Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XXI. Up the Yenisei
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together in matrimony, and burying those that have perished.
Here, moreover, is a doctor, a church, and a prison.
“The chief of police is a jolly fellow, who likes to joke
with arriving travellers. When they ask him where to get
lodging, he replies curtly: ‘In the prison!’ If the reply
is taken seriously, and the visitor looks astonished at him,
he replies, laughing: ‘I was only joking. There is no
hotel in the city, and travellers lodge in the prison, which
is seldom used for other purposes. I have for six years
been chief of police here, and there has been only one
case, when a famishing native ate up his sister—you may
have read about it in the newspapers?—and I sent him
alive to the capital of the province.’
“The central figure of life in the city, for the sake of
whom indeed the very city itself with all its ruling
authorities exists, is the Ostiak. But the people of the city have
of late become dissatisfied with the Ostiak.
“‘What times we now live in, Barin!’ complains old
Madame Kopylicha, who has a small store of colonial
goods in the city, and secretly trades in intoxicating liquors.
‘Why, it is no longer possible to live on the Ostiak—
such a cunning animal the savage has become, you can’t
conceive! For instance, there comes an Ostiak and says
he, “Give me a pound of tea, little mother, and I will give
thee this white fox-skin.” Well, I weigh out three-quarters
of a pound of tea to him, and say, “Here thou hast
a pound;” and he weighs it in his hand and says: “No,
little mother, this is not a pound.” And—would you
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