94 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AXD SPORT. 



tribe. They thought we had on board the Russian 

 officer who pays them an annual visit, and were 

 anxious to pay their respects to him without delay. 

 One old man was very much struck with the huge 

 Newfoundland dog belonging to the ship ; a beast so 

 fat and unwieldy that he had a difficulty in walking, 

 especially at this time, as he had just before swallowed 

 two loom -skins feathers, beak, and all. The old 

 man wished to buy the dog, and pulled out a heap of 

 silver as a first bid, adding to it gradually till he had 

 spread out all his money, which amounted to about 

 an English pound, and finally throwing a couple of 

 his own dogs in ; nor would he desist till with great 

 difficulty he was made to understand that the dog 

 did not belong to any individual but to the ship, and 

 that he might just as well try to buy the mainmast. 



In concluding this notice of the sporting aspects 

 of a visit to Nova Zemla, undertaken with far differ- 

 ent objects, I can only hope that this country, much 

 of whose coast, and nearly the whole of whose in- 

 terior, is still unexplored, may be more often visited 

 by our countrymen ; for the better it is known the 

 greater will be its value as a base for an arctic expedi- 

 tion by way of Franz-Josef Land, which, when under- 

 taken, promises to yield a success which has not as 

 yet rewarded the efforts to attain a very high latitude 

 by other routes. By familiarity with this land and 

 its surrounding seas, we should gain a knowledge of 

 the movements of the ice from year to year, which 



