CHAPTER II 
OUR RETURN 
IT was a most unpleasant morning; a biting north wind 
blew, snow was falling fast, and soon covered the 
ground; but as it made the travelling much better, we 
did not complain. 
We took this time a more northerly route, crossing 
the upper waters of the Konkina and Veliki rivers. 
So well did we travel that by 8 a.m. we had done 
nearly thirty versts, and then we pitched the tent. 
We had a most exciting and delightful drive. This 
side of the mountains did not seem to me to be so much 
cut up with gullies as the other. But it is hard to say ; 
for the Samoyeds, who knew all the passes, often made 
so that we should take at any easy slope hills which 
would have been very fierce and formidable had we been 
hurrying on foot. 
And very often we were able to travel for long 
distances along the side of the snow gullies when they 
were not very steep. But this was rather alarming to a 
beginner; for then the men would put the reindeer 
to a gallop, and the snow here lying not flat, but at an 
angle, the second sleighs, those on which Hyland and 
155 
