SCHAROK AGAIN 265 
July 30th—No sooner were we back in camp this 
morning early than the rain came on in torrents, and a 
gale sprang up from the north-east. The rain held on 
till three in the afternoon. Then we went out to the 
lake, and shot an eider duck that was there with her little 
young ones. Wealso picked up a well-fledged little stint. 
On the way home we shot two willow-grouse out of a 
pack of eight cocks. The first pack we have seen. 
The rain came on again in the evening, and my tent 
was flooded as usual. 
We were just cooking supper at 10.30 when up came 
Uano and young Yelisei, bringing me my geese; forty- 
six brent and three bean. 
Then they came and waited by the tent, in the silent 
way that many natives have, waiting for us to open a 
conversation. 
I pointed out to him the boat away on the bank beyond 
the creek. Such a tempest was raging, and the water 
broke over the ice so furiously that at that distance it 
looked as though the boat must be lost. 
‘Propalo’ (spoilt or lost), says Uano. 
This Russian word did duty with the Samoyeds for 
many ideas. A dead dog or deer was ‘propalo,’ a fly- 
blown goose was ‘ propalo’; a mislaid axe, a rotten cord, 
a worn-out coat,—these things were ‘propalo.’ Only a 
dead man was not ‘propalo’; for him they had another 
word, a word of their own, which fact perhaps pointed 
to a belief that he was still going on somewhere. 
