282 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 
fill it in for yourselves. For scene you have a raised 
plateau of the tundra, a line of red-and-blue cotton gipsy 
tents, a birch-bark covered choom, a troop of quarrelling 
dogs, a confusion of boats, sleighs, tubs, and nameless 
paraphernalia, a herd of deer scattered round over the 
waste, and a team or two of five fastened up. Put in the 
middle a circle of men, women, girls and boys, standing 
or squatting round the dead body of a fresh-killed 
smoking deer, cutting, tearing and feeding, and then you 
have all. 
They were astonished beyond measure that I did 
not join them. Hyland ate some and pronounced it 
excellent, and I really don’t know why it should not be 
so; but I prefer my food cooked. The Samoyeds were 
especially fond of the windpipe, the sinews, the lungs, the 
outside of the bones, and the velvety vascular part of 
the horns. All these they dipped in the blood before 
eating. 
‘Good, very good,’ says old Ustynia, offering me a 
most tempting bit of lights, fresh from the blood. I made 
a face which expressed disgust, but they only thought 
it meant that I wasn’t hungry. ‘Oh, not hungry,’! they 
said; and ‘Oh, not hungry,’ went the round of the ring, 
in a series of intermittent ejaculations between the 
mouthfuls). They were hungry, it seemed, for they 
gorged away. If any one in this country could have 
eaten so much at a go he would have fallen asleep. But 
1 Yangho ormingawum. 
