A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 287 



on Dickson Island by Mr. Lied. We had a steak for 

 supper one night. It tasted like good beef, but I am 

 told that the hams only are fit to eat, for the flesh of 

 the rest of the body is interlarded with blubber. 



During the fortnight that we lay at Nosonovsky, 

 the party in the saloon, besides our two selves, con- 

 sisted of Mr. Lied, the captain, the ice-pilot, a Russian 

 gentleman — a geologist from Petersburg — and a Swedish 

 pastor, Herr Enander, who was a botanist and a special 

 student of the family Salix. He must have found 

 plenty of opportunity to study willows at Breokoffsky, 

 for the islands produced nothing else. Besides these, 

 Mr. Christensen, who superintended the discharging of 

 the cargo, used to come in to meals, and sometimes 

 Captain Gundersen of the Skule paid a visit. Captain 

 Johansen, the ice-pilot, was a fine old man who had 

 sailed in the arctic regions since boyhood. In 1878 he 

 had accompanied Nordenskiold on the famous voyage of 

 the Vega through the North-East Passage, and was the 

 first captain to take a steamer up the river Lena. His 

 brother was that Captain Johansen who discovered and 

 named Lonely Island, to the north of the Taimyr 

 Peninsula ; and he himself at one time had owned 

 the sloop Gjoa, until he sold her to the explorer 

 Amundsen, who made his famous voyage through the 

 North -West Passage in her. 



Miss Curtis and I were the only two people on 

 board who were idle, and we used to feel quite ashamed 

 of our inability to haul baulks of timber about the deck 

 or handle bales of tow, when we watched the furious 

 activity of everybody else. For trade with the Yenesei 



