as many squirrel skins as we can, both
for clothes, and to exchange for commoner skins and high boots."

It was three weeks after they had left Kirensk before they struck the
Angara, near Karanchinskoe. They had traversed a distance, as the crow
flies, of some eight hundred miles since leaving Kara, but by the route
they had travelled it was at least half as far again, and they had been
little over ten weeks on the journey. Luka had assured Godfrey that they
would have no difficulty in obtaining a boat.

"Everywhere there are fishing people on the rivers," he said. "There are
Tunguses--they are all over Siberia. There are the Ostjaks on all the
rivers. There are my own people, but they are more to the south, near
Minusinsk, and from there to Kasan, and seldom come far north. In summer
everyone fishes or hunts. I could make you a boat with two or three
skins of bullocks or horses or elk, it only needs these and a framework
of wood; but we can buy one for three or four roubles a good one. We
want one strong and large and light, for the river is terribly swift.
There are places where it runs nearly as fast as a horse can gallop."

"Certainly we will get a good-sized one, Luka. If the river runs so
swiftly we shall have no paddling to do, and therefore it will not
matter at all about her being fast; besides, we shall want to carry a
good load. We will not land oftener than we can help, and can sleep on
board, and it will be much more comfortable to have a boat that one can
move about in without being afraid of capsizing her. Whatever it costs,
let us get a good boat."

"We will get one," Luka said confidently. "We shall find Ostjaks' huts
all along the banks, and at any of these, if they have not a boat that
will suit us, they will make us one in two or three days."

Avoiding the town, and passing through the villages at night, they kept
along down the river bank for four days. The river was as wide as the
Thames at Greenwich, with a very rapid current. They saw in some of the
quiet reaches fishing-boats at work, some with nets, others with lines,
and at night saw them spearing salmon and sturgeon by torch-light.
Across the river they made out several of the yourts or summer tents of
the Ostjaks, but it was not until the fourth day that they came upon a
group of seven or eight of these tents on the river bank. The men were
all away fishing, but the women came out to look at the strangers. As
Luka spoke their dialect he