A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 215 



were among the most easily dispensable of the innumer- 

 able superfluous chattels with which our civilisation is 

 cumbered. But in the choom the saucer is as important 

 as the cup, for the tea is poured out into it before it is 

 drunk. Indeed, we found that the natives actually 

 despised our saucerless mugs, and regarded ours as an ill- 

 appointed tea-table. When the kettle boiled, the meal 

 began. There were three courses — tea and soushki, 

 reindeer meat, and fish. The men were too hungry to 

 talk much, and what they did say related chiefly to the 

 loss of the deer. As the price of a good draught rein- 

 deer may be anything from fifteen to fifty roubles, they 

 were much troubled at the accident. After supper the 

 beds were brought out, and each of the brothers, taking 

 off his outer garments, crept into a warm reindeer-hide 

 sleeping-bag. I noticed that although their hands and 

 faces were so dark, the skin of these Dolgans' arms and 

 chests was as white as the skin of a European. The 

 Dolgans, however, are a cleanly race : I have seen 

 Yuraks and Samoyedes who were so dirty that it seemed 

 as if their skin must long ago have renounced its proper 

 function. 



All through the night the wind and rain yelled 

 over the tundra. A choom is a marvellously weather- 

 proof dwelling. Like all things which have evolved 

 slowly from the practical experiments of hundreds of 

 generations, it is the simplest and most effective adapta- 

 tion of means to ends ; but, at the same time, even a 

 choom has its limitations, and long before morning 

 the pitiless rain had beaten an entrance and was 

 dripping dismally on to the hearth. It was too cold 



