PESANKA TO SCHAROK 179 
first because of the lichens, as it rolled along it changed 
and changed again. For it took colours from the sun- 
light and colours from the clouds. Here it was purple, 
which deepened back and deepened back till suddenly 
a spot lay lit to emerald, as the sun caught a moss-flat or 
the grasses round a tarn. And here it was blue—a blue 
like the haze in England when the hay is in rows in the 
sun. And if you sat and watched a little longer, lakes 
began to form from separate small centres, and widened 
and grew till they formed a chain of waters spanning the 
tundra from hand to hand. Though you knew they 
were but phantoms of the mirage, transformed from little 
drifts and cups of snow, it mattered little—you had your 
picture all the same. 
And away to the west lay the ice barriers, dense upon 
the water and ridged upon the sands. Only now, lifted 
up in the sunlight, it was no more the level ice-pack, 
but noble cliffs of quivering whiteness as round some 
enchanted isle. 
There was more than this, much more. But these are 
the broader touches in the scene. 
This was Sunday, and that perhaps was why the 
women all knelt in a row by a stream and washed their 
hair. Then they combed it with their fingers and tied it 
up. It is straight and black, and it reaches nearly to the 
waist. Also, because it was Sunday we cooked one of our 
four tins of preserved beef, and stewed some apple chips. 
I don’t mean to imply that the Samoyed food is not 
