A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 115 



and Sopochnaya would find an untilled field which 

 would abundantly repay their work. A great deal of 

 what is apparently loose morality among the Siberiaks 

 is due, not to the vicious tendencies of the people 

 themselves, but to the conditions of the country. It is 

 often impossible for a man and a woman to marry, 

 because they cannot find anyone to perform the rite. 

 There was a little dilapidated church on the island at 

 Golchika, but service was held there only once a year, 

 when the pope came down the river from Dudinka for 

 the purpose. His visit just coincided with the fishing 

 season, and consequently very few of the balagan 

 dwellers of the district could spare the time to travel 

 on foot or by boat for forty or fifty versts to attend. 

 In winter the people cannot, in summer they will not 

 go to church. As the result, the inhabitants of the 

 Lower Yenesei live in deeper heathendom than even the 

 poor natives around them, who at least are bound by 

 their own tribal code of laws. They live beyond the 

 pale, with nobody to care for either their bodies or their 

 souls. 



Nevertheless, degraded and brutal as so many of 

 these balagan people appeared, I must confess that, 

 except from a purely academic point of view, I found 

 them more interesting than the natives with whom my 

 anthropological companions used sometimes to contrast 

 them to their disparagement. After all, it is they who 

 must take part in the future development of Siberia — a 

 part which the aborigines will never be able to play. 



The resources of Siberia are immense both in and 

 under the soil, and as yet not a twentieth part of them 



