REACHING THE GOAL 121 
news affected him with no greater sense of credibility 
than had I said, ‘I see the Lord Mayor and the Bank of 
England.’ 
With this I gave the glass to Hyland. And no words 
of mine could convey the intensity of his delight on really 
seeing with his own eyes that this wonder was no 
illusion. For just as we have all known many a fisher 
to mistake a weed or log which he has struck for a pike, 
but have never known the contrary happen, so, for all 
the deceptions of the mirage, when the real thing came 
there could be no mistake. There was nothing for it 
now but to march right on till we came up with the 
choom. 
I had always in my mind that old account of the 
Samoyeds on Yalmal, who fled away from their Nor- 
wegian visitors; which made me suppose that in such an 
isolated spot as Kolguev, where visits of the foreigner 
were all but unknown, we might find with them the 
same experience, which would be a grievous disappoint- 
ment. 
However, I need not have felt this concern, as will 
presently appear. So we kept plodding on, over one of 
the most difficult bits of country with which we had yet 
met. Up the hills and across the gullies we struggled, 
until at last I said we should make some tea. 
For I experienced that which many others in similar 
cases have known before. As long as there was im- 
perative need for pushing on I never seemed to be really 
