THE MAINLAND 373 
You will have had enough of us and our adventures 
by this time, if indeed your patience has carried you so 
far. We travelled from Okshin up the river to Ust 
Tsilma, from there overland to Archangel, from there to 
Vologda by sleigh, thence to Moscow, whence I sent 
Hyland home by Riga, going myself to St. Petersburg, 
where the Tsar's body was lying in state, and so to 
England. 
I arrived at Queenborough on November roth. 
To tell you the details of this journey would take a 
separate book by itself, for it opens a new chapter on 
mainland Samoyeds and on Russian peasant home- 
life. 
If we had chosen to wait for the winter we should 
have had no further difficulty in crossing the frozen 
rivers and the snowy tundra than to sit on a sleigh, as 
others have done before. But, if Hyland was to be home 
for his Christmas customers (a serious consideration in 
his little trade), it was very necessary to start at once. 
And so it was that we fell on a time when not a reason- 
able soul ever took that journey, because the rivers were 
half-frozen and very dangerous, and the swamps im- 
passable, as was supposed. So that even the Govern- 
ment service stops during this season of ‘ Rasputa,’ and 
all contracts are off for a month, and it is a time of 
holiday, or, as the Russians say, of ‘ Stroke.’ 
But I have written enough for this time. If this book 
should win as much interest as may serve to warrant it, 
