The Izhma River flows through the territory of the Komi Republic. It is a left tributary of the Pechora.

River location

The Izhma River is located almost entirely on the territory of one republic of the Russian Federation. Its overall length is quite impressive. It is 531 km. At the same time, the total area of ​​the basin of this river is slightly more than 30 thousand m 2.

The Izhma River in Komi takes its beginning on the southern side of the Timan Ridge. From here it starts and heads northwest. In the upper reaches of the river significantly changes its appearance. Its banks are covered with massive forest plantations. In the lower reaches, the river flows through swamps and meadows.

Izhma rapids

Its channel is very winding, which attracts many tourists. For example, lovers of kayaking. After all, in the middle and upper reaches there are often rapids and rocky rifts that are difficult to pass.

The largest of them on the Izhma River is located near the city of Sosnogorsk. Slightly downstream of the village. This threshold is called Selet-Kosyet, which in literal translation from the language of local peoples means "Heart".

For a long distance this river is navigable. Ships and ships can sail from the mouth of the Ukhta River. It is from here that navigation begins on the Izhma River in the Komi Republic.

In the lower reaches of the Izhma, it expands significantly. At the same time, it becomes difficult for the passage of ships. A large number of backwaters and channels appear. At the same time, the flow of the river is greatly weakened. And in addition, there are large islands that you constantly have to go around.

The Izhma flows into the Pechora near a small village called Ust-Izhma. The river has many tributaries. On the right side, the largest are Sebys and Ayuva. And on the left side these rivers are called Ukhta, Sedyu and Kedva.

The place at the mouth of this river is noteworthy. Historians and archaeologists have discovered an ancient settlement, which is known as Poganiy Nos. On it, scientists found artifacts that date back to the 11th-13th centuries. Among them is an iron ax with a wide blade, spearheads and arrowheads, an armchair equipped with a bronze handle. Presumably, all these items belonged to Novgorod residents, who considered themselves to be state people. They were directly involved in collecting tribute.

Settlements near Izhma

From this article, you learned where the Izhma River is located. It is worth noting that along its banks there are a large number of different settlements.

For example, in the upper reaches the river flows through a fairly large village called Verkhneizhemsky. It belongs to the municipal district of Sosnogorsk. There are about 10 streets in the village. According to the latest census, it has almost 900 inhabitants.

In the middle course of the river is the town of Sosnogorsk itself. At this point, the Ukhta River flows into Izhma. It is noteworthy that until 1957 this city was called Izhma. This settlement is located almost 350 km from the center of the region - Syktyvkar. About 26 thousand people live in it. Traces of primitive communities dating back to the Stone Age were discovered by scientists at the site of Sosnogorsk. The modern history of the city dates back to the period of Soviet industrialization in 1930-1940.

Ukhta is located 8 km up the river. This is the second largest settlement in the Komi Republic. Its population is almost 100 thousand people. Ukhta received city status in 1943. After the end of the Great Patriotic War, processing and other industries actively developed here, building materials were produced. Main pipelines were built to supply oil and gas to other regions.

Today it is a large industrial city with a well-developed resource base. The economy is famous for its developed transport and industrial infrastructure.

There are many skilled workers here. Several design and research institutes operate in the city.

At the mouth of the Izhma stands the village of Akim. It originated in the middle of the 19th century. The name was given in honor of the founder, whose name was Yakim. Now the village is in decline. According to the last census, only 21 people live in it.

Pechora basin

According to the water register, Izhma belongs to the Dvino-Pechersk basin district.

The water management sections of the river are divided as follows: this is the Pechora itself from the confluence of the Usa to the Ust-Tsilma, and then the Pechora below the confluence of the Usa River.

Izhma directly belongs to the Pechora river basin.

Object hydrology

Basically, the river is fed by melting snow. Usually the reservoir freezes by mid-November. Ice breaks up on the river in spring. This happens after the May holidays.

The maximum water flow is about 1,300 meters per second. Such indicators are formed in May. Minimum indicators in February-March. No more than 80 cubic meters per second. In April, it rises sharply to almost 250. This does not allow the river to overflow its banks and dry up. Thanks to this, its flora and fauna are preserved.

Izhma (Komi Izva) is a village in the Komi Republic. The administrative center of the Izhma region.

Attractions

In Izhma and neighboring villages, a large number of old wooden huts of the 19th - early 20th centuries and several churches of the same time have been preserved.

Geographical position

It is located in the central part of the republic, 400 km northeast of Syktyvkar, 150 km north of Ukhta, on the banks of the Izhma River.

Story

From 1922 to 1929 Izhma was the administrative center of the Izhmo-Pechora district. Prior to that, it was part of the Pechora district.

Izhma is a large village on the Izhma River, located in the north of the Komi Republic. The village was founded in 1567. Most of the population of Izhma and the surrounding villages are ethnic Komi (a special ethnographic group is the Izhma Komi). Until the middle of the XX century. reindeer breeding was the main branch of the economy in the Izhma region. Now it no longer plays the same role as before, but still remains. Until now, the rich folklore traditions of the Komi people have been preserved in Izhma.

Notable natives

Born in the village:

• Semyashkin Gavriil Prokopievich (1888-1937) - Hero of Labor.
• Anufriev Alexander Alexandrovich (1926-1966) - bronze medalist of the 1952 Olympic Games

Population

• 1959 - 2,495 people
• 1970 - 3,090 people
• 1979 - 3,253 people
• 1989 - 3,595 people
• 2002 - 3,786 people
• 2010 - 3,753 people

5. VILLAGE IZHMA

General view of the village and the nature of the Zyryans, according to personal observations. - Life Zyryan, home and public. - Izhma river. - The first descendants and ancestors. - Antique papers. - Gardening. - Zyryan national fishery. - Borscheeds. - Belkovanie.

You will go to Izhma - you will see there the temples of God made of stone and in all splendor they will treat you like a merchant; will tell you that they believe in God, do not listen: they lie! The tundra has been a sin on their conscience for a long time. Look, do not succumb to these zyryans: rogue people! ..

A similar warning and, perhaps, an instruction given to me a week ago by my kind storyteller in Pustozersk, came to my mind precisely at the time when the whole Izhma volost, the extreme (along the Pechora) in the Arkhangelsk province, opened up before me, with all its obvious petty details. I did not want to believe these warnings at the first steps and at first glance, especially since reality assured me otherwise. It is true, however, that the huge stone churches with a loud ringing, with loud, consonant singing on two kliros, with the sonorous voices of deacons, with iconostases adorned from top to bottom with images in silver, gilded vestments, generously doused with rich light, and with clergy in eye vestments. So everywhere, in all the villages of the Izhma volost: in Sizyab, Mokhcha, in Izhma itself, and as nowhere else in the Arkhangelsk province, excluding only the provincial city itself, the ancient Kholmogor and three or four still not abolished monasteries (not counting here the unusually rich Solovetsky) . The Izhma churches were packed to the brim with people praying not with the old cross. One could hear in these crowds the suffocating senile cough, and the restless weeping and squealing of infants, and sometimes the sonorous, immodest cries of adolescents. We saw both those and others, and third: men on the right side, women on the left, without exception, according to the old Russian custom. Meanwhile, in more than half of the Arkhangelsk villages and even cities, the clergy correct services in empty, cold, wind-blown churches, almost on rye prosphora, in half-decayed robes, by the light of four or five yellow wax candles throughout the church, with the deacon's broken voice, sounding even sadder in such a sad environment. Not so, far from so in the rich churches of the Izhma volost, where the houses of the clergy are the best houses in the whole village, where the churches are definitely incomparably richer than in Arkhangelsk itself. Where is the justice in the words of an honestly obsolete century, brought up in artless, patriarchal simplicity and respected by all the neighbors of my distant friend:

They will tell you that they believe in God, do not listen - they lie!

The first moments of acquaintance with Izhma decisively do not say this, on the contrary, by the visual situation they prove the completely opposite. Meanwhile, the old man's second testimony turns out to be true. The owner of the allotment apartment greets me cordially, does not allow me to drink my tea and, not jokingly, grumbles at this proposal of mine and almost scolds me. He drags, fussing like a madman, from below several plates: with bagels, with raisins, with gingerbread, with meleda pine nuts, from where he takes a bottle of sherry, a decanter of vodka, and all this asks to be consumed together, to pile in a heap. He pours out cheap, thick, like beer, tea, asks to put sugar in a glass, and as soon as possible more - not to regret; promises to bring cream, and brings such thick ones, which are rarely known anywhere in the province, except for Kholmogory; he swears that he will search the whole parish tomorrow to get a lemon; promises this, another, everything... Is it really necessary to give faith to the words of my empty-zero friend even after that? No, something is far from right!

The next day exclusively attempts to break all remaining doubts, if it does not break them completely: in the morning, gray-haired, respectable old people come one after another to ask for a taste of their bread and salt and then meet them on the porch, and fuss affably, and, apparently, frankly. Not knowing what to do with the guest, they treat meleda, a handful of which, without dexterity and habit, cannot be snapped in half an hour. Not knowing what to honor, they put on the table sturgeon - a curiosity of their region, exported from far Siberia, from the Ob, boiled reindeer tongues, reindeer lips, surprisingly tasty, rare dishes, and kvass, like a delicacy, replacing unknown beer here. They don’t even treat salmon, like cheap fish, and, justifying themselves, they interpret:

Uncooked, it is not healthy, fresh soon becomes boring.

For this reason, everywhere in the Pechora for fish soup (in their language, chips) are cut into small pieces and boiled. Then they dump the pieces on the tray, salt and cool. A few handfuls of flour are added to the ear and boiled again.

On purpose, according to your high nobility, the deer was chopped in the evening, take it: it will be great for us! - the Zyryans say at the same time with a lively Russian dialect, although with an incorrect pronunciation of words and with incorrect stresses on them, making the speech of the Izhma residents similar to the gypsy dialect of distant Russia. The Zyryan language itself, which, however, is more pleasant in the mouths of women than men, beats the ear with a wealth of unpleasantly guttural and hissing sounds. Women do not sit at the table with us, they bring only dishes with low bows and now they leave without saying a single word. My interlocutors do not let my native language into exclusive use, when asked questions, addressing the companions in the Zyryan language. Let them somehow look at each other suspiciously and beg each other for answers to these requests, addressed exclusively to their life and being, to reindeer herding. This time I am ready to explain all this about my everyday life in the following way: the gutturalness of their language is that it is a branch of Chud; the absence of women is an old age-old custom (hitherto observed) to see in a woman only a slave, and not a man; passion for the native language - the birthright of all peoples.

One could explain the exchange of glances, and sidelong glances, and their distrust of questions, and their unwillingness to directly and more talkatively answer them - by the fact that the Zyryans spend most of the year among their tribal families and are not used to new fresh people. Perhaps, even, finally, I will explain this to myself by a simple habit, a generic folk peculiarity. But despite all this, the answers turned out to be more significant and more important than they seemed at first. In this case, as in many other similar ones, chance helped me. It remained then to track him down in hot pursuit.

This is how it happened:

The six of us talked about various trifles, and the result of our conversation was: for them - that they drank two large, very large samovars and snapped a large, deep plate, sprinkled on top with pine nuts, for me - a few meager, however, information ...

My Izhma residents are noticeably secretive, as if they are afraid of something, often look at each other, suddenly abruptly change the conversation completely unexpectedly, and mainly in those places where it takes on a more lively character.

No, something is wrong! - I thought at the same time, spoiled, perhaps, by the talkativeness and frankness of the recently abandoned good empty boats. The words of one of the locals: "Cunning Zyryan people, you look: do not give in to them," they revolted, as if alive, as before.

Cunning people all this "Izhemtsa?"! - This is usually the name of all the Zyryans, who joined their villages to the Russian Pechora much later than the settlement of the latter at the mouth of the Tsilma River. At the same time, the collective name, turned into its own, with retention on the last syllable, is necessarily inclined grammatically, with the inevitable Pechora choking, - they say: "at Izhemchi, in Izhemchi." This word has completely supplanted the name of the Zyryans, and this time thoroughly in the sense that the Izhemtsy now bear little resemblance to the native Zyryans. The popular proverb, which called them “borsche-eaters”, does not separate this mockery from the Ust-Tsilems: even these, in a country where gardening is poorly cultivated, instead of cabbage, ferment and store for the future for the winter wild-growing in the meadows dedelyushki or dedelya (it is also borscht, a bunch).

I tried to ask if there were any legends among the Zyryans about their distant past, but I received little in response: that in the Chudsky graves, at the mouth of the Izhma with the Pechora, coins were found in the mountain about 20 years ago that come across there mammoth horns (bones), though rare; that there is a cross on the way to Sizyaba, on the grave of Kypriyan, one of Avvakum's friends, who was exiled here for the schism and whose head was cut off here for the same thing; what is in the village of Ust-Izhma filthy barrow, in place of which doselennoy at one time there was a city of Chud; that while digging a mound, they found a spear there ...

I asked about the history and reasons for their eviction, according to legend, to a distant country, from the Permian countries - the center of settlement of the Zyryans, at least at the time when history and the Gospel found them in this place, but my interlocutors somehow especially looked at each other wildly and fell silent, each and every one of them even more concentrated and stubborn. This time I had to stay with the same few information: that the robberies and insults of the Cossacks, who went through the places of their former villages at the sources of Izhma, in the Yarensky district of the Vologda province, with the Verkhotursk treasury to Moscow, forced them to get out with the whole population to a grateful, albeit distant the area of ​​the mouth of the same river; that the population of Izhma subsequently increased by immigrants from the nearby Ust-Tsilma, which was significantly populated and strong already at that time with its material resources; the Chuprov brothers from Ust-Tsilma joined the Zyryan, who had moved here from the Yarensky district, from the village of Glotova, and with them extended the right given by the letter of Terrible Lastka, extended to this area. Actually, a charter was sent to the Izhma Zyrians by Tsars Mikhail and Alexei (in 1627 and 1649). These credentials are gone. The official of the governor took him and took him to the City (Arkhangelsk). The Samoyeds also settled here, now having lost their nationality and their tribal type under the influence of the Zyryansky, which differs from the Slavic only by a certain swarthy face (and nothing else, external). Here the Siberian road ran under the tsars and the Great and the Lesser and White Russian autocrats ...

The old papers that survived the fires and the extreme ignorance of the guardians in the churches and the government and fell into my hands also say little: one commanded to give only the centurion of the archery rower and not to give the same to the simple archers of the city of Arkhangelsk, going to the Pustozersky jail, on the grounds that that "they can row under themselves." The second - by decree (1688) of the tsar and Grand Duke Fyodor Alekseevich - ordered the destruction of tarkhan letters for tallow trades in favor of the Trinity Sergius Monastery, the income from which from this year should have already turned into the sovereign's treasury. The third - by decree (1697) of Tsar Peter Alekseevich, a memory was made to the head and kissers of the customs and mug yard, so that they, with a shortage of Kholmogory wine, would buy "where it is decent at the smallest price without transfer." The fourth scroll (4? sazhens long) details the rules of customs duty from Russians and local merchants traveling to Siberia and back from Siberia (there was a customs checkpoint in Izhma), points out some abuses that were in this case, and orders to keep books, The fifth scroll, the oldest I have in terms of time, contains a decree of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (1678), which ordered the Izhma people to carry timber and build four sharpnesses for the historical schismatics exiled to Pustozersk: Archpriest Avvakum of Murom, Nikifor of Simbirsk, Lazarus and Elder Epiphanius. Of the old papers preserved in the church archive, more remarkable, in comparison with others, can be considered the decree (1760) of the Archbishop of Kholmogory and Vazhesky Barsanuphius, who ordered to find a priest who was guilty of covering one schismatic for a pood of cod, freeing him from confession and Holy Communion. The bishop ordered to shave half his head for this and send him to the Archangel Monastery for eternal work, so again, so that, upon his arrival at the place, he would shave the rest of his head and half of his beard there. As can be seen from the search, the priest, frightened by such a decision, fled and, as they think, to the Topozersk schismatic sketes. Here are all the old papers preserved in Izhma! ..

After two unsuccessful attempts, I finally turned to my interlocutors with the question of the tundra, and, without inquiring into their rights to own it, I nevertheless caused noticeable excitement. They began talking quickly, every minute looking askance at me with those incredulous, suspicious eyes with which they meet any unexpected and unfamiliar person who appears unawares in the middle of behind-the-scenes, family activities, which have taken the form of long-standing legality and are usually hidden from prying eyes. Embarrassed and caught at the wrong time. So it was with us. The Izhemtsy continued to interpret for a long time in their dialect, which could no longer be incomprehensible to me. Its meaning already seemed suspicious enough to, having figured out the matter, recall the warning of the empty lake old man that had haunted me until then; that "the tundra of the Izhma people has long been a grave sin on their conscience."

Now I consider it my duty to tell about the Izhemtsy everything that I happened to learn during a very short stay between them.

The volost of Izhma, which has become much richer in recent times, had a wooden church at the beginning of this century (and only in the village of Izhma), now has three rich stone and four more villages there. In any case, these circumstances, testifying to the prosperity of the peasants, undoubtedly indicate with such wealth the presence in the character of the inhabitants of the volost of enterprise, sensibility, resourcefulness, resourcefulness - in a word, everything that characterizes a commercial person, even if he is a distant Pechora, removed from the main centers of Russian trading activity. In recent decades, the Izhemsky malitsa has been seen both in Moscow, and at the Nizhny Novgorod fair, and in Kostroma Galich: he is here as a representative of the wholesale sale of furs bought in his homeland and dressed in the same animal skins and leggings. The Izhemets do not shy away from petty trade on a smaller scale in the neighboring Pechora villages, they deliver there everything necessary in village life and sell it with amazing honesty and conscientiousness, which in recent years have caused significant damage to the long-standing trade of the Perm Cherdyns. According to all the probabilities and visual methods with which the Izhma Zyryans did business, one can probably predict that in a short time the Pechora will no longer see the Cherdyn skiffs. Already in the last two years they have significantly decreased in the number and quantity of goods they bring. Here are the bare facts.

Following further the inherent features in the character of the Izhemets, in addition to his secrecy and suspicion, you involuntarily come to his no less remarkable feature. This is an unconditional faith in the old traditions in domestic and public life, and in blind obedience to their details without looking back, without further reflection and strict analysis according to the requirements of the century and after the inevitable meeting and acquaintance with the life of the capital and large trading cities. Until now, the Izhma people, having observed, to a greater or lesser extent, the seclusion of the female sex, not letting their wives and daughters into the eyes of any guest (except for extremely honorable ones), have retained all the chaste purity of morals. Compared with neighboring Ust-Tsilma (which in this case is a significant help), Izhma is striking in this respect throughout the Arkhangelsk region, making an amazing, remarkable exception. Preserving some games and amusements from antiquity: running in the meadows in the summer, skiing from the mountains in the winter, the Izhma people have established and firmly keep the custom that allows these pleasures for girls separately from the fellows. Only the catechumens of grooms still have some right (and even then very rarely) to play in public with the brides. And here, having agreed with the girl, the groom does not see her until the very day of the wedding; she mourns her will and on the fateful day appears, covered with a veil or a board. A piece cut from a wedding blessed loaf is wrapped in this plat. This chunk is then eaten by the young before the wedding table, in which they do not have the right to participate, limiting themselves only to regaling the guests, among whom there is always a dear and happy one who came to Izhma from a foreign land: therefore, they always try to look out for one of the Ust-Tsilems in the crowd of wedding spectators and voiders. Zyryanka, having become a wife, from that time on becomes a slave: if her assistant in difficult draft work is mostly Samoyeds and poor Ust-Tsilma women, then all the same, taking care of the children absorbs most of her life. Zyryans, as you know, breed amazingly, whether from a sufficient life, or from the almost constant presence of fathers among families - this cannot be decided in a positive way. But in order to be more clearly convinced of this, one need only pay attention to the village streets on a sunny day and to the churches on big holidays: they are all half filled with children.

Among other remnants of antiquity, attention should be paid to the custom of the Zyryans on the day of the Epiphany, after the blessing of the water, to ride with a cry and as quickly as possible on horses and deer around the village of Izhma and along its streets. By this, as they say, they drive away the evil spirit, defeated by the holy church rite.

Horticulture among the Izhma people, with the exception of other Pechora people, is quite developed: they plant cabbage, radish, turnips and onions, and they even have the opportunity to put some of the vegetables on sale to the Pechora residents up to the Kolninsky churchyard. When potato riots started in northern Russia, the Izhma people went for seeds and planted it in their gardens, and distributed it to their relatives.

It is also remarkable that the word “plunder” has recently appeared in the Zyryan language entirely from the Russian language, which until then did not cause a need. As is known, ten years ago the Izhma people did not use locks, replacing them with convenient wooden latches, and then only for lascivious horned cattle. Now thieves began to appear between them, cunning in their own way. So once two of the neighbors come to a rich man to ask for something to sell. We got talking. As if to spite them, another (not a participant in the case) appears to ask for pims. The owner sends his wife to look for extra ones in the attic, and she, instead of pims, grabbed her legs in pims. The swindler burrowed into the malitsa there, hoping to rob everything at a time when his accomplice would squander with the owner. However, recently some attempts of evil people have repeatedly been crowned with success. In general, the old-timers are already complaining about the deterioration of morals and the beginning disregard for indigenous customs: about tobacco smoking that has spread everywhere, especially between the younger generation, about the excessive use of wine and vodka to a violent, intoxicated state, about their frequent visits to the Ust-Tsilma schismatics. They even point to some of their female population with extreme discontent and contempt. Still, on big holidays they still go to their relatives to treat themselves to tea and dinner. Mother-in-law treat their sons-in-law with sour cream, marking a cross three times in advance with a spoon in a cup. In the old way, the rich, lending money to their poor fellow tribesmen, speak their word of honor not to tell anyone on the consideration that the poor know the rich and without a summons, with his need, will come to him. Hanging themselves with mirrors and paintings, painting their floors with paint and upholstering the walls with Moscow wallpaper, the Zyrians nevertheless throw nutshells and cigar stubs anywhere, prefer to remove from the dish the fat piece they like right with their fingers, although they have long been looked out for and applied to the case. knives and forks. As before, around Nicholas Day (December 6), they drive deer to their village, beat them with guns, believing that this is fun and their true pleasure. According to the old and true custom, they tie those deer to the church fence, which they donate to increase the splendor of the church. The donated deer, horses, rams and calves at the end of the service are sold by the church elder to those who wish, and the proceeds go to the church mug or to decorate the temple, or to allow the churchmen. The pious Zyryan is always ready to put a candle to the home icon, although we did not have a special incentive for this, saying: “Maybe God will forgive me what a sin! and always ready cut yourself wine until the dead strength on every holiday, and even far before mass. If some see the decoration of churches with zyryans as simple vanity, justified only by a too distant, ingratiating goal, nevertheless, in the Izhemtsy, once and for all, they must recognize positive honesty, patriarchally observed in all commercial enterprises. Having given his word, the Zyryan is faithful to him to the grave. This general rumor is based on a lot of ubiquitous facts.

Blind adherence to antiquity, on the other hand, gave rise (as is natural) among the Zyrians to that simple-hearted simplicity, which, according to the popular proverb, is worse than theft and, according to the general laws of nature,

serves on grief and sometimes to the misfortune of the most ingenuous simpleton. So, the Zyrians, loving to receive and treat a guest, themselves, in turn, love treats very much, believing their well-being in it, and see respect for their personality in every bow of a third-party person, even if this person did it deliberately, with an ingratiating purpose. . Here the Zyryan forgets everything outside, all his benefits and deals, and honors hospitality as hospitality, and forgets (unless he forgives) a debt of 6,000 rubles (as one of the Izhma residents did) for the sole reason that when he first woke up in the debtor's house horses were ready for him to ride for breakfast, then, for dinner and for an evening treat, always plentiful, satisfying and fat, and even in the simplicity of his heart he was ready to brag (on returning home without money, but with gifts) of the honor that he received from sensible and truly already cunning of their debtors. But he is stingy to the extreme and looks with a flint at everything that is closed and locked in his large, forged chests. Such, at least, are the Izhma Zyrians of the old school! They know how to bark, they know how to make a penny. Some suede factories they have up to thirty. They do not disdain any article in the works of the Pechora region. Poultry, fish, reindeer skins, horns, tongues, reindeer and beef lard, cow butter, arctic foxes, foxes, martens, otters, walrus and mammoth bones (horns), fluff and feathers, loon necks - everything is in the hands of the Izhma zyryans, this mixture indigenous Zyryans with people of Russian blood of Novgorod origin. They keep up with their goods everywhere: to the Nikolskaya fair in Pinega, and to the Margaritinsky fair in Arkhangelsk, and to the Evdokievskaya fair in Shenkursk, to Kostroma and Galich, to Moscow and Nizhny. It is not known what the new generation will develop for itself and how it will declare itself, but let it be just as steadfast in the word given to honor; let it be just as resourceful in commercial enterprises and not shy away from petty ones at first, let it be just as patriarchal, unanimous and mutually help each other; he drinks less wine, which is positively disastrous for any undeveloped person, especially for a half-savage foreigner (the Samoyeds have completely drunk themselves!). Finally, let us wish that they would offend these Samoyeds less, that is, they would completely stop traveling with barrels of bread wine to the tundra.

However, as you know, the vast majority of the Zyryans, not only Izhma, but also all the other Pechora ones, are indigenous, so to speak, natural trappers, leaving to fish even in the Trans-Ural forests with an experienced leader and up to ten people in artels. They take in the forests everything that comes across: every animal and bird; but in the profits they count most of all the squirrel or veksha, wandering in innumerable flocks through pine forests and cedar groves. When it “flows”, that is, it promises a catch, the Zyryans see this both by the harvest of fir cones and by the bird crossbilly. This bird is the leader of the squirrel artels, and therefore, as soon as it appears, the Zyryansk artels rush to choose their leader and also go to the pine forests for three months. The leader is not burdened with any luggage for honor: all of it is laid out on the artel sledges. In them: crackers, dried pies with cereals, flour, cereals, lard, and most importantly - gunpowder, lead and spare guns, in total up to twelve pounds for each. On skis and lamps they carry long light sleds along the steep slopes of the mountains, through deep snowdrifts. To do this, they wear zipunas a little below the knees with fur sleeves and mittens and old torn coats in case you have to change linen from the pair that you have taken with you. Halts are made in two or three days, and here is the food: for yourself - your favorite pancakes in bacon and dried pies, worn out into porridge, which is called "matting" (yes, it looks like that), for dogs - squirrel meat. From a successful fishery, another brings up to 500 squirrel skins, and a good shooter, with happiness, will kill up to 20 pieces in one day.

In the morning, - they say, - when you get out, in - nothing, it's cold. Well, as soon as you see - a squirrel, one and the other - you will start walking as soon as possible, and it will become hot, like on fire.

According to the ridges, that is, according to the varieties, squirrel skins are valued in trade and the “surviving” (well faded) “zyryanka” squirrel relies in the best varieties and is bought by carmols at the Pinezh and Krasnoslobodskaya fairs more expensive than other varieties. In "zyryans" the fluffy tail of a squirrel does not deceive experienced shooters. Unfortunately, it is only necessary to say that after the destruction of the forests, the old people began to lower their heads and say: “Where the marten lived, there now you won’t find squirrels.”