Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XVII. Across the Tundra to the Anabar
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and Yenisei had any warning of the possible arrival of the
balloon or its occupants. These natives on the Anabar
had during the summer roamed hither and thither on the
coast of the Arctic Ocean seeking mammoth-tusks and
tending their herds of reindeer, but they had come across
no traces of the expedition.
In former times the Anabar people were said to have
been well off, having had large herds of reindeer and
plenty of nets for catching fish. Now they have been
reduced to poverty by the Yakut agents of the Russian
merchants, who have made them only too well acquainted
with vodka. They soon become indebted to these
unscrupulous people, and in order to work off these debts
are obliged to spend almost the whole of their time in
fox-trapping and collecting mammoth-tusks, and are thus
unable to provide for their real wants. Now only a few
families have a small herd of 200 reindeer or so, the rest
living on fish or the meat of wild reindeer. These poor
people, innocent as children, understood neither the value
of money nor of their skins and furs, and accepted whatever
the agents of the merchant were pleased to give them as
payment.
We found a kind of croup and various other epidemics
raging among them, which had carried off several individuals
in a neighbouring camp. These distant regions are regularly
visited by agents of merchants, and every other year or so
by a priest, who sometimes combines the sale of vodka
with his profession, but they never receive any medical
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