A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 219 



larger hides are all used in the chooms. The Sotnikoffs 

 had about three hundred reindeer under their charge, of 

 which about half belonged to Prokopchuk. This, how- 

 ever, was not a large number for one family to own, 

 for reindeer are delicate creatures, and in some years 

 are subject to a form of epidemic disease which carries 

 them off in hundreds. The Samoyede reindeer are 

 smaller than those used by the Tungus, and judging by 

 the head of one that I saw from Dickson Island, they 

 are not so heavy as the wild deer. The draught 

 reindeer are gentle and tractable. Seebohm says that 

 on the Petchora, haviers are used in the sledges ; but 

 all those that I saw on the Yenesei carried fine horns, 

 although of course at that season they were still in 

 velvet. In winter a team will go a hundred and fifty 

 versts in a day, but in summer they are in poor con- 

 dition, and cannot travel more than thirty miles. 

 Their scenting powers are wonderful, and when lost in 

 the pourga, they will travel miles to find a choom, 

 guided by the smell of the fire ; but they have none of 

 the homing faculty of dogs, and will run to a stranger's 

 camp as readily as to their own. I once saw Joseph 

 Gerasimvitch flay a newly-killed carcase within thirty 

 yards of where a team were standing. Cattle under 

 similar circumstances would have been driven frantic 

 by the smell of blood, but the reindeer paid no attention 

 whatever. 



In the afternoon the skies cleared, and as I started 

 on a solitary ramble up the valley, I saw the tundra 

 under another guise. Last night we saw its dour side, 

 its greyness, its loneliness, and seemingly under the 



