60 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEl 



with liis face in the soup tureen. He had been out to 

 shoot for the pot, and was carrying a couple of long- 

 tailed ducks. 



The steamer was timed to start at 2 a.m., so we 

 walked back to the balagans, where the people were 

 busily shovelling snow out of their summer lodgings. 

 The bones of a beluga, or white whale, lay on the shore. 

 These creatures come up the river in the summer after 

 the omul and seld, and are sometimes caught in the 

 seine nets. The hide is valuable for making sledge 

 harness, and the flesh is cut into strips, dried, and sold 

 to the natives, who are very fond of it. 



As usual there was no sign of a boat, and for half 

 an hour the cook and I wandered disconsolately up and 

 down the bank, for we were both about three times as 

 wet and six times as cold as we liked to be. Then 

 luckily a boat full of Yuraks paddled past, and we 

 persuaded them to take us back to the steamer. 



At midday on 28th June the Oryol anchored off 

 the Golchika River. The coast was full of sandbanks, 

 and therefore the steamer dared not approach within a 

 mile of the shore. Our first view of the place where 

 we were to live for the next two months was therefore 

 a distant one, but it was none the less dreary for that. 

 In the background lay a range of low hills, overhung 

 by heavy snowstorms, and still streaked with white 

 drifts. A turbid, coffee-coloured river flowed through 

 them, and between the hills and the shores of the 

 Yenesei was a long stretch of low marshland, partly 

 covered with floods and partly with snow. The posi- 

 tion of the Yenesei and its tributary at Golchika 



