14 Arctic and Antarctic Exploration [part i 
are made of coarse cloth supported by branch poles of 
birch and pine. A fire is lighted in the centre, and there 
is an opening at the top by which the smoke escapes. 
The Lapps are always wandering for food for their 
reindeer — moss and birch leaves, and in winter lichen. 
One family requires a herd of at least 200 animals. The 
Lapps drive their reindeer in sledges, make cheese from 
their milk, eat the venison, and make most of their 
clothing of the skins. These people can march great 
distances with a short quick step and carry very heavy 
loads. They live to a considerable age. Their language is 
Mongolian, and their religion one of magic and witchcraft, 
which inspired some awe in the minds of the Norsemen 
who enforced tribute from them. 
Eastward from the White Sea the nature of the country 
changes, and we enter upon the tundras, a Russian name 
for the bare tracts between the forests to the south, and 
the shores of the Polar Ocean. The Petchora is the 
greatest river of the western tundra, flowing northwards 
along the western spurs of the Ural Mountains towards 
the gulf of Mezen, where the delta is 120 miles long, 
the channels winding in a network round islets and banks 
which shift their positions at every thaw. Fifty miles off 
the coast lies the island of Kolguev, 50 miles long by 40, 
entirely composed of sand and small stones, all its deposits 
being referable to oceanic forces ; it is, indeed, essentially 
a water and ice-formed island. 
The region from the White Sea to the Ural Mountains 
is inhabited by a race called Samoyeds, brachycephalic 
Mongols with a Finnish admixture. Of short stature, 
averaging a fraction over 5 feet, they have the short 
broad Mongolian face, long oblique eyes, high cheek-bones 
and flat noses. Like the Lapps they are dependent for 
locomotion, clothes, and food on their herds of reindeer, 
and they also have dogs for rounding up the deer. Their 
boots, loose tunics, and winter cloaks are of deer-skin, 
and the Samoyed hut (choon) is made of birch poles 
covered with deer-skin for winter, and with strips of 
birch-bark sewn with sinews in summer. Like the Lapps 
too, and for the same reason — to drive off mosquitos — 
they light their fires inside the choon. The Samoyed sledge, 
drawn by three to five reindeer abreast, consists of two 
