410 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



of the Ostiaks become more frequent, until at length the only 

 visible signs of man's presence are the movable, conical, birch-bark 

 huts or "tshums" of the Ostiaks, and occasional exceedingly 

 miserable log-huts, the temporary shelters of Eussian fishermen. 



We had determined to explore a tundra or moss-steppe, and 

 had therefore fixed upon the Samoyede peninsula between the Ob 

 and the Kara Sea, all the more because a solution of certain import- 

 ant commercial problems was to be looked for in this portion of 

 the broad treeless zone which encircles the pole — a region, moreover, 

 on which Europeans had scarcely as yet set foot. In Obdorsk and 

 further down-stream we hired for this journey several Kussians, 

 Syryanians, Ostiaks, and Samoyedes, and set out on the 15th of 

 July. 



From the northern heights of the Ural range, which is here 

 represented by lofty mountains, three rivers arise near one another, 

 the Ussa, a tributary of the Petchora, the Bodarata, which enters 

 the Kara Sea, and the Shtchutshya, which flows into the Obi. It 

 was the basin of the last, Shtchutshya, which we determined to 

 visit. But no one could tell us what the country was like, how we 

 should fare, whether we might hope to find reindeer or be forced to 

 go afoot. 



To the mouth of the Shtchutshya river we journeyed in the 

 usual fashion, paying off our oarsmen at each Ostiak settlement 

 and hiring others; when we reached the river our own followers 

 began their work. For eight days we worked slowly up the stream, 

 following its countless serpentine windings further into the mono- 

 tonous, indeed dismally tedious tundra, now approaching the Ural 

 range, and again diverging from it. For eight long days we saw 

 no human beings, but only traces of their presence, — their necessary 

 property packed on sledges for the winter, and their burial-places. 

 Treacherous swamps on both sides of the river prevented us from 

 making inland excursions, and millions of bloodthirsty nlosquitoes 

 tormented us without ceasing. On the seventh day we saw a dog 

 — quite an event for us and our crew; on the eighth day we came 

 upon an inhabited tshum, and in it the only man who could tell us 

 about the country before us. We took him with us as a guide, 



