A SUMMER ON THE YENESEl 217 



came to the north with their reindeer, and during the 

 short arctic summer, they wandered over the tundra 

 from one pasturage to another. When autumn came, 

 however, they packed up their goods on the sledges, and 

 travelled southwards for four or five hundred miles to 

 the border of the great Siberian forests. Here they 

 had another choom. Were they not afraid to leave it 

 unprotected all through the summer, lest someone 

 should steal it, we asked ? They shouted with laughter 

 at our simplicity. " Who would touch it ? " they asked, 

 scornful of the very idea, for they knew the scrupulous 

 honesty of their own race. 



No doubt this migration was well enough for the 

 three young men ; but it seemed little short of marvel- 

 lous that the little, fragile old woman, who could 

 scarcely hobble fifty yards from the choom door, should 

 travel thus on an open sledge through the first snows 

 of a Siberian winter. Maria, however, seemed to 

 regard the journey with as much equanimity as a 

 London housewife regards the annual holiday trip to 

 Margate. Vassilli, the eldest of the brothers, was a 

 middle-sized man with a little hair on his face. His 

 cast of countenance was the least amiable of the three ; 

 and we heard later that, although of marriageable age, 

 he remained a bachelor willy-nilly because all the girls 

 of his people were afraid of his temper ! Nicolai, on 

 the other hand, had a round face with such a joyous, 

 comical expression that it was not possible to look at 

 him without smiling in sympathy. Maxim, the 

 Benjamin of the family, was a small edition of Nicolai. 

 All three were as merry as schoolboys, and had the 



