CHAPTER XL 



Swerifskye — Its reputation — We go there — Mnogie vino — A stroll on the 

 tundra — A night in the open air — Walk to Och Marino — Mirage — 

 A search-party — Birds and men at Och Marino. 



The other day I took my old school atlas from the 

 shelf, and turned up the map of Asia with greater 

 interest than it received in the days when we learned 

 in our geography primer that, " Western Siberia, an 

 immense region where a few dwarf Samoyedes 

 dwell, and where miserable convicts are cruelly made 

 to work in quicksilver mines, is watered by the Ob, 

 Yenesei, and Lena Rivers, whose mouths are mostly 

 frozen.'' Four towns were marked upon the Yenesei 

 — Krasnoyarsk, Yenesiesk, and Turukhansk of course, 

 and then, right up at the top, in type covering 

 a space which actually represented about three 

 hundred miles, and challenged attention with the 

 name of the river itself, was Swerifskye. Nobody 

 knows what made the worthy cartographer introduce 

 Swerifskye into his map. In the year of grace 1914 

 the place consisted of two balagans and three native 

 chooms built upon a shingle beach. Even Golchika 

 was a gay and populous place compared with it. 



Swerifskye was on the other side of the Yenesei, and 

 on a clear day you could see the stacks of firewood, 



