3000 MILES BY SLEDGE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XL, Issue 11407, 26 October 1915, Page 2

3000 MILES BY SLEDGE.

i mfjfru - EXPLORERS’ ADVENTURES IN SIBERIAN WILDS. REINDEER TRANSPORT. FIRST WHITE WOMAN SEEN BY NATIVES. After 'travelling in Siberia for ovor a year, Miss M. A. Czaplicka, a young Polish lady, has arrived back in, England with some valuable specimens relatiiig to the social and religious life of the natives for the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford. Miss Czaplicka, who is slim of figure, with fair hair and blue eyes, scarcely suggests the explorer. She undertook the expedition at the suggestion of the university authorities, and when she left this couutry in tho spring of Inst year she was accompanied by two London ladies, Miss Curtis and Miss Haviland—an artist and an ornithologist respectively—and Mr Hall, of the Philadelphia University. They travelled by the TransSiberian Railway to Krasnozarks, on the Yenisei River, and proceeded by fishing vessel to the mouth, establising a camp upon the eastern bank, well within' the Arctic Circle, They relied upon their own efforts to provide themselves with “fish, flesh, and fowl.” Miss Haviland proving an excellent gun-shot. Before the winter set in the two London ladies returned, and Miss Czaplicka and Mr Hall, continued their studies, and with a transport of fifteen sledges drawn by reindeer and driven by natives they covered snore than 3000 versts in a tour during which they were able to study intimately the life and habits of the nomads who inhabit that bleak and inhospitable region, ‘T was the. first white woman whom the natives up there had'ever seen,” said Miss Czaplicka on Tuesday to a representative of Lloyd’s News, and, whereas they always refer to their own womenfolk in terms which reveal relationship—tho mother of So and-so, or the daughter of So-and-so—of me they sp6ke as ‘the Woman,’ and frequently added their opinion that I was a fool when they understood from my Tungus woman companion what was my object in travelling there.

WONDER OP PAIR HAIR. “I was, of course, wrapped up closely in furs, and they would take off my hood to look at my hair. Theirs is uniformly dark—turning to grey in old age—and it was a source of wonder to them that my face should be so young while my hair was to them so ‘old.’ They mistook the fairness for a form of greyness. “Wherever possible we made it a practice to sleep in ' the tents of the natives m our sleeping bags. The natives are very scattered, and you may travel -for days without encountering a habitation, but it is a rale that travellers are permitted to enter and sleep for the night because of the terrible cold. “There were times when we slept out in the open within the circle of the sledges, the reindeer and an outer embankment of snow, and even could hear the howling of the wolves. But they never attacked us, as there was plenty of food tor them in the huge herds of reindeer to bo found in this region. Miss Czaplicka deprecates the Idea that.traveling by reindeer sledge is conducive to comfort. “Not a day,” she said, with a smile at the recollection of the expedition’s jolting jirogress, “but bad its adventure. The reindeer team is first gathered from the herd with a Jassoo, and while the animals are very restive in this process, they become quiet when harnessed op. . “They are driven by means ot a single thong in the hands of tho driver, and this needs an expert, as the direction is given ro the team by- jerks. Travelling over the snowdrifts is uneventful, but passing over the spaces—tops of mountains. for instance—where the sun has thawed through,, the bumping is almost intolerable, and. I was bruised all over. Spills occurred, too, in which you and the driver, the deer and the sledge, rolled for yards down a slope in a mass, and o»ly the thickness of your furs saved you from serious accident.” Miss Czaplicka, who is a native of Warsaw, was a student at Somerville College, Oxford, being the first Polish student to be received at Oxford on the strength of English scholarship. She intends returning to Siberia three years hence.