A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 209 



overturned, and that was mine. My team, following 

 their leaders too closely, cut a corner as we slid into the 

 bed of a torrent. The right-hand runner caught a pro- 

 truding stone, and the sledge turned completely over, 

 tumbling me and my gun and cooking-pot into the 

 water. At this mishap the Dolgan brothers laughed 

 like schoolboys as they picked up the overturned sledge 

 and released the struggling deer from the traces. 



But no matter how thick the mist, nor how winding 

 our way, Vassilli never hesitated, but chose his path as 

 confidently as a Londoner who walks from the Marble 

 Arch to Piccadilly. As an example of his absolute 

 knowledge of the country : we were crossing a wide 

 sphagnum swamp, when he presently turned aside to 

 a little knoll, which, to the untutored eye, was exactly 

 like hundreds of others on the desolate plain. Here he 

 jumped ofi" the sledge and picked up a small object. It 

 was a tobacco-pouch which had been forgotten during a 

 halt on the previous journey, and for which he had now 

 returned. That a native should have a general sense of 

 direction highly developed is not so remarkable, for it 

 is a faculty which in a greater or less degree is shared 

 even by civilised man ; but that he can remember one 

 spot amid hundreds, all so similar, and identify it again, 

 is sufficiently wonderful. Several times we noticed this 

 instinct for locality, if one may call it so. A party of 

 Samoyedes once came to buy from Prokopchuk. They 

 had travelled from what the Golchikans call " the 

 other tundra," i.e. from the country which lies hundreds 

 of versts to the eastward, in the basin of the river 

 Lena. Their leader, an elderly man who could speak 



