Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Open sea, eastward to the Yenisei
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THROUGH SIBERIA
The engines were stopped ; but the lead showed no less
than 4 fathoms, and we were afloat. It must have been
quite a small sandbank sticking up.
Tuesday, August 26. Half an hour later we anchored
in 8 fathoms of water to wait for daylight, for the
channel was not so easy here. This was off Sopochnaya
Karga, which lies on the west bank of the river. There
were some bonfires burning on land, and some huts where
Russian fishermen live in the summer.
I had not been in bed many minutes before the
Captain came and warned me that we were going to have
a visit from the shore, and there was nothing to be done
but to turn out again. A boat came alongside in the
darkness with seven or eight Russians. One of them
was in Government employ, taking statistics of the
fisheries here.
There were also two political exiles ; one a factory
hand from Kharkov in South Russia, and the other a
Jew from Yekaterinoslav (South Russia), who had
managed a little mill. They had both been exiled after
the revolution, and must have come out to Siberia in
1906. We were invited to visit them ashore, and three
of us went with them in the boat.
Three or four low timber huts stood on the shore,
but it was so dark that we could hardly see them. In
front of the huts the fire was burning, and food was
being cooked. The shore was covered with barrels in
which fish was being salted.
It was mostly "omul" (Coregonus autumnalis, Pall.),
which is caught here in great quantities, and a smaller
fish, "seld" (Coregonus merki, Giint.), which is salted
and treated like herring. These are both fish of the
salmon tribe, but with white flesh like the gwiniad.
A higher price is obtained for a larger kind called
"nyelma" (Stenodus nelma, Pall.), which is more like
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