Page:The cruise of the Corwin.djvu/88

 counted twenty huts in all. When we drove up, the women and children, and a few old men who had not been tempted to make the journey to the ship, came out to meet us. Captain Hooper went to the house belonging to hisdriver, I to the one belonging to mine; after-wards we joined and visited in company. We were kindly received and shown to good seats on reindeer skins. All of them smiled good-naturedly when we shook hands with them, and tried to repeat our salutations. When we discussed our proposed land journey the women eagerly joined and the children listened attentively. We inquired about the Vega, knowing that she had wintered hereabouts. At first they said they knew nothing about her; that no ship had wintered here two years ago. Then, as if suddenly remembering, one of them said a three-masted ship, a steamer like the Corwin, had stopped one season in the ice at a point a few miles east of the village, and had gone away when it melted in the summer. A woman, who had been listening, then went to a box, and after turning it over, showed us a spoon, fork, and pocket compass of Russian manufacture, which she said the captain had given them. The huts here are like those already described, only they are dry because of the porous