BREKOFFSKY NATIVES 



403 



The following day, another twenty hours' hard work 

 well-nigh exhausted the ornithology and ethnology of the 

 Mala Brekoffsky ostroff. I was footsore with all this 

 walking in swamps, and positively worried by mosquitoes. 

 I think nothing short of the certainty of coming upon a 

 curlew sandpiper's egg would have tempted me on shore 

 again that day. The natives are very ugly, not copper- 

 brown like the Dolgans, nor yellow like the Ostiaks, but 

 almost as cadaverous-looking as corpses. The extreme 



GOIXHIKA 



irregularity of their features and the dirt of their dress 

 add to their repulsiveness. I got a curious leaden pipe 

 from a Yurak, and the mate gave me an interesting 

 iron pipe, made by a Tungusk, which he had got at 

 Dudinka. 



In the evening we weighed anchor, delighted to leave 

 the mosquitoes, but at midnight we were obliged to cast 

 anchor again and send a boat out to find water to float a 

 ship drawing three feet ! We seemed to be out in the 

 open sea but we were, in fact, in a nest of shoals. At 

 last we found a passage out, in one to one and a quarter 

 fathoms, and got on fairly with a head wind and a slight 

 current as day came on. 



