middendor!ff's adventures in taimurland. 



221 



Dudino. Here his companions were attacked by measles ; but as it was high 

 time to reach the Chatanga before the melting of the snow, the patients were 

 carefully packed up in boxes lined with skins, and the whole party — whose num- 

 bers, meanwhile, had been increased by the addition of a topographer and of 

 three Cossacks — emerged from the region of forests on April 13, having to face 

 a cold of —36°, and a storm that almost overturned their sledges. With 

 Tunguse guides they traversed the tundra in a north-easterly direction as far as 

 the Pasina, and thence passing on from one Samoiede horde to another, at length 

 reached Koronnoie Filippowskoi (71° 5' lat.) on the Boganida,an affluent of the 

 Cheta, which is itself a tributary of the Chatanga. Here a halt was made, 

 partly because all the party except Middendorff were by this time attacked with 

 the reigning epidemic, and partly to wait for the Samoiedes, whom they intend- 

 ed to join on their summer migration to the north. During this interval Mid- 

 dendorff made an excursion to the Chatanga, for the purpose of gathering in- 

 formation about the voyage down that river, and to make the necessary prepara- 

 tions. In the village of Chatangsk, however, he found nearly all the inhabitants 

 suffering from the measles ; and as no assistance was to be expected from them, 

 he resolved to alter his route, and to proceed as soon as possible to the River 

 Taimur, which would in all probability afford him the best means for penetrat- 

 ing to the extreme confines of continental Asia. As this most northerly river 

 of the Old World lies far beyond the boundaries of arboreal growth, a boat-frame 

 of twelve feet on the keel had to be made at Koronnoie before setting out. 

 Brandt was left behind with part of the company, to make a prolonged series 

 of meteorological observations, and to gather as complete a collection as possible 

 of the animals and plants of the country, while Middendorff started on his ad- 

 venturous tour (May 19) with sixty-eight reindeer, under the guidance of a few 

 Samoiedes on their progress to the north, and accompanied only by the topog- 

 rapher, an interpreter, and two Cossacks. The difficulties of this journey, since 

 a boat-frame, fuel, provisions, physical instruments, apparatuses for the preser- 

 vation of objects of natural history, forming altogether a load for many sledges, 

 had to be transported along with the travellers, would have been great at all 

 times, but were now considerably increased by the epidemic having also seized 

 the tribe of Samoiedes which Middendorff expected to find near the small River 

 Nowaia, and which was to guide him farther on to the Taimur. At length, 

 after a search of three days, he found the remnant of the horde, which had been 

 decimated and reduced to a deplorable condition by the epidemic. In vain he 

 sought for the well-known faces of the chief personages of the horde, with whom 

 he had negotiated on the Boganida — " they were all dead." Of thirty-five per- 

 sons, one only was completely healthy ; a second could hardly crawl about ; but 

 the others lay prostrate in their tents, coughing and groaning under their skin 

 coverings. Leaving seven corpses on the road, they had advanced by slow jour- 

 neys to join Middendorff, until they broke down, so that instead of receiving 

 aid at their hands, he was noAV obliged to help them in their distress — an assist- 

 ance which they amply repaid, as we shall see in the sequel. 



Unfortunately the illness had prevented the Samoiede women from sewing- 

 together, as they had promised, the skins that were necessary to complete the 



