CHAPTER VIII. 



First days at Golchika — The coming of the steamers — Our hut — The 

 commissariat — A home-made sundial — The Lena — Disturbance 

 in the Prokopchuk family — "The Alcohol King" — Mosquitoes — 

 Native fishermen — The people of the balagan — An unwilling 

 ferryman — The spell of Golchika. 



For the first fortnight of our stay at Golchika we 

 lived, as I have already mentioned, in the bakehouse 

 of the Antonoffs. During that time the place was 

 more or less in a buzz of excitement, owing to the 

 coming of the steamers from Yenesiesk, which brought 

 the first news of the outer world which had reached 

 the river's mouth since the previous September. A day 

 or two after the Oryol had returned, the Yenesei, 

 belonging to Mr. KutcherenkofF, came in ; and, on 

 4th July, the Government steamer Turuhhansk 

 appeared. With each of these ships, summer visitors 

 arrived at Golchika. Kutcherenkofi" brought two men 

 to work in his fish-packing station. One was a youno- 

 Siberiak from Yenesiesk, Micha by name, and the other 

 was a Jew, a political exile of the lower sort, called 

 Cherniavinski. His sentence was for ten years, of 

 which he had already served eight in the service of 

 Kutcherenkoff. His crime was that he had belonged 

 to some proscribed society ; but his enforced stay in 



Siberia had taken away his taste for politics, for he 



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