TO THE HOLY HILLS 337 
‘Nonsense,’ I said; ‘of course they have bolvans. 
Every Samoyed has bolvans.’ 
‘My son’s bolvan buried! Yes, yes, buried. No 
good,’ persists the old man. 
Oh, very well, I told them, then all engagements were 
off. 
I need not continue. Those who know anything of 
the ways of savages or native people can fill in the 
details for themselves. It was along palaver. Then I 
said good-day and turned to my writing. I suppose I 
wrote on for half-an-hour in a dead silence, then they 
began to mutter among themselves, and the old man left. 
At last it seemed they had come to some agreement. 
The youngest son—I saw it out of the corner of my eye 
—fumbled about in his clothes and produced a little 
coloured doll, which he brought to me, and said, ‘I good 
Christian. My bolvan, your bolvan. Yes, yes.’ I 
looked at it. There was a shiver of protest when I 
raised the hood from the face. It was apparently quite 
new, but he said he had made it twenty years ago. 
‘No,’ I said, ‘too clean; I want dirty bolvan.’ 
Well, after an incredible time and much jabbering, the 
eldest son brought me a second bolvan. There was no 
doubt about its dirt or its antiquity. The face, although 
it had always been covered up, was so worn that the 
features were all but lost. The wood, originally light 
coloured, was now quite black. He told me that his 
father gave him this bolvan thirty years before; that 
Y 
