208 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 



from which a snowy owl or buzzard flapped majestically 

 at our approach. Vassilli, however, never hesitated, and 

 drove unerringly ahead. Every five or six versts he 

 stopped to give his deer a breather, and we stood up to 

 shake the water from our knees and stamp our cold feet 

 back to warmth again. Then, as soon as the reindeer 

 had snatched a mouthful of moss, and Vassilli himself 

 had lighted his long brass-bound pipe, he pulled the 

 teams into position, and away he went once more. As 

 a rule, however, there were severalfalse starts. The deer 

 were harnessed by a trace which was fastened round the 

 neck, and then passed under the near fore-leg, and as 

 long as the sledge was moving all was well ; but as 

 soon as the traces slackened, the hind legs of one or 

 other of the deer usually became entangled in the 

 harness, and there was nothing for it but to stop the 

 sledges and put the matter right. This happened so 

 often that I could not help being secretly both amused 

 and exasperated by the stolid patience of the natives, 

 who were conservative enough to prefer the delay and 

 inconvenience of the frequent halts to release the deer, 

 to devising some more efl"ective system of harness. 



The pace of the deer was a steady seven-mile jog- 

 trot, and they scarcely dropped into a walk even for a 

 piece of ground as rough as a Scottish moor, or a swamp 

 where the water spurted high on either side of the 

 runners. Sometimes we raced down a slope so steep 

 that the sledge slid down upon their haunches, or else 

 rattled and bumped through the bed of a brawling 

 stream. It says much for the stability of the sledges 

 that during that thirty-mile drive only one of them was 



