from the land of Cathay, where the sands were 

 golden, where spices grew on all the bushes, and where 

 silks and furs might be had for the asking. There- 



