ON
THE YENESEI

"I ^ive tAe/f Booits
for the founding of a College in this Colozif

Bought with the income of the
Edward Wells Soulhworth
Fund, 191 5»

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI

A SUMMER
ON THE YENESEI
(1914)

BY
MAUD D. HAVILAND
AUTHOR OF "THE WOOD PEOPLE AND OTHERS'

ILLUSTRATED

LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
191S
[An rights reserved^

PREFACE

Anyone who writes about the birds of Yenesei, now
adays, does so with diffidence, for the recollection of
the Birds of Siberia is always present with him, like a
critic standing at his shoulder. But the journey down
the river is shorter than it was in Seebohm's time, and
therefore there is less opportunity to observe the birds
and men who live along the banks ; for taiga and
tundra slide past as quickly as at a kinematograph
show. There is more scope at Golchika, and there, if
wishes might have found place, I should like to have
woven a little of the spell of the tundra into these
lines of print — the voices of the wild-fowl calling up
the summer, the poppies above the snowdrifts, the
smell of driftwood fires, and the squelch of the rein
deer's little hoofs in the moss. But this book has no
pretension to such art. It contains merely some pages
from the journal of a season spent among birds, which,
for the most part, are known in this country only on
migration or as vagrants.
The scientific names employed are those used in
the Hand-List of British Birds (1912), except for
certain species not included in the British lists, for
which the nomenclature is that of H. E. Dresser's
Manual of Palsearctic Birds.

vi PREFACE
I must again express my best thanks to Miss
M. A. Czaplicka, by whose energy and enterprise the
expedition was organised, for permission to join the
party. My thanks are also due to Mr. H. L. Popham,
who kindly gave me much information about the
Yenesei, both before and after the trip.
MAUD D. HAVILAND.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
PAGE
The "Gillissy" — Departure from London — Warsaw — Contretemps
at Moscow — Krasnoyarsk — Vassilli Ivanovitch — We embark
for the north — The Angara River — Yenesiesk — The Oryol and
her captain — Fellow-passengers — The "wide water'' — Nasi-
morokoya — Vorogovo — The Kamin Pass — Midnight in the
forest ... ... 1
CHAPTER II
A ramble in the forest — Verkne Imbatskaya — The Ostiaks of the
Yenesei — The black-throated ousel — The romance of the tele
graph — Difficulties on the voyage — Monastir — Bird's-nesting
at Turukhansk — The pale thrush — The Kureika — The
Yenesei cuckoos — Lost in the forest — The willow island —
Igarka ........ 23
CHAPTER III
The taigd,—The dusky ousel and the little bunting— The Tungus—
Platina — Women merchants — Dudinka — The first sight of
the tundra — Krestova — The Yenesei fisheries — Breokofi'sky
Ostrov— Stormbound— Arrival at Golchika— First impres
sions — A Good Samaritan— Michael Petrovitch Antonofi' . 45
CHAPTER IV
A morning theft— Cockroaches— Spring at Golchika— A dog sledge
 A trip to Och Marino — A Siberian household — The Eastern
golden plover — A change in the weather — Rough water on
the Yenesei— Return to Golchika . . . .68

viii CONTENTS CHAPTER V
PAGE
People of Golchika — Protyvik — Antonoff and his household — The
Prokopchuk family — Sylkin the Samoyede — His sayings — His
religion — The natives at Golchika — Their manners and
customs — The need for medical missions — The colonisation
and future of Siberia . . . . . .90
CHAPTER VI
The birds of Golchika — Seebohm — Popham — The effect of the season
— The curlew-sandpiper — The grey phalarope — The red
necked phalarope — The little stint — The Temminck's stint . 119
CHAPTER VII
The Eastern golden plover — The bar-tailed god wit — The distribution
of birds at Golchika — The dotterel — Some other birds — The
Siberian herring-gull — The long-tailed duck — The king-eider
— The wild swan — The black-throated diver — The red-
throated diver — The white-fronted goose — ^The red-breasted
goose — The migration of geese — Scarcity of birds of prey —
The blue fox — Some smaller birds — The Lapland bunting —
The red-throated pipit — The autumn migration — Young blue-
throats . . ... . 142
CHAPTER VIII
First days at Golchika — The coming of the steamers — Our hut — The
commissariat — A home-made sundial — The Lena — A dis
turbance in the Prokopchuk family — " The Alcohol King " —
Mosc[uitoes — Native fishermen— The people of the balagan —
An unwilling ferryman — The spell of Golchika . . 163
CHAPTER IX
Bird's-nesting on the Golchika — A morning call— Grey phalarope —
Dunlin — A Dolgan — Red-throated divers — Pintail duck —
Richardson's skua — Peregrine falcon — Sylkin's perplexity —
Willow-grouse — Vino — A fish hunt — White-fronted geese —
Grey plovers — A narrow escape — A bird pirate — Plovers' eggs 188

CONTENTS ix
CHAPTER X
The charm of the tundra— The reindeer sledges—" Into the tundra "
—A wet drive— The sense of locality— A difficult passage—
The choom—A wet night— The Dolgan family— Sunshine on
the tundra— Photographing the Eastern golden plover— A
goose hunt— Good-bye to the tundra .... 204

CHAPTER XI
Swerifskye— Its reputation— We go there— il/)io(/te vino~A stroll
on the tundra— A night in the open air- Walk to Och Marino
—Mirage— A search-party— Birds and men at Och Marino . 228

CHAPTER XII
A native postman— An invitation— We go to Kazachye— A mid
night visit— Simeon Prokopchuk and his family— Mezen-
chyne — The long-tailed skuas — A night on the river-bank 
The tragedy of the balagans— The flowers of the tundra—
The return to Golchika— Appeasing Gerasim Androvitch . 240

CHAPTER XIII
The fall of the year — The departure of the chooms — The arrival of
the Yenesiesk — First news of the war — Packing up — A
dinner with the Antonoffs — Church parade at Golchika —
The Turukhansk and Lena arrive — Stormbound — News
of home — The Oryol again — Joseph Gerasimvitch — Dis
appointed hopes — The English steamers — A native wedding
— Nosonovsky Ostrov ...... 256

CHAPTER XIV
Nosonovsky Ostrov — The English expedition — Our party is broken
up — The Ragna and the Skule — A cosmopolitan crew — A
heavy cargo — Homeward bound — The last sight of Golchika
— Dickson Island — In the ice — A narrow escape — Wireless
news — A Government scandal — Novaya Zemlya . . 280

X CONTENTS CHAPTER XV
PAGE
The Kara Gates— Sir Hugh Willoughby— The magic of the Arctic
— Captain Wiggins — The Kara Sea route — Ingoe — A storm —
Bird passengers — Midnight off North Cape — Hammerfest —
Rumours of war — Tromsoe — Sidelight on German mobilisa
tion — From Bergen to Newcastle — War- fever— London again 303
Index ..... . • 323

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Antonopps' House . . ") „ . .
>- Frontispiece
Dog Sledge .... )
FACING PAGE
Yenesiesk . . 14
Krestova . . 40
The Taiga by the Kureika . . 40
Native Children . ... 102
Sylkin and his Son, Nerobi . . 102
Eastern Golden Plover (Gharadrius d. fulvus) . . . 142
Lapland Bunting {Galcarius I. lapponicus), immature plumage . 142
Little Stint (Erolia minuta) . . . . 142
Blue Fox . . .156
Yurak Boots . . . 164
A Dolgan Cap . 164
A Native Fisherman . .182
Natives Fishing by the Yeneski . . 182
Willow Grouse {Lagopus albus) . . .194
Eggs of Grey Plover (Squatarola squatarola) . 194
Eggs of Curlew-Sandpiper (Erolia ferruginea) 194
Reindeer Grazing .... 214
Dotterel (Gharadrius morinellus) . . . 222
Grey Phalarope (Phalaropus fulicarius) . . . 222
Temminck's Stint (Erolia temminckii) . . . 222

xu

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Nesting-Place of the Curlew-Sandpiper
Siberian Gulls (Larus f. antelius) .
FoxTRAP ON the Tundra
Balagan Folk
Chooms at Golchika .
Vassilli Sotnikoff and his Reindeer
A Yurak Grave
A Samoyede Doll
S.S. Skule in the Ice
" Pancake " Ice in the Kara Sea .

FACING PAGE
. 234
. 234
. 234
. 250
. 258
. 258
. 278
. 278
. 298
. 298

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI

CHAPTER I.
The "Gillissy" — Departure from London — Warsaw — Contretemps at
Moscow — Krasnoyarsk — Vassilli Ivanovitch — We embark for the
north — The Angara River — Yenesiesk — The Oryol and her captain
— Fellow-passengers — The "wide water" — Nasimorokoya — Voro
govo — The Kamin Pass — Midnight in the forest.
The first allusion to the Yenesei River that I can
find in literature dates from 1595. In that year
Willem Barentz, the Dutchman, sailed up to the Kara
Sea, and while his ship was fast in the ice, some
Muscovy hunters came on board. They told him a
tale how that each summer ten small smacks sailed
eastwards from Kholmorgori on the White Sea, " through
the Sea of Tartary right past the river Obi, -to another
river, the Gillissy," where they carried on a trade in
cloth and other stuffs.
Now Willem Barentz, that practical old adven
turer, knew well enough from the quaint charts of his
day that the Gillissy River flowed into the northern
ocean from the land of Cathay, where the sands were
golden, where spices grew on all the bushes, and where
silks and furs might be had for the asking. There-

2 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
fore, in the following year, he tried to reach it by the
coast of Novaya Zemlya, but the ice was against him,
and he was forced to return unsuccessful.
After Barentz' time, very many men tried to reach
the " Gillissy " from the north. A few succeeded, and
many more failed, and by degrees it came to be known
that the river flowed from no ready-made El Dorado,
but merely through a wilderness of vast and unde
veloped resources. During the latter part of the last
century, several Englishmen penetrated as far east as
the Yenesei. As far as I know, the first of these to
write a popular account of his travels in Siberia was
the great ornithologist, Henry Seebohm. In 1877,
Seebohm travelled down the river, and afterwards
described his experiences in that most fascinating book.
The Birds of Siberia. From an ornithological point
of view his trip was a failure in some respects. Owing
to a series of accidents, he did not reach the river
mouth until late in the summer, and consequently
little was known of the bird life of the Lower Yenesei,
until, in the nineties, Mr. H. L. Popham made three
expeditions down the river. Among other rarities
Mr. Popham found the nests of the curlew-sandpiper,
red-breasted goose, bar-tailed godwit, and grey plover.
But since then, partly because of the distance and the
difficulty of reaching the estuary early in the summer,
no other English ornithologist has visited the country.
Nevertheless, for naturalists, the banks of the Yenesei
still hold something of the romance of an ornithological
land of Cathay. They are the certain summer haunt of
great rarities, and have even greater possibilities. You

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 3
never can tell what you might find there, said the wise
men. Wherein doubtless lies much of the romance
of the region. Therefore I considered myself very
fortunate, when, in the spring of 1914, an opportunity
of visiting the country unexpectedly presented itself.
Miss Czaplicka, the well-known Polish anthropologist
of Oxford University, was about to travel down the
river from Krasnoyarsk to Golchika in order to study
the native tribes that live along the banks, and I
gladly accepted the offer to join her expedition.
There were four of us who travelled east together.
Tireless energy and a most winning address, even apart
from her intellectual gifts and knowledge of the world,
marked Miss Czaplicka's striking personality. Then
there was Miss Dora Curtis, an artist. A better
comrade for such a journey it would be impossible to
find. Always in good spirits, and keen for either work
or play, always the very soul of good nature and
kindness, she was the life of the party, and later on
contributed much to its material as well as to its
mental well-being, as one who has had the good fortune
to taste her cookery can testify. The third of my
travelling companions was an American gentleman,
Mr. H. U. Hall, who was interested in the aborigines of
Siberia. Miss Curtis, Mr. Hall and I left London on 28th
]V[ay — a still spring day with a promise of rain — and
travelling by Flushing and Berlin, we reached Warsaw
forty-eight hours later. Here we spent a few hours in
seeing the sights of the ancient city. Fine as they
were, we should have looked upon them with tenfold

4 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
interest had we but guessed at the titanic battle which
only four months later was to be fought under its walls.
But even at the time, one sight struck me forcibly, and
in the light of after events I recall it vividly. We
were driving down one of the shady streets, when our
carriage drew up to allow a regiment of Cossacks to
pass. There were some hundreds of them, returning
from manoeuvres outside the city. They were all small
men, and sat well up on their horses' withers, as you
may see our English jockeys ride. As they rode by
they sang some monotonous marching song to the clash
of cymbals and the thud of their horses' feet. Our
companion, a Polish gentleman, drew attention sarcastic
ally to their dusty accoutrements and careless ranks, but
for the moment I could not look at those things. What
struck me, even in that fleeting vision of ochre and
scarlet and thumping cymbals, was the virility of the
corps. Here was no war machine, but a living force —
the stuff with which battles must be won. . . . Their
voices rose and fell in abrupt barbaric cadence, as they
streamed away down the sunny road, and turned towards
the Vistula.
In the evening we left Warsaw for Moscow, where
we were to meet Miss Czaplicka. The rather tedious
journey across the plains of Poland would have been
wearisome no longer if we could have foreseen the part
that the country was so soon to play in the greatest war
in the world.
At Moscow, a disaster occurred. Our luggage, which
had been registered correctly from London, and which
we had seen safely through the customs at Alexandrovo,

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 5
had not arrived. It was absolutely necessary that we
should leave on the morrow for Krasnoyarsk if we
wished to catch the first steamer down the Yenesei ;
and in spite of the assurances of the station officials that
the luggage would follow next day, we went out in
despondent mood to look at the Kremlin, and the
wonderful view of Moscow that lay below its terraces.
However, morning brought all the luggage except
a box of cartridges, which, owing to the blunder of a
carrying agent, had been detained en route. I had no
time to wait for it to overtake me, and the delay was
the more annoying as so much of my work depended
upon it. There were only a couple of hours in which to
make good the deficiency, and in Russia the sale of fire
arms and ammunition is fenced in with much red tape.
The first gunsmith refused to supply me, but the second
was more amenable, and agreed to sell some cartridges
on the production of the gun, and the official letter of
introduction, with which, in addition to the regulation
passport, each member of the party was provided.
While I was unpacking the gun case in the hall of the
hotel, the two lift-boys peeped round the door.
Said the first lift-hoy : " What has she there ? "
Second lift-hoy : " Weapons ! "
First lift-hoy : " What does she want with them ? "
Second lift-hoy: " I do not know."
Opinion of both lift-boys: "Now without doubt
these are Suffragettes ! " {SuffragettsU).
There was only an hour and a half before the train
left, but the gunsmith, whom I shall always remember
with gratitude, turned on all his men to loading

6 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
cartridges, and in addition I bought materials for
reloading, which, with economy, were sufficient to last
me during my stay in Siberia.
The journey across Asia by the Trans-Siberian
Railway can never be anything but unspeakably tedious.
We had missed the International Express by twenty-
four hours, and were therefore obliged to go on to
Krasnoyarsk by one of the daily post trains, which is a
slower, but also a less expensive way of travelling.
After the first thirty-six hours, the novelty of running
out to bargain for the daily provisions at the buffet
wore off, and there was nothing left to do but lean from
the window and watch the little line of shining railroad
which wound away into the west behind the train, just
as a snail crawls across a garden path and leaves a
shining trail of slime behind it.
We reached Krasnoyarsk at midnight on 8th June,
to find that again our luggage, which we had seen
safely on to the train at Moscow, had been delayed
somewhere en route, and had not arrived. Things
looked serious for our enterprise, for the steamer which
we were bound to take if we wished to reach Golchika
by the beginning of July was to leave on the following
day. Hopes were held out that the baggage might
come by a post train at 2 a.m., but, alas, the cases that
were turned out of the van were not ours, but the
property of some mining engineers who were travelling
up the river to Minnusinsk, and our spirits sank.
At Krasnoyarsk, rooms had been taken for us at
the hotel, and other arrangements made, by an ac
quaintance of Miss Czaplicka — Mr. Gunnar Christensen

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 7
— a. very agreeable young man, who was the Yenesei
agent of the Siberian Steamship Company. To his
energy and foresight much of the subsequent comfort
of our trip was due. We went to bed at sunrise and
tried to snatch a few hours of sleep.
But when the train from the west came in next
morning, there was still no luggage. It was therefore
arranged that at noon we three women should go on
to Yenesiesk, and that Mr. Hall should wait for the
baggage, which had been delayed at the frontier, and
was due to arrive on the following day. Mr. Hall was
to travel after us by a steamer which left a day later
than ours did.
Krasnoyarsk has profited by the coming of the
railway, and is now the largest of the three principal
towns of the Yenesei. It takes its name from the
colour of the sandstone cliffs around, for Krasno in
Russian means red. The city has still that mixed
appearance of crude rawness and rising prosperity that
is characteristic of most Siberian towns. Some of the
houses are of stone, but more are built of timber, with
broad streets and squares of unkept ground between
them. There are five schools, museum, etc., a large
cathedral dedicated to the Nativity, and an automatic
ferry, a thousand yards long, across the river. But, as
I have said, to our regret we had no time to see all
these things.
At Krasnoyarsk our party received two additions.
One was a young black-and-white setter named Jest,
who at the last moment was lent to us for the summer
by Mr. Christensen. The other was a servant, Vassilli

8 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
Ivanovitch. A Siberiak who is guaranteed neither to
steal nor drink is a precious possession, but as a matter
of fact his excellent recommendations were true of
Vassilli. He was wont to declare virtuously that the
mere sight of a drunken man made him feel quite ill ;
and although while he was in our service he had plenty
of opportunity of obtaining liquor, we never saw him
drunk, and as far as I know, he never stole anything.
His vices were laziness and conceit. Whenever he was
found fault with, he merely twisted his moustaches and
replied pityingly, " How could I know how you wished
it to be done ? I am not used to service. I have
always lived in my own house."
However, like all Siberiaks, he was a handy man
with tools,' could row a boat, cook passably, and
described himself as an Ohotnik — a hunter — which in
plain language meant that he could shoot ducks. The
only thing about which he was really energetic was
his desire to learn English. At all times of haste or
anxiety, we were driven sometimes to exasperation, and
sometimes to laughter, by his irrepressible, " Pa Russki
thus and thus : pa Angliski . . . ? " And when the
answer was given, it was immediately written down as
he conceived that we pronounced it in Russian script
in a very ragged pocket-book. We never had the
opportunity of looking at this pocket-book, but it must
have been a curiosity in phonetics.
It must be confessed that our prospects when we
embarked at Krasnoyarsk were not of the brightest.
We started down the river with literally nothing but
the clothes that we stood up in, and these were already

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 9
sufficiently travel-stained by ten days and nights spent
in the train. Miss Curtis and I could speak not a word
of Russian ; Miss Czaplicka had never visited Siberia
before. We left behind us a companion, who, in his
turn, could speak nothing but English, and were in con
siderable uncertainty as to whether our luggage would
arrive in time to allow him to overtake us at Yenesiesk.
On the quay we were introduced to a Mr. Peacock,
one of the merchants who trade on the Yenesei. This
man and his brother, although they were Siberian born
and had never been east of Moscow, were of English
descent, and were both exceedingly proud of their
British nationality. Mr. Peacock had only just reached
Krasnoyarsk from the north, and told us that below
the Kureika the ice had not yet broken up on the river.
The journey from Krasnoyarsk to Yenesiesk
occupied thirty hours. For the greater part of the
way, the river ran between low banks clothed with
pine trees, and which here and there were honey
combed by sand-martins' nesting-holes. Once or twice
we stopped for an hour or two at a riverside village,
and the peasants in their brightly coloured clothes
crowded down to the bank to look at the first north
ward-bound steamer of the year, for it was Sunday, and
they had no work to do. Late in the evening, while
we were sitting alone at supper, we stopped at such a
village. Presently a half-drunken man lurched into
the saloon and began to shout .to us, until the steward
who was passing turned him out. But for the most
part we had very little unpleasantness of this kind
during the whole trip.

10 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
At one o'clock on 9th June, we passed the Angara,
the first of the three great tributaries of the Yenesei.
The steamer stopped at Trotzska, a small wooden
village at the mouth of the river, and we went ashore
for an hour to stretch our legs and give our poor dog
a run, for she was already very tired of her cramped
quarters on board the steamer. A few white wagtails
and house-sparrows were pecking on the rubbish-heaps
that surround every Russian village, and the banks of
the river were buzzing with sand-martins. Vassilli
brought me two of the latter birds that he caught
upon their nests, but it was evidently still too early
for eggs. After it had received the waters of its mighty
tributary, the Yenesei widened out to almost double
its former size. All the afternoon we steamed along
between low-lying pine woods, and, later, came abreast
of a forest fire which threw a lurid banner of smoke
across the river. It may have been the atoms of ash
in the atmosphere which made the sunset so gorgeous
that evening. The sun went down behind the trees
in a blaze of clouds, and the steamer seemed to travel
through blue and orange fire. Even the stolid
Siberiaks on deck paused in their incessant nut-
cracking to stare at the sky.
We reached Yenesiesk on the evening of 10th June,
and after travelling for 217 miles through virgin forests,
it was strange to come suddenly upon a large town
with schools, churches, museum, and a picture palace
in the middle of the wilderness. Before the railway
came to Krasnoyarsk, Yenesiesk was the principal

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 11
town on the Yenesei and a great centre of the gold-
mining trade. It stands among wide, low meadows,
and its mellow-toned wooden houses and shady grass-
grown streets are much more picturesque than the
blatant newness of Krasnoyarsk. As we steamed
down the river on a fine summer's evening, its timbered
houses, dominated as usual by the green and white
cupolas of the church, looked curiously barbaric and
Byzantine. We went ashore at once to the post-office, where, to
our relief, we found a telegram from Mr. Hall at
Krasnoyarsk to say that the luggage had arrived, and
that he expected to join us on the following ""day. I
had been given a letter of introduction to Mr. Stephan
Vassillievitch Vostratine, the member of Duma for the
Yenesiesk Government, but we had already been told
at Krasnoyarsk that he was in St. Petersburg. How
ever, Miss Czaplicka had an introduction to his brother,
Mr. Vassilli Vassillievitch Vostratine, who, with his
wife, showed us the greatest kindness during our stay
at Yenesiesk. From an ornithological point of view, the neigh
bourhood of Yenesiesk is full of interest, and I was
sorry that I had no opportunity of spending a day out
in the country ; but we had only two days to pass in
the town, and much of the time was taken up in many
final preparations for our journey to the north.
Yenesiesk was full of the bustle of the coming of
summer, and the quay was humming with life.
Stacks of timber, hundreds of fish barrels, boats, sacks
of flour, household goods — in fact, every conceivable

12 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
thing that the riverside population could need for the
whole year — were heaped beside the steamers and
barges, for the northern season is short, and there
are only three months in which supplies can be taken
down the river.
After we had settled our business, our first thought
was to have a bath — a luxury which we had not enjoyed
since we left England. Accordingly we walked along
the quay and out of the town to the bathhouse, which
stood by the bank of the river. It was very hot out
of doors, and hotter still in the bath-rooms. We
waited while the mystified attendants scrubbed down
the little cubicles, and then, ordering all the buckets
and all the hot water that could be prepared, we had
a kind of compromise between a Russian vapour bath
and a soap-and- water English one.
After we had thus ridded ourselves of some of the
dust of travel, I went for a ramble outside the town.
It was a beautiful summer's evening, and although it
was scarcely a month since the snow had melted, the
leaves and grass were at their prime. It was my first
introduction to the birds and flowers of Siberia, and
I still like to remember a cock bluethroat who was
singing among some white clematis, as if a golden pea
leaped and vibrated in the pipe behind his gaudy bib.
The brilliance of these northern birds in their breeding
plumage is a revelation to those who hitherto have
seen them only on their winter visits to Britain.
Under the clematis were pink primulas, cranesbill, and
honeysuckle, and there were marsh marigolds which
might have been picked in the ditches of the Thames.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 13
It was my first walk alone in Asia, and perhaps I
should not have been surprised if a red-throated thrush
or a blue-rumped chat had crossed my path. But
here were willow-warblers talking English with only a
slight foreign accent, and reed-warblers, and a couple
of magpies who cursed in their familiar jargon when
a hand was thrust into their nest. The bluethroat
was the only stranger, and even his song was in the
dialect of the nightingale. Soon, however, the
mosquitoes fairly drove me out of the thicket. If
Siberia is ever in need of a national emblem, she
cannot do better than to quarter her arms with a
cloud of mosquitoes rampant. I think the number of
mosquitoes in the Yenesei valley alone must outnumber
the insects in all the rest of the world put together !
They swarmed not only in the swamps, but likewise
in the town. Along the riverside a number of brown-
faced boys were fishing. Even they were tormented
by the plague, and by each rod burnt a little green
wood fire to smoke away the insects.
At five o'clock next morning Mr. Hall arrived with
the luggage. He had had a very uncomfortable time on
the journey, for, at the last, he had been unable to find
a place on the steamer herself, and was obliged to travel
on the lighter that she towed behind her. Here he
found that he was expected to share a cabin with some
fisher-folk who had the poor Russian's usual dislike to
fresh air, and accordingly he had preferred to sleep when
and where he could on deck.
A good deal of the forenoon was taken up in
readjusting our luggage and in looking at the Museum.

14 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
In the latter my companions found much that was of
interest to them, such as the weapons and tools of the
different races that inhabit the Yenesei. I went to look
at the natural history section, but unfortunately this
was in a state of great confusion. The tottering and
dusty specimens were not classified ; in many cases
neither sex nor locality were given ; and birds from
other parts of Siberia were mixed indiscriminately with
the local species. It seems a pity that the museum of
the chief town of a country full of ornithological
interest should be thus neglected, for with a little care
a most valuable and interesting collection might be
formed. After this I was the more sorry that I had
not been able to see the museum at Krasnoyarsk, which
was said to be well worth a visit.
In the evening Mrs. Vostratine took me for a drive
along the Yenesei. I was a little disappointed not to
spend an extra hour or two among the birds, but it was
impossible to refuse so kind an invitation, and indeed
it is worth going far to see the Yenesiesk meadows in
June. The lush-grass was in its first freshness, but
under the birch trees it was almost hidden by sheets of
orange trollia, pink bird's-eye primroses, and forget-me-
nots. On every bush a yellow-breasted bunting, as
bright as the flowers, poured out his monotonous little
song, and the thickets were filled with the racket of
jays and woodpeckers, and half a dozen more, whose
notes I could not identify. We returned along the
main high road between Krasnoyarsk and Yenesiesk,
which was nothing but a turf track full of holes into
which the wheels bumped and swung perilously. I was

|(k j^., i

-^ J

-^.5

iT!

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 15
obliged to cling ignominiously to my seat to avoid
lurching out altogether, and envied the composure of
my companion, who never even swayed as we banged
over the ruts. The people of Yenesiesk do not concern
themselves much with roads, for nature has already
given them the finest highway in the world, and one,
moreover, which needs no cost of upkeep. This is the
noble Yenesei, along which, by boat in summer or sledge
in winter, they can travel either to the north or to the
south. In the evening we took coffee with Mr. and Mrs.
Vostratine, and while we were at their house, we were
introduced to one of the largest merchants of the Yenesei
— Mr. Kutcherenkoff. This gentleman took a most
good-natured interest in Miss Czaplicka's enterprise, and
it was a great deal owing to his kindness that our way
was made so smooth for us at Golchika.
About nine o'clock we went down to the quay, and
found most of the town assembled there to see the start
of the first northward-bound steamer. The decks were
crowded with household goods and children, and down
below, the crush was even greater. In the forepart of
the ship, and even in the narrow passage on each side
of the engine-room, the sleeping-benches were arranged
so closely side by side that it was almost impossible to
step between them. After much bustle and shouting we
swung out into midstream, and amid the flurry of
paddle-wheels and cheers from the quay we started on
our fifteen-hundred-mile journey to the north.
The steamer Oryol, in which we travelled down the
Yenesei, was owned by a private company, and from

16 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
what we saw, she was the most comfortable of the
steamers that ply up and down the river. She formed
one of a fleet of European boats which the Russian
Government bought in 1905, and sent out to the
Yenesei via the Kara Sea, in order to carry foodstuffs
to the starving people of Siberia, who were reduced to
great want owing to the Russo-Japanese War. The
Oryol had been used for passenger work on the Clyde,
and her old Scottish name, Glenmore, still appeared on
her bell and buckets. She had accommodation for a
few first-class passengers aft, but forward she was
crowded during the whole trip. The third-class berths
were divided into "numbered" and "unnumbered."
The passengers in the first division paid a little more,
and were certain of a sleeping-place each night. Those
in the second slept where they could, and it was almost
impossible to move about between decks, for every corner
was occupied by bundles of bedding, kegs of butter,
cooking utensils, or sleeping children. The older people
sat about in groups and drank tchai steadily all day
long, or else cracked sunflower seeds and the nuts of the
Siberian cedar [Pinus cembra). Not only was the
steamer herself thus crowded. Behind her, she towed
a barge as large as Noah's Ark, and almost as unwieldy
as that commodious vessel must have been. Every
nook in it was thronged with poor Siberians, and on
deck was piled a medley of goods — empty fish barrels,
fishing skiffs, spars, and flour sacks ; and among them
all a great Russian cross in cheap white wood, evidently
destined for some distant trapping station, and ordered
during the previous autumn when the last steamer went

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 17
down to the south. Behind the barge was tied a scow
loaded with barrels, and two or three boats. It needed
no little skill to manoeuvre all these clumsy craft inshore,
especially when the wind was at all strong or the river
bed shallow.
Captain Otto Ello of the Oryol was a Finn. He was
an exile from his own country, but his banishment was
self-imposed. In his youth he had shirked his term of
military service, and dared not now return lest he
should be arrested as a deserter. He had settled in
Siberia, and married a most kindly Russian wife, who
accompanied him on his voyages. He spoke excellent
English, and had accompanied Mr. H. L. Popham when
that distinguished ornithologist travelled down the
river in 1897.
The OryoVs small saloon was almost as crowded as
the deck. Besides the four members of our own party,
there were two merchants who were travelling down
the river to inspect graphite mines on the Kureika,
and a Yenesiesk trader called Kitmanoff, one of the
owners of the steamer. There was also on board a
very influential person, an official of some kind in the
province of Yenesiesk. He was a morose, ugly little
man, with a goatee beard, who spent much of his time
in drinking tea and eating dutch cheese, which he kept
in a tin box in his cabin — a frugal custom that we,
after a perusal of the steward's tariff card, resolved to
imitate. Our attention was first called to him at
Yenesiesk, where a deputation of the officials of the town
waited to receive him at the gangway ; and when we
left the place two days later, the same deputation

18 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
brought offerings to him. The Influential Person was
very pleased with the gifts, which were small but
practical, and consisted of a jar of honey and a green
pocket-handkerchief. With Yenesiesk, we left some of the formalities of
life behind us. Nicolai, the saloon steward, who, for
four broiling days, had endured a crumpled white shirt
front as a sort of insignia of office, now ran about in
coUarless comfort for the rest of the trip ; and Captain
Ello paced the bridge in a sort of semi-lay attire, some
thing like that of a Wesleyan minister.
Now that the last of the towns was left behind. It
became a little easier to realise this wonderful river
down which we were travelling. The Yenesei — " the
wide water" as it was called by its first navigators
(beetle-browed and hairy -jerkined folk, who launched
their catamarans upon its upper reaches when history
was dim) — is the fifth longest river in the world. It is
the second of the three stately rivers that flow north
wards from the central watershed of Asia, and drains
an area of 970,000 square miles. The sources of the
Yenesei, the Bei-Kem, Khua-Kem, and the rest, rise
in the mountains of Mongolia and flow for 3000 miles
before they reach the Arctic Ocean. All the great
tributaries — the Angara, which comes from Lake Baikal,
the Podkammenaya Tunguska, and Lower Tunguska —
enter it from the east. Even at Yenesiesk, the great
river is a verst in width, and it gradually grows, until
just below Dudinka it sweeps out into one of the most
magnificent estuaries in the world. What energy, as
it seems, is here poured profitlessly into the Arctic

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 19
Ocean ! The strength of all these billions of tons of
moving water is scarcely harnessed sufficiently even to
turn a sawmill. And if the waste were twenty times
as great, it would be almost useless to exploit it, for
during the half of each year the Yenesei is securely
locked away under ice. Marvellous must be the power
of the frost that can bind such a volume of running
water. But strong though the frost is, the strength of
the thaw is greater still. Seebohm,^ who watched the
break-up of the ice on the Lower Yenesei, gives a
graphic account of a display of force which " dwarfs
Niagara into insignificance. . . . Some idea of what
the pressure must have been may be realised by the
fact that a part of the river a thousand miles long,
beginning with a width of two miles, and ending with
a width of six miles, covered over with three feet of ice,
upon which was lying six feet of snow, was broken up
at a rate of a hundred miles a day. ... On several
occasions we stood on the banks of the river for hours,
transfixed with astonishment, staring aghast at icebergs,
twenty to thirty feet high, driven down the river at a
speed of ten to twenty miles an hour."
When we left Yenesiesk the heat was intense, and
mosquito netting was stretched over all the portholes.
About midday we stopped for an hour at Nasimoro
koya, a large settlement on the left bank of the river.
This was the terminus of the high road from Krasnoyarsk.
From here, the only communication with the north is
down the river or else by telegraph. We went ashore
and walked about the village with interest, for it was
^ Birds of Siberia, p. 331.

20 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
the first of its kind that we had seen. All the villages
of the Yenesei are built after the same plan. They vary
only in size. Each consists of a manure heap with a few
wooden huts on the top. Sometimes it is a small manure
heap with one or two huts, and such a place smells
only a little. Nasimorokoya was a large manure heap
with about fifty huts, and it smelt a great deal. It was
very hot, so we went into a little shop to buy something
to drink. They brought us quass from an underground
store. It was a kind of small beer distilled from
bread, and I thought that the taste was very bitter
and nasty, but my companions liked it. When we
returned to the ship, we found that the crew were in
the act of slaughtering two young calves beside the
gangway. Somehow none of us felt inclined for the
veal that came on to the table for supper !
That night it was so hot that we could scarcely sleep,
but on the following morning we awoke to find weather
like that of an English March, with a chilly northerly
breeze. In the course of the day we went ashore at
Vorogovo, another village that almost deserves the
name of town in this part of the world. I went for a
ramble along the banks of a long-stagnant backwater
which lay between the river and the forest. It was the
haunt of innumerable reed-warblers, and also of innumer
able mosquitoes. A great spotted woodpecker popped
his scarlet poll round a stump, and a widgeon duck
malingered beside a willow-grown island. In the
meadows at the back of the village a flock of fifty
common gulls were resting on their journey to the
north, all turned heads to wind in ranks like a squad of

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 21
soldiers. The commonest birds were the yellow-breasted
buntings, which swarmed everywhere. Although it
was the middle of June, a female that I shot contained
eggs not yet ready for extrusion. I fancy that they
must breed rather late, and Mr. Popham also informs
me that he did not procure any eggs. Cuckoos were
calling in the forests on the other side of the back
water, and I shot a short- eared owl in a thicket. There
was a curious medley of east and west in the bird calls,
for while the redwings were making the woods ring,
and I heard the low, plaintive note of a yellow-browed
warbler among the willows, the dominant voices were
those of a pair of starlings, who were breeding in an
ivied tree-trunk hard by. The mosquitoes were as bad
here as at Yenesiesk, and fairly drove me back to the
ship at last.
We left Vorogovo in the afternoon, and a few hours
later entered the Kamin Pass. This is the only reach of
the river between Krasnoyarsk and the sea which is
conventionally beautiful. Elsewhere, the stream is so
wide and the banks are so fiat, that the interest of the
landscape lies in its immensity, and even this is so
panoramic that the eye cannot grasp it properly. But
just here, the Yenesei narrowed to half its usual width,
and wound between steep fir-clad hills and crags. A
dark, hump-backed island, called Monastirskiy, lay in
mid-channel, and the river was divided into bewildering
creeks and inlets. A little village was perched on a crag
at the edge of the forest, and the hills and woods were
limned so sharply in the placid water that substance
and reflection might have changed places, and the land-

22 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
scape would have lost nothing of its clearness. A
number of black-throated divers were swimming in front
of the steamer, and their melancholy cries seemed quite
in keeping with the loneliness of the place. It seemed
almost like a sacrilege to drive our noisy, smoky little
boat through a scene of such profound peace, and smash
the still images of the hills into a thousand ripples in
our wake.
In an hour we left the pass behind, and the river-
banks flattened out into their usual monotony. In the
small hours of the morning we stopped at a little station
in the forest to take in fuel for the engines. The wood
was already stacked at the waterside, so that there was
no delay, and the crew went to work at once to fill the
bunkers. The bank was overgrown with white flower
ing shrubs, and by climbing to the top it was possible
to escape from the steamer and step into the peace of
the forest. The place had recently been on fire, and
Httle wreaths of smoke hung among the tree-tops. It
was still dark, but somewhere a long way off a thrush
praised the dawn that was coming. One of the ship's
boys made a pipe from an alder cane, and its plaintive
lilt was in harmony with a scene whose spell even the
laughter and chatter of the woodcutters could not break.
We seemed to stand at the edge of an enchanted land.

CHAPTER IL
A ramble in the forest— Verkne Imbatskaya— The Ostiaks of the Yenesei
— The black-throated ousel— The romance of the telegraph— Diffi
culties on the voyage— Monastir— Bird's-nesting at Turukhansk—
The pale thrush — The Kureika— The Yenesei cuckoos— Lost in
the forest — The willow island — Igarka.
Between Yenesiesk and Turukhansk, the stoppages
of the steamer were much fewer and shorter than
those later on when we neared the river's mouth,
and this obliged me to leave a great deal of most
interesting country unexplored. It was very tantalis
ing to see mile after mile of forest slipping past
with all its wealth of bird life, and not go ashore
there. On the following day, 13th June, I could not land
until the afternoon, when we stopped at a firewood
station. Vassilli came with me and brought his gun,
for the size of our weekly bill had startled us, and we
found that it was cheaper to furnish our own pot than
to live upon stchee from the steamer's kitchen. Before
leaving, I asked how long the steamer waited, and was
told one hour.
Vassilli and I went along the waterside. Several
times we tried to penetrate into the forest, but the
trees here were saplings growing so closely together
that a man could scarcely force his body between them,

24 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
and we were obliged to keep to the river-bank. In an
English woodland, if one pauses for a minute, some bird
or other is certain to betray himself — a robin flits across
a clearing, titmice squabble overhead, or else a blackbird
rushes chuckling from his stronghold, but by the
Yenesei, small birds seemed oddly scarce. Vassilli shot
a hazel hen [Rahchik, the Russians call them), and
forthwith teased me until I had taught him the English
for " horoshie myaso," which means " good meat." A
cuckoo flitted before us into the forest, and a great
spotted woodpecker hammered a stump. Inside the
forest sounded the voices of tits and willow-wrens, and
down by the waterside a pair of common sandpipers
were nesting. This was the most northerly place at
which I heard the insistent monotonous little song of
the yellow-breasted bunting.
It was rather a disappointing walk on the whole,
and in the hope of finding better things I pushed on
rather farther than I intended. Consequently we were
still more than a mile from the ship when the hoot
of her departure blared into the forest. When we
arrived, excessively hot with running, it was to find
Captain Ello whistling to us from the bridge, and all
the gangways up ready to start, while we had to run
the gauntlet of the highly flavoured comments of the
passengers of the barge, who leaned over the rail to
watch us hurry past. Often on that trip down the
river I was reminded of Epictetus' parable of the man
who, while on a sea voyage, goes ashore to gather shells
and nuts, and thereby is in danger of losing the ship
altogether. I always made a point of finding out how

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 25
long a stop was expected in a given place, but the answer
was generally an hour beside the truth. It was annoy
ing to hurry back to the steamer from some promising
place only to find that her departure had been delayed
for some reason, and that I might have put in an hour
of extra work.
During the afternoon we passed the post boat from
Turukhansk to Yenesiesk. In the summer, the mails
are sent by the river and forwarded from village to
village. The little boat was scudding along at a fine
pace, with her square sail set to the southerly breeze,
and we were told that letters sent in this way reach
headquarters more quickly than if they were carried by
the steamers. We also saw a small boat towed along
the shore by dogs. A man and woman sat in it at
their ease, while the dogs ran along the bank. The
latter were harnessed very clumsily, as it seemed to me,
by a trace fastened to a girth round the middle of the
body, so that all the strain came upon the animal's
loins. The sledge dogs of the Yenesei are fine
fellows, something like a Scotch collie, only more
stoutly built, with prick ears and tremendous furry
coats. The native dogs, on the other hand, are much
smaller, and are not used for haulage but only for
hunting and for herding the reindeer.
In the evening, we reached Verkne Imbatskaya, but
the steamer did not stop long enough to allow me to
do any bird's-nesting there. Here for the first time we
saw some Ostiaks by the waterside. Half a dozen of
their boats, clumsy but ingenious contrivances, built
like a punt with a barrel on the top, were moored in a

26 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
backwater beside the village. The owners, who were
living in two very dirty chooms on the bank, were
timid, especially the women. At the approach of
strangers they all dived into their primitive house-boats,
and hid there until tempted out by the offer of kopecks,
the value of which they quite realised.
The Yenesei Ostiaks are of very great interest
ethnologically, and are said to be unlike any other tribe
in Siberia. One scholar has even' put forward the
hypothesis that they belong to the same race as the
short-skulled people who lived in Northern Europe before
the Germanic immigration. Philologists, however, have
given good reasons for supposing that the Ostiaks are
nearly related to the present inhabitants of Thibet ;
and there seems no doubt that in very early times they
immigrated to the middle Yenesei from the south-east,
or at least from the south. Formerly they were a fine
and warlike race, and gave their Slavonic invaders
much trouble before they were subdued. But during
the last two hundred years, their strength has declined,
and now they are a quiet and inoffensive people,
miserably poor, and decimated by the diseases that they
have acquired from the white men. At one time there
used to be a great annual fair at Imbatskaya, to which
hundreds of Ostiaks came to sell fish and furs ; but now
the race has dwindled to such an extent that the total
number of the whole tribe probably does not now
exceed a thousand souls. Soon, no doubt, like other
primitive races, they will totally disappear before the
advance of Western civilisation.
Mr. Popham found both the black-throated thrush

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 27
{Turdus atrigularis) and the pintailed snipe breeding
near Imbatskaya, and I was therefore disappointed that
I had no opportunity of bird's-nesting there. However,
on the following day, I went ashore for an hour or two
in the evening at Markova, a small fishing village
farther down the river. A pair of oyster-catchers, the
only ones that I saw on the Yenesei, were paddling
about, almost in the street. A thrush whose note was
then unknown to me was singing among the thick
willows, and I spent about half an hour out of a
precious two hours in trying to stalk it, but in vain.
I afterwards knew it to be the Siberian thrush [T.
sihiricus). I then left the willow thicket, and went into
the spruce woods at the back of the village. Redwings
were breeding there in some numbers, but there was
little undergrowth for other small birds, and those that
there were had gone to roost. Presently, however, a
thrush that was no redwing bounced out of a low
spruce tree. I shot her as she fluttered through the
branches, and was pleased to find that she was the
black-throated thrush, a species whose eggs were first
taken on the Yenesei by Mr. Popham.'- The nest was
built between four and five feet from the ground, close
to the trunk of a low spruce tree, and was stoutly made
of twigs, dry grass, and mud, like that of a blackbird.
It contained five eggs. A little farther on another pair
of the birds were evidently breeding, but they kept out
of shot, and while I was looking for the nest, the
steamer hooted its hideous warning, and I had to give
up the search. 1 H. E, Dresser, The Ibis, July 1901,

28 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
At Markova, as at all these riverside villages, a
broad lane was hewn through the forest parallel with
the river to make a way for the single line of telegraph
wire which connects Turukhansk and Vorogovo with
Yenesiesk. The trees and saplings were just lopped off,
and lay where they fell in an avenue some thirty yards
wide and five hundred miles long. When you walked
beneath it in the dusk of a Siberian midnight, and
listened to the wind buzzing round its insulators, that
telegraph had a peculiar romance of its own. Here
were two intense patches of human life, set down
hundreds of versts apart in the wilderness, and this
wire seemed such a slender, inconsequent sort of thing
to bind them together. How many messages must in
the course of the year travel thus through the heart of
the forest all unknown and unsuspected by the birds
who fly across the clearing, and the beasts who hunt
through the thickets hard by !
The voyage between Vorogovo and Turukhansk
was made difficult for us by the illness of the only
member of our quartet who could speak Russian. The
conversation of the other three was limited to authorita
tive requests for tea and bread and butter, and as our
only other linguistic asset was an inquiry as to how
long the steamer would wait at the next stopping-place,
the situation would have been very inconvenient if it
had not been for the kindness of everybody on board
the Oryol. All, from Captain Ello, who was the only
person with whom we could converse, to Nicolai, the
good-natured steward, did their best to help us. Even
the Influential Person dashed out of his cabin to rebuke

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 29
a fellow-passenger who disturbed the patient by slam
ming a door ; and another traveller, a little merchant
of Monastir, hearing that we were trying to obtain
oranges, brought a dozen that he was taking home as
an especial treat for his wife, and offered half of them
for the invalid. Nevertheless there were awkward
moments, and neither I nor one of my companions will
forget one critical evening when ice became a necessity
and the dictionary was mislaid. Then we took the law
into our own hands, and went in person to those
mysterious and odorous regions whence our food came.
The galley door was open. Inside, the cook stood with
his back to us, unawares. His face was buried in the
soup tureen which was tilted to his thirsty throat. My
companion and I looked at each other meaningly ; and
then, unperceived, we slunk past on tip-toe to the
storeroom. It was locked, but some grinning third-
class passengers, who thoroughly entered into the joke,
showed us a trick, the knowledge of which was evidently
common property, by which the padlock might be
slipped aside. We entered like conspirators among the
butter-kegs, pickled cabbage, and gory carcases which
would furnish our future meals ; and in haste chipped
off illicit chunks of ice and stored them in a thermos
flask. When we turned round, we found that we had
been caught in flagrante delicto by the chiefs of the
commissariat department of the ship, who were too
speechless at our audacity to interfere.
We were due to arrive at Monastir on 15 th June,
and we were most anxious to reach this town, as we
hoped to find a doctor for our companion, who was

30 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
seriously ill. In the ordinary course, we should have
arrived at midday, but at 11 a.m. the wind rose so
much that for the sake of the barge, the steamer was
obliged to anchor for two hours. Behind the barge
was towed a scow full of empty fish barrels, and as the
river grew choppy, these began to shift about perilously.
Half a dozen men went off in the dinghy to make them
fast, but before they could reach the spot, some of the
cargo had rolled off, and floated away gaily down the
Yenesei. Then some spars on the deck of the barge
were blown bodily overboard, and there was some con
fusion before all was made secure. At length the boat
returned, but the crew were in such a hurry to scramble
aboard out of the rain, that they omitted to make fast
the painter, and two minutes later the boat was seen to
follow the barrels down the river. The steamer had
then to slip the cable and go off to pick up the boat.
Altogether we did not arrive at Monastir until after
seven o'clock.
We lost no time in inquiring for the doctor. He
came on board at once, and was able to reassure us
about our companion, whose illness had fortunately
taken a turn for the better during the day. We were
lucky to find him at home ; for his district includes a
million square versts of country, and it must take a
good deal of travelling to cover it all, if indeed he ever
succeeds in doing so.
I did not see much of Monastir, and that not under
the most favourable conditions ; but, on the whole, I do
not think that I have ever seen a more dreary-looking
place. Miss Curtis and I went ashore late in the

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 31
evening. It was bitterly cold, and there was scarcely
a living thing to be seen except a few dogs who were
prowling over the mixens by the landing-stage. The
main street was like an open sewer-ditch, spanned by
a broken plank ; and as we balanced ourselves pre
cariously above the mud, it began to sleet heavily
enough to make us look for winter gloves — a woeful
change from the heat at Yenesiesk, where we had sat
about in cotton shirts and talked of bathing.
Monastir is now the capital of the Turukhansk
district. Until a few years ago, Turukhansk, on the
little river Turukhan, held that position ; but recently
the Government buildings were burnt down by a raid
of criminal exiles, and it was decided to move the seat
of officialdom to Monastir. Turukhansk was founded
in 1662, when Mangaseya, the great trading town on
the Taz, was burnt down by the Yuraks ; and until
1822, when its importance declined, it was the largest
town in this part of the north. Each year a great fair
was held there, and was visited by numbers of people
who came partly to buy and sell, and partly to worship
in the church of the Monastery of Svyato-Troitskiy
(i.e. the Holy Trinity), which contains the sarcophagus
of St. Vassilli of Mangaseya, which, so the legend
says, was brought there by miraculous aid from the
Taz in the seventeenth century. Now it is nothing
but a miserable hamlet; for what little prosperity
official peculation has left to this part of the country
has been transferred to the neighbouring village of
Monastir. We went to the little post-office at the top of the

32 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
town to buy stamps ; and the magnitude of our purchase
fairly staggered the postmaster, who had probably
never before sold letter stamps by the dozen. After
wards we tried to buy biscuits, but it was after midnight,
and the houses were all shut up. However, at last we
found a little shop, whose owner was not only awake,
but could also talk German. He seemed to take great
interest in us, and asked us to drink a glass of tea with
him, but we had to decline with thanks, for the steamer
was about to start. A great deal of this was kindly
Siberian hospitality, but there was besides a certain
amount of curiosity. Our party was a matter for
wonderment all along the river. The most popular
explanation of our presence on the Yenesei was that we
were Suffragettes who had been exiled there by the
British Government ! But if that had really been the
case, it would have been doubly kind of the Monastir
shopkeeper to ask us to tea.
We went to bed at 2 a.m., and awoke next morning
to find that the Oryol was anchored at Old Turukhansk,
about thirty versts farther on. It was a fine bright
morning, and I lost no time in going ashore. Turuk
hansk stands on some rising ground in the middle of
water meadows. Behind it lie miles and miles of broken
country, of pasture, marsh, and forest, all swarming with
bird life. I saw the little bunting here for the first
time. This was one of the nests that I was most anxious
to photograph while on the Yenesei, and I spent a con
siderable time in searching for one ; but the birds were
still coquetting in pairs along the woodside, and did not
seem to have begun to breed yet. Seebohm took his

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 33
first nest on 23rd June, and that was a full week later
than the date on which I first saw the bird.
Behind the village there was a stretch of marshy
lake, and the debatable land between woodside and
water teemed with birds. Redwings, fieldfares, and the
graceful yellow-headed wagtail were breeding, but the
willow-warblers were still courting in the tree-tops, so
it seemed to me. I saw Phylloscopus borealis, P. tristis,
and P. superciliosus. The latter was very common,
and its little monotonous song tinkled on without ceas
ing from every bush. Here, for the first time, I saw
the love flights of the pintailed snipe. Half a dozen of
the birds were buzzing over the forest. They rose in
circles to a great height, uttering a sharp single note
not unlike the hek of the common snipe, and then made
a tremendous perpendicular dive earthwards. Dresser ^
describes the noise as being like the bubbling of water,
but I found that this was rather misleading. The sound
when heard at close quarters is a hollow roar, extra
ordinarily loud and deep. I should not compare it to
water at all, unless it has a remote resemblance to the
noise made by filling up quickly a vase with a narrow
neck. Two pairs of wood sandpipers were honeymoon
ing among the rushes. Their voices were happy :
taludle taludle lirra lirra taludle, and from a birch
tree fell a shower of the most liquid notes that are heard
in the Yenesei forests — the song of the Siberian thrush.
But Turdus sihiricus is the wariest of a wary family ;
and when he spied me among the bushes, he dropped
out of sight with a low chuck-chuck, for all the world
1 A Manual of Palxwrctic Birds.
3

34 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
like a blackbird who dives into the laurels when you
surprise him on the shrubbery path. To an amateur in
bird-watching, it is a constant interest and pleasure to
notice among the birds of another country the little
actions and ways that he has learned to know so well in
their kindred in Britain.
In the scrub birch wood at the back of the vUlage,
I shot a pine grosbeak. He was like a flash of red sun
shine as he flew through the wood, and when I had him
in my hand, I was sorry, because sunshine is scarce. I
wonder why a bird is beautiful even when it is dead.
A dead beast is always ugly and generally repulsive.
White as pearls are his teeth, was said of the dead dog
in the legend, and it was all that even perfect Com
passion could say. I once saw a dead fox who looked
beautiful, but then he was curled up as if in life with
the sunshine on his ruddy pelt, and all the hateful con
sequences of death were hidden. But a bird's dead
body keeps some grace, and why this should be so I do
not know, for, when in life, it is so much the incarnation
of all that is joyous and vital that symbolically, if not
actually, it seems as if it ought to be doubly repellent
in death. Close to this spot I found a wood sandpiper brood
ing over three fresh eggs in an old fieldfare's nest, buUt
in a low spruce tree. In Europe the wood sandpiper
breeds in a hollow in the ground ; and it was Mr. H. L.
Popham who first pointed out that on the Yenesei, in four
cases out of five, the site chosen was the deserted nest
of some other bird. The sandpiper sat so closely that
he almost allowed himself to be pushed off the nest, and

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 35
if a camera had been at hand it would have been easy
to photograph him as he peeped over the brim.
On my way back to the ship I passed through the
village of Turukhansk, which was even more desolate
and poverty stricken than that of Monastir. All the
inhabitants were down by the waterside, unloading
flour sacks and revelling in the excitement caused by
the arrival of the first steamer of the summer. We
understood this excitement better when we had lived for
two months on the river without news of the outer
world. In the course of the afternoon we weighed anchor
and proceeded down the river, putting into a firewood
station in the evening. I went ashore with Vassilli, but
it was a cold, wet night, and there were hardly any birds
to be seen. I walked for more than a verst into the
forest and saw nothing but a few bramblings and one
cuckoo. Presently, however, a thrush, which at first
sight I took to be a redwing, dived off a nest built in
the angle of a fir-tree branch about twelve feet from the
ground. A minute later, and both birds were fluttering
round me. I shot one, and to my surprise found that
it was a cock pale thrush {Turdus ohscurus). I
climbed up to the nest, which contained four eggs lying
on a grass lining like that of a redwing. As time was
short, I could not wait to secure the other bird, but
hastened back to the ship. On the way I met Vassilli,
who brought a nest and five eggs similar to those I had
found, and also a female pale thrush, which he had shot
at the nest. Vassilli had been using duck-shot and had
fired at a fifteen-foot range, so that it was impossible to

36 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
make a skin of the mangled corpse that he produced
for my inspection, but it was quite recognisable enough
for identification. Shortly afterwards, while waiting
for the gangway to be raised, I heard another bird sing
ing on a larch tree close to the river bank. The song,
what there is of it, is sweet and very characteristic of
the thrush family ; but as it consists only of a few notes
and then a semibreve rest, it is not to be compared with
that of our own throstle.
The following morning, 17th June, I turned out at
7.30 a.m., and found that we were at anchor a couple
of versts south of the river Kureika. This must always
be one of the most interesting parts of the river to the
ornithologist, associated as it is with Seebohm's account
of his explorations in 1877, and I went ashore at once
with Vassilli.
The shore was littered with whitening branches, the
dead bones of the forest flung hither and thither by
the spring floods. A pair of ringed plovers — those
cheerful cosmopolitans — had staked their claim to a
patch of the beach, and some sandpipers had already
prepared their nest in the sand. There were many
cuckoos flying about the river bank. The Kureika was
the most northerly point at which I saw these birds,
and they puzzled me a good deal. There were, so it
seemed, two distinct kinds. One, when on the wing,
appeared to be identical with our common cuckoo
{Cuculus canorus). The other, which was of about the
same size, was constantly seen in company with the
grey bird, but it had plumage which was as dark as
that of a nightjar. These Yenesei cuckoos had two

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 37
distinct notes. One was the familiar cuckoo call ; the
other was a weird hoo-hoo-hoo, which rang for miles in
the forest. I was not well acquainted with the cuckoo
family, and hastUy jumped to the conclusion that the
new call belonged to the dark birds. I made several
attempts to secure one of the latter, but always failed to
do so. When I returned to England, Mr. Popham
kindly allowed me to see nine skins that he obtained on
the Yenesei some years ago. These skins were formerly
identified as Cuculus canorus, but they have recently
been re-examined by Mr. H. F. Witherby, who pro
nounces that all but two belong to an allied species,
C optatus, which ranges eastwards from the Yenesei
to China, and southwards to the Himalayas. It
differs from our bird in note, and also in the cream-
coloured underwing- and undertail-coverts, and in the
broader markings on the breast. Among these C
optatis are two examples of the red or hepatic variety
of plumage. I have not much doubt but that the dark
birds that I saw belonged to this type. If so, it is
common on the Yenesei, for I reckoned that one-third
of all the cuckoos seen belonged to this form.
We walked along the beach, and about half a mile
from the ship, where the covert was densest, I heard
a little crackle of brushwood. There, hidden among
the willows, were two little Ostiaks, gathering fire
wood and chattering together as they worked. In their
brown hide dresses they looked as much children of
the primitive forests as wild fawns or hares, and they
were nearly as timid. At the rustle of our passing,
they looked up, startled, with their gentle, inquiring

38 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
faces turned to the spot whence the sound came, and
then in panic-stricken silence they slipped away into
the bushes.
Presently we reached the junction of the Kureika
and the Yenesei, and I could scarcely believe that I
was actually standing beside the river of which Seebohm
wrote, and perhaps in the very spot where he went
bird's-nesting. With the recollection of the Birds of
Siberia in my mind, I was rather disappointed in the
Kureika. Perhaps, in a sort of subconscious way, one
expected to find ruby-throated warblers or red-tailed
fieldfares on every bush. As it was, I walked for two
miles up the tributary and saw nothing at all except
two wood sandpipers, scores of willow-warblers, and
some pintail duck. By and bye I thought of taking a
short-cut back to the ship, through the forest, and as
Vassilli took kindly to the idea, we turned off among
the trees. I knew quite well that it was necessary to
be careful, and I generally wore a compass on my watch
chain, but that morning by some oversight it had been
left behind, and as we had only to cross the open angle
formed by the two rivers, it did not seem possible to
lose the way. The trees grew very close together, with
long tags of lichen-like sparse hair waving from their
twigs. The moss underfoot deadened the footfall like a
blanket, and every now and then the foot slipped down
into the heart of a tree that had been buried out of
sight under the rotting pine needles of hundreds of
summers. Here there were even fewer birds than by
the riverside. Once or twice I heard the harsh chee of
a brambling, or a defiant spasm of song from a wandering

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 39
chiff-chaff, but, for the most part, the forest was as'silent
as a church, and nearly as uninteresting from an
ornithological point of view.
I had reckoned that in order to hit off the steamer
we ought to walk in a south-westerly direction, but
after we had wandered on for more than an hour I
began to be rather anxious, and appealed to Vassilli.
He, however, was quite confident, and explained by
signs that the steamer was ahead of us. Wherever he
goes, a man is taken at his own valuation. Vassilli
rated himself very highly indeed, and consequently, at
first at all events, we had much respect for his judg
ment and capabilities. Accordingly I followed him
for another mile towards the south - west, although
with increased misgivings. Twice I tried a southerly
direction, but each time he insisted with emphatic
gestures that we ought to walk straight ahead. The
forest was undulating, and at each ridge I expected to
see the Yenesei, but each time only another immense
vista of tree-tops met the eye. Vassilli began to lag
and cast doubtful glances round him, and when I next
turned to him he merely shrugged his shoulders and
threw up his eyes in despair. I then realised that we
had fairly lost our bearings in a forest some seven
thousand versts long by fifteen hundred wide. I think
that the faculty of direction, or orientation, or whatever
one may call it, must fill a very large place in the human
mind, because, when it is lost, the feeling is one of such
utter helplessness. You pooh-pooh the idea that you
have really gone astray, but at the same time you have
an insane wish to go on walking somewhere, no matter

40 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
where, just so that you may keep on the move. Your
instinct declares so emphatically that you are all wrong
that you are tempted to believe it, and turn right about,
although your reason says that you are all right. I
knew, of course, that we could not be so very far from
the ship, and that if the worst came to the worst we
could retrace our steps with a reasonable chance of
hitting off either one or the other of the rivers ; but
this would have meant spending several hours in the
forest, and, besides, we had twisted about so much
among the trees that I was by no means certain that I
was right. The question was, would it be best to wait
until the steamer hooted her departure, and trust to
hearing the siren, or should we go and look for her ?
But sound did not carry far under the trees, and there
was the possibility that we might have wandered beyond
the range of the whistle. Therefore, as Vassilli had no
suggestions to offer beyond the futile one that we
should continue to walk towards the south-west, I
turned back, and, much against his will, went off at an
angle to our former course. After we had gone for a
couple of miles we heard the sound of running water,
and soon came across a little ravine with a brook at the
bottom. Guessing that this stream must run into the
Yenesei, we followed it up, and soon came out on
the river bank. The Oryol — welcome sight — still lay
two or three versts downstream. Vassilli was delighted,
said, "I told you so" in dumb show, and insisted on
writing down the Russian and English words for
" steamer." This little adventure gave me a fright, and
I did not venture again upon promiscuous explorations

Krestova.

' .^^'-^

The Taiga by the Kureika.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 41
in the forest, but always followed up the river-bank,
or walked beside some watercourse, which in the end
would guide me back to the ship.
The steamer stopped at the mouth of the Kureika
to set down two merchants who were prospecting
for graphite about sixty miles up the river. Their
venture, however, turned out very badly. They entered
into a contract for the shipment of the graphite to
Europe via the Kara Sea, but the contractor very
prudently insisted that his money should be paid in
advance. When the European War broke out, the
merchants wished the contract to be void, but the
contractor held them to their bargain. The unfortunate
men lost their money, and, for all I know, their graphite
is still lying beside the Kureika.
After we had crossed the Arctic Circle we came in
for a spell of stormy weather. Late in the evening,
after we had passed the Kureika, the wind rose, and,
for the sake of the barge, we were obliged to lie to
under a willow-grown island. A regular blizzard was
driving over the river, and all the leafless trees by the
waterside moaned and rattled their branches together
like dancing skeletons. Most birds were hidden out
of sight. Those who were in evidence included a
party of mealy redpolls {Carduelis linaria)'m the adult
frosted-roseleaf plumage, and a terek sandpiper who
jumped up from a clutch of fresh eggs under a fallen
tree-trunk. Fieldfares were breeding in the willows,
and I saw a bluethroat and a little bunting. Vassilli
went off to shoot ducks for the pot, and secured a
widgeon, a teal, and a tufted duck, while I wasted a

42 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
lot of time in trying to stalk a bird which turned out
to be my alert friend, the Siberian thrush, again. I
was climbing up to what appeared to be a fieldfares
nest, when, unexpectedly, a long beak like a bee's
sting darted over the brim, and instead of the original
architect, the grey poll of a wood sandpiper popped up.
Near the same place Vassilli found a clutch of eggs of
the same species laid upon the ground. In all the
nests found by Mr. Popham the male bird was on
the eggs ; but in this case Vassilli shot the sitting bird
for identification, and it turned out to be the female,
thus proving that the hen does take some part in the
work of incubation.
The following day — 1 9th June — was cold and
squally, with a southerly wind. We travelled past
miles and miles of willow forests. The banks were
shaved away sharply by the recent floods, and the
roots and branches of broken trees stuck through the
debris. All along the Yenesei nothing is more striking
than this prodigal litter of driftwood. Scores of acres
of forest must be washed away every year and carried
down to the sea. Much of the flotsam is stranded on
the beaches and islands of the estuary, but more drifts
into the Arctic Ocean, and after travelling to and fro
for months or years is finally thrown up on the coasts
of Novaya Zemlya, or else carried in the ice right
across the Pole to Greenland. At midday we stopped
for half an hour at Igarka, a typical riverside settle
ment. The place was a trapping as well as a fishing
station, and a man came on board with fox and martin
skins for sale. A few immature common gulls and a

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 43
dozen arctic terns were flying round the landing-stage
— perhaps in anticipation of the pickings that would
be theirs by and by. In the forest behind the houses,
the snow lay more thickly than at any place that we
had yet seen, and a flock of redpolls were feeding
in the drifts in front of the huts as confidently as
sparrows. This was the destination of the white
cemetery cross from Yenesiesk, for although there were
not half a dozen houses in the place, yet there was a
well-filled graveyard beside them. Two or three pallid
children peeped at us from the doorways, and although
the settlement did not seem as poor as many that we
had seen, yet it had a look of unutterable dreariness
that even the cheerful twittering of the redpolls among
the tombstones could not dispel.
What a strange big-little horizon must compass the
folk who live in these pioneer settlements ! Their outer
world is almost boundless — taiga and taigd, and taiga
again for three thousand miles. But their inner view
is limited by the price of fish and foxskins, and the
change of the weather. Often as I watched these
lonely spots slip behind us, I wished that I could
spend a year in pilgrimage on these waters, to work
with the people for a little while and live as they lived.
Later on we learned something of their precarious lives,
but even there we saw them only as a man sees players
moving on the stage, and criticised and applauded with
a certain detachment. What sort of people are they ?
Very simple, very powerful, very crude, but not brutal
any more than children or animals are brutal, and not
so much immoral as unmoral. It is only in the lees of

44 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
cities that human nature becomes wholly debased : men
who live in the wilderness keep some saving grace,
however small. At least the air that they breathe is
pure, and the sights that they see, save those of their
own making, are clean. But life such as this is a great
leveller. Many of the old settlers sink back to the
state of the aborigines. From year to year, they
almost forget a stranger's speech and gradually relapse
into the native dress and customs. On the Yenesei,
there are more half-breeds in the choom than in the
Russian hut. Face to face with the primitive life and
the primitive country, the native strain soon quenches
the European blood.
At one time this region must have been much more
densely populated than it is at present. In 1824 there
are said to have been forty-six Russian homesteads
north of Turukhansk, whereas in 1863 there were only
twenty-seven. According to Dr. Nansen,^ who quotes
an old map of the Yenesei estuary, " there was a fairly
dense population the whole way, especially along the
east side of the Yenesei, from Dudinka northward, right
up past Dickson Island, and eastward to the mouth of
the Pyasina." Of late years, there has of course been
a renewed flow of immigration, but it will be a long
time before the traffic along the lower reaches of the
river is equal to what it used to be in the past.
' Through Siberia, p. 180.

CHAPTER III
The taigd— The dusky ousel and the little bunting— The Tungus —
Platina— Women merchants — Dudinka — The first sight of the
tundra — Krestova — The Yenesei fisheries — Breokoffsky Ostrov —
Stormbound — Arrival at Golchika — First impressions — A Good
Samaritan— Michael Petrovitch Antonoff.
As we travelled northwards, the trees on the river bank
became smaller, and the snow patches between them
grew larger. It seemed as if for every day, spring was
retarded for one week. Outside Platina, which we
reached on 19th June, the steamer made a long stop to
take fuel on board, and I was able to take a walk in the
forest. The snow here lay so thickly that it was possible
to blunder waist-deep into a drift, but where the thaw
had left the moss black and bare, the crisp crimson leaf-
buds of the wild rhubarb were uncurling in the sunshine,
and the whole forest rang with the tinkle of little rills
of melting snow. Although the calendar made the
season mid- June, the air was that of a jocund English
March. Yellow heartsease were in bloom beside the
snow, and wild garlic at the waterside. All day divers
passed the ship on their journey down the river — either
singly or in pairs. In the spring most birds go north
in couples, but they return in the autumn in troops.
The cook of the Oryol caught a red-throated diver — a
ga-garra as he called it — and brought it home alive,
45

46 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
writhing and striking like a snake in his hands. Be
sides the divers, geese were on the move, and flocks
continually flew gag-gaggling overhead. But all these
I hoped to meet again farther north, and the small birds
of the taiga were more appealing at that time. Of
these the little bunting was the most in evidence, and
this was the most northerly spot at which I observed this
elegant and charming species. On the whole, the buntings
are a homely family, well tricked out perhaps, but, all the
same, a little clumsy of build and a little scanty of song.
There are, however, two over whom I could find it in me
to become poetical. One is the trim reed-sparrow of
our Berkshire osier beds, and the other is the little
bunting under the Yenesei cedars. The birds had not
yet begun to breed, but males and females were keeping
company together in little parties consisting of two and
three couples in the forest where the undergrowth was
thickest, and where one might have only a glimpse of
their dainty mottled plumage through a lattice of twigs.
The song, unlike most bunting music, is a distinctive and
pleasant little warble, and the manner of its delivery
is not like that of most buntings. The corn-bunting
and the yellow-hammer, for instance — their Euro
pean cogeners — make a serious business of song, and
will not interrupt it either for food or for battle.
But the little bunting, like the warblers, weaves his
music into his common round, until it seems as
spontaneous as the rustle of the wind in the leaves
overhead. That afternoon the silence of the taiga was more
absolute than anything that I have ever known. It was

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 47
even more impressive than the silence of the tundra, for,
still as it was, one felt as if a life in which one had no
share was going on around. All the dense vegetation,
grass and undershrub and tree, seemed to be en
gaged in a desperate battle for light and air. You
saw the results of this tremendous wrestling bout in
the rotten branches that cracked in the moss underfoot,
and in the vigourous young undergrowth above them,
until you felt oppressed and stifled, as if you were a
trespasser in this tense and secret place.
I had walked for a mile before I realised that I was
not the only living thing in the forest. A pair of dusky
ousels (Turdus fuscatus) were breeding in a spruce fir-
tree beside a watercourse, and their harsh clamour of
alarm disturbed the stillness rudely. The nest was
built about five feet from the ground, and contained
four eggs, which, to a casual eye, would not be dis
tinguishable from those of a blackbird. When Seebohm
visited the Yenesei in 1877 he found the nest of this
thrush, but it contained young birds. Later on, Mr.
Popham took a number of nests with eggs. " These," he
writes,^ " were generally placed in small isolated trees,
and rarely on the ground, though none were more than
two feet from it." In 1914 I took two nests, both of
which were built, exceptionally perhaps, at least five
feet from the ground. The song of the dusky ousel as
I heard it in the taiga is loud and clear, though rather
broken in phrasing, something like the song of our own
missel-thursh. When their breeding-ground is invaded,
both birds clamour like fieldfares. The dusky ousel is
1 Ibis, 1898, p. 493.

48 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
the most northerly in range of the Yenesei thrushes.
I found it at the Breokoffsky islands, beyond the limit
of forest growth.
At this firewood station a Tungus came down to the
steamer to sell red foxskins. The Tungus inhabit the
taiga on the east bank of the Yenesei round the basins
of the Nishni Tunguska and Kamina Tunguska, as far
east as the watershed of the Lena. It is said that,
unlike the more northerly races, the Tungus, even when
offered unlimited vodka, seldom become helplessly
drunk. However, this Tungus must have been a
decadent specimen, for, unluckily for himself, as soon
as he came on board, he fell into the clutches of a
merchant from Yenesiesk, who plied him with drink
until he was quite stupid, and then persuaded him to
barter all his winter's catch of foxskins in exchange for
a bottle of vodka. This Tungus had brought a little
girl with him, and while he was carousing on the deck of
the Oryol, the poor child crouched in the canoe, staring
bewildered at the files of shouting woodmen who ran
between the gangway and the forest. Evidently she
had never before seen so much bustle and confusion on
the river bank, and when I tried to photograph her as
she sat in the boat, the poor little thing covered her
face timidly. When we last saw the pair, the man was
waving his bottle and shouting lustily, while the child
in the bows tugged patiently at the oars and rowed him
out of sight round a promontory.
In the course of the evening we passed Platina.
At this settlement there was one house which was of
much better appearance than the rest. It stood in a

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 49
good situation, and had an unwonted look of comfort
and neatness. A couple of cows and a horse grazed
near, and it had some attempt at a garden beside it.
On inquiry we heard that this house belonged to a
widow woman who had set up a small store there, and
conducted her business with such prudence and economy
that she outstripped all the masculine traders of the
district. Judging from what we saw on the Yenesei,
the women of Siberia are fully a match for the men in
the field of commerce. One of the passengers on the
Oryol — a certain Madame Nerotova — was the manager
for a large merchant in Dudinka. She was an intelligent-
looking, dark-eyed woman of middle age, and as her
employer could neither write nor read, she had control
of all his business, and many thousands of roubles
passed through her hands annually. Whenever the
steamer stopped at a fishing station, she went ashore
to look after the interest of her firm ; and for the credit
of our sex we were glad to see that her fishing tenants,
both native and Siberian, were on the whole happier
and more prosperous looking than their neighbours.
We reached Dudinka on 21st June. Although it is
only half the size of Monastir, this town is of some
importance on the Yenesei, for it is the focus of all the
trade and traffic of the tundra from as far east as the
Khatanga and Anabara Rivers. Twice a year, in spring
and autumn, the natives come with their reindeer to buy
and sell, and the merchants of Dudinka are reputed to
be the wealthiest in the whole country. Here we left
the forest behind, and the only trees were a few meagre
larches, not more than ten feet high. Dudinka itself
4

50 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
stood upon rising ground, and the country around was
open and rolling, although, owing to the melting snow
drifts, it was impossible to walk straight for two hundred
yards in any direction. But in between the patches of
snow were thickets of scrub willows which were just
blazing with birds. The word may sound exaggerated,
but anyone who has seen the edge of the tundra at
the end of June will know what is meant by it. Here
I met with many species that were new to me. Red-
throated pipits were very abundant, and on all sides
they parachuted down into the willows in a cascade of
song. The Lapland bunting was the next commonest
species. These birds were in pairs, and I shot a female
who was toying with a feather. I also saw a yellow-
headed wagtail, who was trailing a wisp of grass as long
and as unmanageable as her own tail. The willow bushes
held bluethroats and a number of small green furtive
things — Phylloscopus tristis and P. borealis so my gun
told me. How charming these little warblers are, and
how exactly, both in form and colouring, they harmonise
with the willow leaves among which they hide ! At
Dudinka, for the first time, wading birds became common.
I heard several golden plover on the tundra, and shot a
great snipe in the snow. Red-necked phalaropes were
abundant, and flocks of ruffs constantly flew overhead.
From a half- frozen creek came harsh the cries of some long-
tailed ducks — coal arU can'le licht, as the Scotch syllable
the call — and a dozen arctic terns were fishing in a flood
pool. I did not see the pintailed snipe here, although
it had been common in the marshy parts of the taiga
and was afterwards observed as far north as Pustoy.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 51
I did not visit the town (sic) of Dudinka. It is
said to contain thirteen houses, which annually consume
a hundred barrels of vodka between them. In fact, we
were told on good authority that there were only two
men in the place who did not drink, and both of these
were political exiles. Two of the merchants, following
what we found was the usual custom both here and at
Monastir, came into the saloon of the Oryol and ordered
dinner, but before the meal was half finished, both
worthies were lying fast asleep across the table. On
the Yenesei the women traders have the men at a dis
advantage, for the former do not lose half of their wits
and their roubles in the vodka bottle.
As we steamed on our way, we saw a smart little
motor-boat lying inshore. This was the patrol boat
Omul belonging to the Government. Dr. Nansen
travelled up the river in her in 1913.
Next morning — 22nd June — I went ashore at
Krestova, and explored the marshy banks of a small
lake. Here for the first time I saw the Temminck's
stint. Numbers of these gay little waders were hover
ing like butterflies overhead while they uttered their
gay trilling call. The willow bushes were full of chiff-
chaffs, but as far as I know there were no willow-
warblers to be seen. The specimens that I secured
were all Phylloscopus tristis. There were also a
number of redpolls, and I found two nests, containing
respectively one and two eggs. The nests were full of
snow, and of course the eggs were discoloured and
rotten, for they belonged to the previous summer. All
the redpoll skins that I brought back from the Yenesei

52 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
have been pronounced to be those of Carduelis linota, but
Mr. Popham obtained specimens of C. h. exilipes also.
Besides warblers and redpolls, the willows contained
yellow-headed wagtails, red-necked phalaropes, and
Lapland buntings. I also saw a dusky ousel and a
great snipe, and shot a long-tailed duck — one of a couple,
who were preening themselves on a cake of ice in
the lake. Four red-throated divers were swimming in
Indian file down the river, and ringed plovers were as
common as usual.
Although the ice had not long broken up on the
river, and blocks as big as cottages were piled up on the
bank, fishing had already begun. There were three or
four Yurak chooms on the foreshore, and as I returned
to the steamer, I paused to watch how the natives
hauled a good catch on to the sand.
The Yenesei fisheries are yearly becoming more
valuable, as more regular steamboat communication is
established on the river. In 1908, there were two
thousand men fishing on the Lower Yenesei, and
188,000 pouds, or three thousand tons, of fish were
caught. The output is probably still greater nowa
days, although no exact figures have been published,
but the trade might be enormously developed if it was
properly organised. As it is, the fish is bought from
the fishermen, both native and Siberian, by merchants
who sell it again in Yenesiesk, and in spite of the cost
of freight, etc., they make a very good profit. For
instance, the price of omul per poud at the fisheries is
about one rouble and a half, but the same fish is sold in
Yenesiesk at three to five roubles. The fishermen are

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 53
obliged to sell at the traders' price, for they have no
other market for their fish, and as there are no Trades
Unions on the Yenesei, they have not even the remedy
of a strike to help them to obtain better wages. The
methods of catching and preserving the fish are also
very primitive. With the introduction of modern
appliances and modern ways of curing, the Yenesei
might supply half Europe with fish.
The principal fish caught are the sturgeon {Acipenser
bceri), the njelr!iia,{Stenodus nelma), the omul {Coregonus
autum,nalis), the muksun (C. muksun), and the seld
(C. merki). These fish come up the river every year
from the Arctic Ocean. The sturgeon and nyelma
move as soon as the ice breaks up in May and June.
The muksun and seld follow three weeks later, and
the omul goes up stream about the middle of July.
But a good many sturgeon remain in the pools all the
year round, and at the settlements on the estuary, omul
and muksun are caught under the ice in the winter.
The Siberiaks say that these winter fish are fatter than
those taken in the summer.^
In the afternoon, we went ashore at Bieliy Pesok
(White Sand) for an hour. Two friendly Siberian
puppies, who were quite impervious to such snubs as a
pebble pelted at their heads, took it for granted that
I should take them for a walk. They quartered the
ground zealously for a hundred yards on either side of
me, and as the tundra was full of birds, our advance
made a deal of commotion. This was the last place
^ For these and other interesting notes on the fisheries of the Yenesei,
I am indebted to Dr. Nansen's account of his journey, Through Siberia.

54 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
where I heard the willow-wren in song, but the chiff-
chaffs ranged as far north as Breokoffsky. An oddly
assorted pair were hawking over the foreshore. One
was a pomatorhine skua, the first that I saw on the
Yenesei, and the other was a small hirundine of some
kind — probably the Siberian house-martin [Chelidon
lagopoda). There was a regular colony of common snipe
here, and among them were some pintail snipe. The
latter rise much more slowly than our nimble bird. In
fact, when they flipped up out of the willows, they
looked as big and dark as woodcock. I shot a male, and
managed to secure him before my self- constituted
retrievers could reach the spot. Then the Oryol began
to whistle, and the retrievers and I had to run back
through the swamp. However, there was some hitch
about sending off a boat, and my friends, who had been
visiting some chooms in the neighbourhood, sat down on
the sand to wait. Presently the owner of the principal
hut in the place came out and asked us to take a cup of
tea with his family. We entered the house by a dark,
covered passage, which served both as a storeroom and
to keep the living-room warm in winter. Inside the
kitchen was clean and well furnished. There were
actually pots of flowers on the window-sill, and an arm
chair. We sat on the big square bed in the corner while
our kindly brown-faced hostess plied us with tea and
excellent pirog. The latter is a kind of pasty or turn
over made with fish, meat, or sauerkraut. These
people were Tatars from the south, and like most of their
hardy, frugal race in this part of the world, they seemed
^to be more prosperous than their Russian neighbours.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 55
Late on the same evening. Captain Ello called me
to the bridge to look at Lukovoi Protok, where in 1895
Mr. Popham found the red-breasted goose breeding.
The Oryol did not stop at the place, but in the distance
could be seen the row of cliffs, still speckled with snow,
at the foot of which the nests were found.
After we passed Dudinka, the steamer and the
barge began to empty fast. Every few versts there
was a balagan, i.e. a low, turf-roofed hut, and here a
whole family, with children, nets, and cooking pots,
would go ashore with a boat and half a dozen barrels of
salt and a sack of flour. Some of these folk travelled
a thousand versts down the river and back again each
summer, just for the sake of the fishing season, which
lasts only for six weeks. Some of the Yenesei fisheries
belong to the Government, and some to the natives.
The fishing at the latter is free, and consequently the
Siberians prefer to settle there rather than at the
Government stations where a rent must be paid. But
this is rather hard on the poor Yuraks and Samoyedes,
who are thus gradually ousted from their ancient
rights. Below Krestova, the river suddenly opens out into
the magnificent estuary which is here over forty miles
from shore to shore. The low, bleak coast appears as
little more than a distant horizon, and where the wind
meets the water, a nasty choppy sea can spring up in
an hour or two. And so indeed we found it, for on
22nd June the weather changed, and for forty-eight
hours we were storm bound. In the evening, some
fishermen were sent ashore. They managed to put up

56 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
a wooden hut, but all the driftwood was sodden by the
rain, and they could not light a fire. On the second
morning some of the crew tried to take food ashore to
these unfortunate people, but the ship's clumsy boat
could not be beached in the surf on the open strand,
and the sailors were obliged to return, wet to the
skin. This delay was very trying to everybody on board,
from Captain Ello, who w^anted to finish his voyage to
Golchika and return to the south, to our dog, the
" Sabaka," as she was nicknamed by common consent,
who lived in a makeshift kennel in the stern of the
steamer. The poor thing found her quarters very
cramped, although whenever it was possible we took her
ashore for a run. She was cunning enough to find this
out, and as soon as she heard the rattle of the anchor
chains, she used to yelp dolorously until she was
taken for a walk, or until she heard the paddle wheels
thrash the water again, and knew that the hope of
release was over for the day.
The wind did not go down until 25th June. Then
the Oryol began to pant her fussy way down the river
again, stopping every ten or twenty miles to land fish
barrels. We grew heartily tired of watching the
crowded boats creep ashore, and the equally leisurely
unloading of their contents. These halts delayed our
progress very much, and were seldom long enough to
allow me to do any serious work on shore, except at
Breokoffsky, which we passed on 26th June.
We anchored off an island on the eastern side of the
archipelago, at ten o'clock at night. The water was so

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 57
shallow that the Oryol could not approach within a
mile of the bank ; and as there were two or three
families to send ashore, they had to be taken over in
small boats, a slow and tedious work. At the head of
a broad, shallow creek, there were three or four small
balagans. They had not been occupied since the
previous season, and were half full of snow ; but the
people did not seem to mind their damp and chilly
quarters at all, and went off in the best of spirits to
their summer's work.
A number of ruffs had evidently hit upon the
neighbourhood of these balagans as a suitable place for
the foolish sham combats in which they indulge during
the spring. Every few minutes, about a dozen of these
doughty, bedizened warriors would flop on to the grass,
and posture about, and " square up " to each other,
with truculent thrusts of their harmless pink bills. In
this attitude, with their gaudy plumage and curling
ruffs, they reminded me irresistibly of the " Mignon "
gallants of the reigns of the Valois. Now and then a
passing man would step almost in between the com
batants. Then the whole party would flounce off and
alight to settle their absurd rivalries on some other
hillock. The reeves were seldom seen, for they would
soon begin to breed in the long herbage, even if they
bad not already begun to do so.
When Seebohm visited Breokoffsky in the middle
of July 1877 he complained of the heat and the
swarms of mosquitoes. When I saw the place in 1914,
it was very different, for there were still three feet of
snow in many of the swamps, and although the sun

58 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
was shining gloriously all night, the wind was cold
enough to freeze the breath on one's lips. The ground
on the banks of the kurias was thawed and marshy,
but inland, round the lakes, there was much snow, and
most of the time I was splashing over the knees in half-
melted sludge. The willows in this wind-swept country
were so stunted and twisted that they all seemed to lie
along the ground in one direction from south to north,
as if the most prevalent gales blew down the river
instead of up from the sea, as indeed I afterwards heard
was the case. It was easy enough for a man to walk
into such a thicket, but it was quite another thing for
him to go back again, for as soon as he turned, the
slanting tops of the branches confronted him like fixed
bayonets, and held him a prisoner. You may see the
same device in the throat of the cuckoo-pint flower,
where the little flies creep into the corolla to steal the
honey, and then find that their retreat is cut off by
a palisade of hairs, that springs into position behind
them. It was unfortunate that the Siberian birds did not
share the Siberian men's indifference to time. No
matter how brightly the sun was shining, they went
to roost at midnight in the orthodox way — all, that is,
except a few ardent spirits who were too intent upon
their nuptials to take covert. Hence it was difficult
to make an exact ornithological census of the place.
Chiff-chaffs, red-throated pipits, bluethroats, redpolls,
and Lapland buntings were very common, especially
the former, whose chivet-chivet note could be heard
all night long ; and I saw two dusky ousels among the

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 59
willows. It was probably this thrush and not the
redwing that Seebohm found breeding here in 1877.
Common snipe continually bleated overhead, and the
lakes were full of red- and black-throated divers.
Temminck's stints were abundant, but I did not see
the little stint above Golchika, and this is probably its
most southerly breeding-place on the Yenesei.
I saw a pretty sight beside a pool. A pair of
red-necked phalaropes, male and female, were standing
on the snow with their dainty little blue feet just
dabbled in the water, while they mutually preened
each other's neck plumage with a loving concern that
was very amusing to watch. Of course my wretched
human intrusion broke up the picture. There was a
cry of alarm, and then nothing but a circle of ripples
to show that two beautiful and contented creatures
had been there only a moment before. How often
does the bird-watcher wish that he owned the cap of
darkness of the fairy-tale that made its wearer invisible.
I was disappointed not to find the mountain
accentor at this place, but on the return journey in the
autumn I saw several birds. Breokoffsky is one of the
known breeding-places of the Bewick's swan upon the
Yenesei, and presently six of these magnificent birds
flew leisurely across the island. I was watching the
play of the sunlight on their huge wings, when a gun
was fired near at hand and drove them down the creek
at the rate of eighty miles an hour. I turned my
glasses on the place, and discovered a sporting-looking
individual whom I had no difficulty in recognising as
the ship's cook, who had been last seen at Turukhansk,

60 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
with his face in the soup tureen. He had been out to
shoot for the pot, and was carrying a couple of long-
tailed ducks.
The steamer was timed to start at 2 a.m., so we
walked back to the balagans, where the people were
busily shovelling snow out of their summer lodgings.
The bones of a beluga, or white whale, lay on the shore.
These creatures come up the river in the summer after
the omul and seld, and are sometimes caught in the
seine nets. The hide is valuable for making sledge
harness, and the flesh is cut into strips, dried, and sold
to the natives, who are very fond of it.
As usual there was no sign of a boat, and for half
an hour the cook and I wandered disconsolately up and
down the bank, for we were both about three times as
wet and six times as cold as we liked to be. Then
luckily a boat full of Yuraks paddled past, and we
persuaded them to take us back to the steamer.
At midday on 28 th June the Oryol anchored off
the Golchika River. The coast was full of sandbanks,
and therefore the steamer dared not approach within a
mile of the shore. Our first view of the place where
we were to live for the next two months was therefore
a distant one, but it was none the less dreary for that.
In the background lay a range of low hills, overhung
by heavy snowstorms, and still streaked with white
drifts. A turbid, coffee-coloured river flowed through
them, and between the hills and the shores of the
Yenesei was a long stretch of low marshland, partly
covered with floods and partly with snow. The posi
tion of the Yenesei and its tributary at Golchika

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 61
reminded me of a capital letter Y. The stem of the
letter represented the Golchika River, which, just before
its junction with the Yenesei, forked on either side of
a flat delta island.
There were but three permanent houses at Golchika,
and two of them were built upon this island. Almost
as soon as the Oryol cast anchor, boats put off and the
inhabitants came on board. Siberiaks in shuhas and
fur caps strolled into the saloon, and natives in sakooy
pattered round the decks. Captain Ello introduced us
to the two principal men in the place. The first was
a short, stout Siberiak with a good-natured, clean-shaven
face and a bluff manner. He was Michael Petrovitch
Antonoff, and he lived in the largest of the houses on
the island. He seemed disposed to be friendly to us ;
but when Captain Ello, who was shocked at the idea
of us camping out in the snow, asked whether there
was not some place where we could sleep for that night,
he replied evasively that he must ask his wife.
The other merchant, Prokopchuk, was the agent
of Mr. Kutcherenkoff, who had given Miss Czaplicka
an introduction to him. He was a very imposing-
looking personage in a fine reindeer-skin coat, and his
manner was cordial to the verge of effusiveness. He
lived on the mainland, about a verst up the left bank
of the Golchika River, and he was insistent that we
should go home with him until we found a suitable
camping ground.
Meanwhile all our baggage had been stowed away in
the boat with the fish barrels ; and as there was no
room for us all to go with it, our new acquaintance

62 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
immediately suggested that we should follow with him
in his boat in about an hour's time. Accordingly,
Mr. Hall and Vassilli went ashore at once, while Miss
Czaplicka, Miss Curtis, and I sat down to wait.
At the end of an hour, we met the merchant,
who was just coming out of the captain's cabin. His
manner was even more expansive than before as he
explained that he had been taking tea with Madame
Ello, and that he would not detain us for more than a
minute while he transacted a little business on the
barge. Captain Ello was standing by the rail.
" Are you going back with Prokopchuk ? " he asked
in his careful English.
We answered that we were.
" You should not do so," said the captain.
" Why not ? Hasn't he a family ? "
A smile that was nearly as suggestive as a nudge in
the ribs spread over the captain's face. " Oh yes," he
answered in his slow way, " Prokopchuk has a wife —
even two ! "
We began to think that perhaps Prokopchuk's
patronage might not be as disinterested as it appeared.
However, it was too late to draw back, and we could
only wait with what patience we could muster.
We waited for another hour : we waited for an hour
and a half Then the boat came alongside, and we got
into it. Ten minutes later, its owner appeared. It
could be seen at a glance that he had been drinking
something else besides Madame EUo's tea. He did not
fall overboard, because it is as difficult for a Golchikan,
however drunk, to fall out of a boat, as it is for a cat

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 63
to fall out of a tree, but it was certainly a wonder that
he did not upset us all into the river. Then he shouted
for a barrel to be brought, and when it came, he insisted
that it should be placed in the stern, and that he and
I should sit upon it back to back. It was flattering
to me, no doubt, but I should have liked to have had
more than a small fifth of the diameter of the barrel for
a seat, especially as the boat was bobbing about in a
disconcerting manner !
The distance between the steamer and the island
was not more than a verst, but it took us nearly an hour
and a half to cover it. A long tongue of current swept
out of the Golchika River into the Yenesei. Lumps of
ice and pieces of driftwood were floating about in it, and
the water was very choppy. At any time it would have
been difficult to cross it. In our case it was impossible,
because Prokopchuk was much too drunk to steer straight,
and consequently we meandered aimlessly about the
river. A big raw-boned woman in a sad-coloured shawl
crouched on the bottom of the boat and shouted exhor
tations and reproaches. We supposed that she must be
one of the two wives. Of the two men at the oars, one
was an ordinary little Siberiak in a shuha, but the other,
whom I took for a servant, was of a different type. His
size would have made him remarkable anywhere : here,
among the little spindle-shanked natives, and stunted
fisher-folk, he seemed gigantic, for he was not only tall,
but also finely proportioned. He wore no cap, and his
thick, curly hair, which was blown out round his head
like a halo, seemed to add to his height. He did most
of the work of pulling the clumsy boat along ; but he

64 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
did not seem to resent this, nor the noisy antics of the
old debauchee in the stern. He just rowed uncomplain
ingly in a sort of stolid, ox-like way.
But even his strength could not struggle alone
against that stream, and after tossing to and fro for
some time, the boat ran aground on a cake of ice, and
spun round on her keel like a beetle on a pin. This
occasioned a great deal of shouting, and nearly capsized
us altogether. The only advantage of the situation was
that the ice had grounded on a long spit of sand on the
island side of the river ; and it was obviously impossible
that we should cross the flood to Prokopchuk's house
on the mainland, which, since the captain's warning,
we had been very unwilling to do. But the big man
took the painter, and, stepping overboard, he waded
shorewards, towing the boat after him. I think that
it was then, when we saw him striding along with the
water foaming up to his thighs, that we gave him the
nickname that afterwards stuck to him — the Giant.
We were very glad to be on land again, even though
we were uncertain whether we could find a night's
lodging. Our cases were piled up by the landing-stage,
and very forlorn they looked. Everywhere the snow
lay knee-deep, and the wind was bitterly cold. I know
now what it feels like to be a tramp — and there was
not even a Casual Ward at Golchika !
There was, however, something much better, and that
was a Good Samaritan. As we walked up the beach,
Mr. Hall came to meet us, accompanied by a good-
looking young man, whom he introduced as Mr. Peacock,
a brother of the merchant of that name whom we had

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 65
seen at Krasnoyarsk. Like his brother, Mr. Peacock
spoke excellent English, and was exceedingly proud of
his status as a British subject.
" No," he said in reply to a question ; " I was born
in Siberia, and have never seen England, but it is the
wish of my life to visit my own country some day."
It was humiliating to think of the hundreds of
Britons upon whom the obligations of their nationality
sit so lightly, while this young Anglo-Siberiak, although
he had not so much as seen the cliffs of Dover, made
a boast of his English birth. Mr. Peacock had been
staying at Golchika on business, and was returning to
the south in the Oryol. Meanwhile, hearing from
Mr. Hall of our houseless plight, he had visited the
stout merchant, Antonoff, and had persuaded him to
allow us three women to sleep there, at any rate for
one night, while he arranged that Mr. Hall and
Vassilli should go to the house of his agent, Protyvik.
While we were still discussing the matter, out came
Michael Petrovitch himself to invite us to enter, and
to grant us the use of one of his sheds in which to
house our baggage. He had not liked to ask us
himself, he said, "because he had such poor lodging
to offer ! " Antonoffs house stood beside the little
battered church, which was only opened once a year
when the pope came down from Dudinka. There were
many graves around it, all marked with the double cross,
but there was no boundary between the cemetery and
the rest of the swamp. The living walked where they
liked among the graves, and in some way this was
symbolical of the attitude of those simple people towards
5

66 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
death. About a score of great sledge dogs bounded to
meet us as we entered the wooden house, much to the
dismay of poor Jest. The porch opened into an outer
storeroom, and on the left hand was the house door.
We passed through it into the long low kitchen, and
thence into the parlour, which was filled with the cheer
ful din of a gramophone.
The room seemed wonderfully warm and cheerful
after the snowy waste outside, although it was small
and contained little furniture except a table apiece for
the gramophone and samovar, and a few chairs. In
the far corner hung an elaborate ikon, surrounded by a
wreath of wax flowers, and a sewing-machine stood
on the window-sill. A sewing-machine and a gramo
phone at Golchika ! We felt that we were not so much
beyond civilisation as we had thought.
Madame Antonoff was preparing the samovar. She
was a plump, sweet-faced woman, some years younger
than her husband. With her were her two sisters,
Nura and Tania, girls of fourteen and fifteen years old.
After tea she explained that there was an empty
room which would be at our disposal, and took us out
to look at it. As we passed through the kitchen we
saw the big curly-haired man, who sat on a stool in the
corner, while his wet clothes dripped into a pool on the
floor. He looked so patient and humble that we were
surprised to learn that he was not a hired servant, but
the eldest son of Prokopchuk — Joseph Gerasimvitch.
We passed through the storeroom to the back of the
house, and by a low door, we entered the bakery,
which was almost filled up by a big brick oven. Along

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 67
one side there was a settle upon which two huge
workmen were snoring in chorus, but Madame Antonoff
explained that in future they should sleep elsewhere.
Leading out of the bakehouse by an opening in the
wall was a fair-sized empty room. It had a window
and a wooden floor, and after the night in the snow
that we had anticipated it seemed a palace of luxury.
When we had fixed up a curtain over the doorway and
spread out the sleeping-bags, it looked quite comfortable.
So much so, that when, in the midst of our pre
parations, we heard the distant whistle which announced
the departure of the Oryol, we scarcely sent a glance
after her as she steamed back to the south.

CHAPTER IV.
A morning theft — Cockroaches — Spring at Golchika — A dog sledge —
A trip to Och Marino — A Siberian household — The Eastern golden
plover — A change in the weather — Rough water on the Yenesei —
Return to Golchika.
We were awakened next morning by a stealthy move
ment at the window, followed immediately by a loud
clatter. Jumping out of bed, we found that one of the
Siberian sledge dogs had thrust his shaggy head
through a broken pane of glass, and had tried to
capture an egg which lay on the table just beyond his
reach, by insinuating his long red tongue beneath it.
Of course the egg had rolled on to the floor, and the
smash had so alarmed the thief that, in his guilty
effort to escape unobserved, he had knocked over the
kettle and half a dozen tin plates. This incident
aroused us effectually, and we hastened to dress and
prepare breakfast, the latter a task of some little
difficulty on this first morning, as there was no stove in
the room, and most of our goods had been left in the
shed on the river-bank, owing to lack of space. It was
now that we observed something that on the previous
evening we had been too tired to notice — namely, that
both the bakery and our own room swarmed with
cockroaches. Half a dozen of the creatures scuttled
out of my sleeping-bag when I went to roll it up, and
68

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 69
several times, while we were at breakfast, inquiring
antennae peered over the edge of the table, or else
made tentative excursions into the sugar. Later on
we found that most of the balagans along the Yenesei
were infested with cockroaches, and sometimes with
worse vermin. At first the appearance of a " black-
beetle " in the beds was greeted with shrieks of horror,
but before the day was out, we ceased to exclaim, and
by the morrow we scarcely even troubled to kill the
intruders. It is curious how quickly one becomes
accustomed to such small discomforts. I well remember
that not two weeks before we had been discussing our
disgust at various insects, including beetles. One of
the party told the story of a traveller who, sleeping at
a wayside inn in the East, had put his hand under his
pillow in the morning and drawn out a fistful of
cockroaches. At the time this anecdote had evoked
shouts of disgust, and now here we were doing the same
thing. Indeed, in three days' time I found that I
could squash cockroaches quite callously, and even
stamp on them with feet shod only in felt slippers.
The latter was a great test of courage, but it is only
fair to say that the cockroaches of Golchika were of a
less lusty type than the inhabitants of English kitchens.
They seemed, in fact, to be a sort of bantam race of
beetle !
As we sat down to breakfast Mr. Hall came in.
He did not say much about his night's rest, but we
gathered from his reticence that his lodging had not
been so comfortable as ours. Later on it turned out
that, by way of celebrating the arrival of the steamer,

70 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
Protyvik had kept late hours. When at length the older
members of the family had gone to bed, the little
Protyviks had awakened up, and played hide-and-seek
about the room, until, in despair, Mr. Hall had risen and
left the house.
After breakfast I went out to explore the island.
All that I previously knew of Golchika was from the
little vignette in Seebohm's book, and it was very
interesting to try and trace the resemblance ; but it
was not until I had been for some time in the place
that I found the point from which this picture had
evidently been made.
The island of Golchika, which is really the delta of
the Golchika River, is a flat swamp about a verst in
diameter. It stands upon natural piles, for, since
countless ages, the Yenesei has carried down timber
from the forests and stranded them on the mud.
Then the Golchika has in its turn brought down soil
from the tundra and buried the tree-trunks ; and so,
built alternately of layers of wood and layers of earth,
an island has gradually been formed. On one side
flows the Yenesei, and the other two sides are bounded
by the two mouths of the Golchika. At this time the
place was all under snow. Deep drifts, besmirched
with refuse and trampled upon by the pack of dogs,
lay waist deep round the house, and the surrounding
marshes were still white, spangled only here and there
by icy pools. It was impossible to walk a yard without
plunging almost over one's boots in the half-melted
sludge. The Antonoffs' house stood about a hundred
yards back from the river-bank. A path led from the

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 71
door to the landing-place, where already, in preparation
for the fishing season, sheds and sorting houses had
been built beside the stacks of fish barrels ; and here
and there were one or two turf-roofed balagans which
would soon be tenanted for the summer. But in spite
of the grey lowering sky and the snow-covered swamps,
there was an indefinable air of bustle and stir about the
settlement on that cold June morning. Down by the
waterside men were hard at work, repairing boats and
mending fish nets. The air was full of the clapper and
rasp of hammer and saw, and from the Antonoff
kitchen I heard Anastasia singing over her pots and
pans. And it was not only human beings who worked and
sang because summer was coming. Every snowdrift
and every muddy pool was full of birds, dibbling
daintily in the ooze. Such birds too ! There were
stints — the little stint (who is such a personality that
I wish that our ornithologists would give him a more
individual name) and the Temminck's stint, his cousin
— the querulous, red-necked phalaropes, intent upon
their fussy courtships, the delicate white wagtail, a
splendid snow-bunting or two, and Lapland buntings
with perky guinea-pig colouring — black and white and
tortoiseshell. All these and more, newly arrived from
the south, were feeding and fighting and courting and
playing by the waterside, scarcely troubling to flutter
out of the way of the lazy sledge dogs who roamed
round the house. And as I watched I saw more birds
flying down the river — ducks, geese, and waders. They
were the rearguard of that great and eager host of

72 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
birds, which, every spring when the ice breaks up on
the Yenesei, pours northwards to Dickson, to Solitude,
and to the far Taimyr, all in haste to make the most of
the short arctic summer and rear their young before
the ice should close down, and, like an iron hand, force
them southwards again. In spite of the bleak grey
skies overhead, there was something infectious in all
this activity and gaiety. It seemed as if the soul
of spring — the awakening of new life — was in the
air. I forgot all about the dismal prospects of the
previous night, and felt as happy and as glad of life
as any of the birds who sought so diligently by the
waterside. That day I had no opportunity of going over to
the mainland, for presently our host, Michael Petrovitch,
came out smiling all over his jolly face, and told us that
in the evening he was going to visit one of his fishing
stations about thirty versts farther down the river, and
suggested that we should go too. Needless to say we
were only too glad to accept this proposal, and it was
arranged that we should start at six o'clock.
In the meantime Michael Petrovitch showed us his
team of dogs, of which he was exceedingly proud. On
the Yenesei, a good sledge dog is worth a hundred and
sixty roubles, but they are very difficult to obtain, for
a dog is not reckoned to be of much use for draught
purposes unless he has been reared by his owner. A
dog bought after he has grown up can never be relied
upon to find his way home as readily as one which has
lived in the same surroundings since puppyhood ; and
as this homing faculty may often be of inestimable

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 73
service to his owner, if the latter loses his bearings on
the open tundra, the Siberiaks seldom buy a new dog
unless for breeding purposes. Michael Petrovitch had
bought the parents of his team from a merchant of
Turukhansk who was leaving the country. Although
one or two had been crossed with a hound strain, they
were a magnificent pack. Each sledge with eight dogs
could carry a weight of forty pouds of goods and two
men, and Mars, the gigantic leader, could by himself
draw five pouds, i.e. two hundred pounds' weight, on the
sledge. Michael Petrovitch used his dogs in the winter
time when he went down the river to visit his white-
fox traps. He told us that on a good surface they
could travel as much as a hundred versts in three hours.
He gave us a ride down to the river bank and back,
and I must say that it was great fun. The dogs ap
peared to enjoy it as much as we did, and seemed as
delighted to show off as dogs generally are. They were
guided entirely by the driver's voice as he shouted:
"Port," i.e. "right," or " Maneh"—"Mt," as the case
might be ; and " touss-touss " (go on) was obeyed by these
zealous servants as readily as the " ta-ta " which meant
" stop." Antonoffs dogs lived in a lean-to shed behind
the bakehouse. Some dog owners do not feed their dogs
in the summer, and allow them to roam about and pick
up what they can find, but Michael Petrovitch wisely
held that to keep his team in health it was worth while
to spend a little trouble on them all the year round.
He said, however, that the dogs ate more in the summer
when they were idle than in the winter when they were
in full work. Our " Sabaka," who at first had been

74 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
cowed into abject terror by the pack, not only speedily
shook off her alarm, but in a day or two became a
regular termagant. Even the huge Mars fled in a most
undignified fashion when she caught him purloining a
trifle from her kennel, and not one of his fellows dared
to face the little bully. The only member of the pack
who could hold her own with Jest was a large canine
matron with an uncertain temper; but even she was
not permitted to set paw inside an invisible, but none
the less strictly defined boundary, which Jest had
ordained must extend for six feet round our doorstep.
It had been arranged that we were to start on our
trip down the river at six o'clock. Meanwhile the
clouds, which had looked so threatening during the
forenoon, had cleared away. The wind had fallen, and
the Yenesei was like a sheet of glass, tinted softly with
opalescent blue and rose. It was to all appearances
a halcyon evening. Nevertheless, following Michael
Petrovitch's advice, we took with us a certain amount
of food, for the weather on the lower Yenesei is fickle,
and sometimes a change in the wind may mean a delay
of several days. The party consisted of our four selves,
of Michael Petrovitch, who took the steering paddle, and
of our Vassilli, and Nill, the sturdy, red-haired servant
of the house. From the outset we knew that the boat
was low in the water, but as the weather was so fine
we thought that a little overcrowding might not matter.
Opposite Golchika, the Yenesei is some ten versts wide,
and we crossed it at once in order to reach the shelter
of the farther bank. The stream was with us and our
oarsmen had easy work. Even Vassilli, who hated

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 75
exercise, was quite contented, and sang blissfully as he
rowed. Och Marino, whither we were bound, is, I should
think, one of the forlornist outposts of the world.
Even now, when I look at my old school map of Asia,
I can recognise the place and lay my compass point
upon it exactly. The estuary of the Yenesei, which
widens out so enormously at Breokoffsky, suddenly
narrows about two hundred versts lower down. A long,
low spit of land juts out from the western bank into the
river to approach the corresponding promontory of the
Sopochnaya on the eastern side. On a clear day both
points can be seen from Golchika, stretching across the
mouth of the Yenesei like the claws of a giant crab.
It took us about four hours to reach the long, low
peninsula. I remember that Michael Petrovitch
grumbled that with his dog sledge he would have been
there and back again in the time. Nevertheless he
was in high good humour, and laughed and joked all
the way. He had dressed himself up for the expedition,
and looked very fine in a bushy fur cap with ear flaps,
which gave him a quaintly alert appearance, a black
velvet coat and breeches, and gold watch-chain.
When we were still four or five versts from Och
Marino we could see a little wooden hut at the end
of the promontory. Here lived a Siberiak, Hachenkoff
by name, who rented the fishing rights of the place
from Antonoff, whose property they were ; and beside
it were pitched two native chooms. By one of the
curious mirage effects so common on the Yenesei, the
three dwellings seemed to stand in air several feet above

7Q A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
the waterline. By and by, in the wide bay formed by
the angle of the promontory, we met with a barricade
of broken blocks of ice. At first they did not hinder our
passage, for we could easily steer between them, but as
we approached the point, they became so closely packed
that it was impossible to force a way through them,
especially as the whole mass was in surging motion.
Just then, however, a canoe, with two Yuraks at the
oars, and a Siberiak in the stern, put off from the shore
and hailed us. By their directions we went round the
pack and presently found an open passage. But even
here it was necessary to go carefully, for the blocks,
some of them as large as a billiard table, were all grind
ing against each other, and might easily have crushed
the canoe had it been caught between them.
As soon as we landed, Michael Petrovitch introduced
the Siberiak to us as his agent — " Vassilli Vassillievitch."
The latter shook hands with us and invited us to his
house, which was a smaller and meaner edition of those
at Golchika. Deep drifts of snow were still piled around
it, and these, with the clashing of the ice in the river,
made the place seem more wintry than anything that
we had yet seen. After passing through the dark
entrance of storerooms and dog kennels that cluster
against a Siberian house like a crop of barnacles upon
a rock, we pushed open a low door and stepped into
the kitchen, which in this case was also parlour, bed
room, and bakehouse. Although the sun was shining
brightly outside, the room was so dark that at first I
could not see very well what was in it. A slight, gentle-
looking girl with a child in her arms came forward to

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 11
greet us with shy hospitality, and made us sit down on
the wooden settle behind the table. While she prepared
the samovar, and Michael Petrovitch talked to her in
his cheerful breezy way, I was able to look about me.
Almost one-third of the room was taken up by the
stove and great brick oven. On the top of the latter
were piled a miscellaneous collection of household goods
— loaves of sugar, flour-trenchers, and cooking-pots. In
one corner stood a large four-poster bed, and in another
were shelves, upon which the cheap coloured crockery
was neatly arranged. The table was spotless, and the
rough floor was likewise well swept and tidy. The
place was not poverty stricken, in fact, it contained plenty
of comfort, as comfort is reckoned in Northern Siberia,
but I have seldom seen a room which even at first sight
filled one with such a sense of oppression and distaste.
Partly, no doubt, this discomfort may have been physical,
for the atmosphere was not only hot but positively
fetid. I do not think that those Siberian balagans
are ventilated from one year's end to another. If you
were to pull one of them down carefully, stick by stick,
I verily believe that the atmosphere inside would be so
thick and close that it would stand up by itself like a
blancmange turned out of its mould ! Chiefly, how
ever, it was its inhabitants, who, so to speak, spread an
aura of depression over the room. Vassilli Vassillievitch
himself sat on a stool under the window and talked to
Antonoff. He was a small, narrow-faced man, with bad
teeth and a furtive manner, which was all the more
conspicuous beside the open geniality of Michael
Petrovitch. His hands were as restless as his eyes,

78 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
and unless they were employed, as they constantly were,
in rolling cigarettes, they twitched as they rested on his
knee. It was easy to see that his nerves were all on edge,
and not difficult to guess the reason why. The girl who
was attending to the samovar by the stove was slight and
pale, like a bleached plant. Her soft brown hair was
arranged neatly, and her hands, which wore no wedding-
ring, were slender and reflned. She was unlike any of
the balagan women that I had seen before. Her face was
extraordinarily composed. Its expression was not exactly
sad, but she seemed to have no vitality. At first sight
she seemed to lack character, but afterwards I changed my
opinion. The spiritwas perhaps numbed, but nevertheless
it was there. Strange to say, she had a voice which
entirely belied the gentleness of her appearance. It was
both loud and harsh, and when she raised it to speak to
her husband, or to the little native girl who helped her,
it sounded as if a dove were speaking with the voice of
a crow. Round her petticoats crept a whimpering baby of
some eighteen months old. 1 have never seen such a
heart-breaking baby. In the heat of the room it was
clad only in a little chemise, under which its pitiably
thin arms and legs appeared. Its tiny body had shrunk
out of all proportion to its face, from which two terrible
great eyes stared at us, as if demanding dumbly why
the sins of its father should thus be visited upon its
innocent head. Whenever its wailing became too
insistent, its mother took it up and hushed it. Indeed,
it never seemed contented out of her arms, and she
seemed to have accustomed herself to do most of her

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 79
work with one hand. We had brought some food with
us, and when the samovar was bubbling, we set out our
contributions beside those of our hostess, and all had
tea. Meanwhile the room was gradually flUing up
with natives who had wandered in from their chooms
to stare at the Angliski. The bed was taken up by
an immense old lady with voluminous felt petticoats
and a fat good-humoured smile which quite swallowed
up her eyes. She told us with pride that she weighed
seven pouds and had seventeen children. I think that
most of the seventeen must have followed her into the
kitchen, for by that time every nook and corner seemed
to be filled up by male and female Yuraks of every
age. Neither Hachenkoff nor his wife seemed to resent
this intrusion into their already crowded kitchen, but
this is typical of the Siberians. They are notoriously
indulgent to the natives, and cases of cruelty to the
inferior race are very rare. My anthropological com
panions were gleeful over such a collection of "specimens,"
and as Michael Petrovitch had business to talk over
with Hachenkoff, I went outside to see what bird life
the promontory harboured.
The river has built up the long peninsula of Och
Marino in the same way as it has built up Golchika
Island, by alternate layers of alluvial mud and driftwood.
Two miles away to the west a range of low mud-hills
showed where the tundra came down to the coast, but
between them and the river lay a swamp, encumbered
with rotting tree-trunks, which at the time of my visit
was almost impassable with melting snow.
I can never forget that glorious arctic midnight.

80 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
There was one cloud in the east which the sun had
chosen out from among its fellows to flush with pink,
and beyond the ice barrier in the bay, the water caught
up its reflection and repeated it and juggled with it and
glorified it, until the river was like an opal in the
shimmer of silver and rose. Closer at hand, over the
ice the sunshine lay so golden and mellow that one
quite forgot the chilliness of the air and thought of
flowers and hay-fields. But although there were as yet
no flowers beside the Yenesei, nothing could surpass
the splendours of the ice as the light smote across the
floes, discovering their grottos, bulwarks, and pinnacles
of silver and malachite. Here and there a great block,
melting after the day's sunshine, fell asunder with a
crash into a gigantic shining star. Other slabs were
fringed with a delicate tracery of rime, and more were
so hewn by the ceaseless grinding to and fro that their
blunted edges were white as marble with wonderful
green veins. And the air was full of the strangest
sound in the world. It was a peculiar hissing and
rustling, not very loud, and yet as clear as a million
mournful whispers. It was the noise of the melting of
the ice, made by the smaller blocks, as, one by one, they
split and dropped, tinkling, upon their fellows, and by
the groaning of the larger pieces as the river forced
them seawards before the advancing summer.
The only dark and ugly thing in all that glory of
ice and sunshine was the little squat square house with
its rubbish heaps and troop of prowling dogs ; and I
was glad to turn my back upon it and wander away
over the marsh. There were two Yurak chooms close

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 81
to the house, but they were both deserted, for the
owners had all gone to Hachenkoff's house. It was not
easy to walk over the swamp, for at every step one
slipped knee-deep in water, and it was necessary to pick
a way between the pools, along the narrow tracts of
firmer ground which ran across the morass like cause
ways. Spring and summer come both together to the
arctic ; and although, as the ice bore witness, they had
only just arrived, it was the heyday of the year, and
the birds were making the most of it. Already, before
the snow had melted, the swamp was parcelled out into
various small-holdings ; and as I went, the owners
hovered round me a-tiptoe with that anxious expect
ancy which precedes the laying-time. Little stints
flickered up from the sphagnum with a startled drrrt ;
grey, phalaropes, with breasts like rubies, wheeled over
the ice ; Lapland buntings sought diligently for nesting
material among the snowdrifts ; and a flock of long-
tailed ducks, in single file like a string of beads, paddled
across a pool. Presently a troop of gulls began to
clamour overhead, and while I was stalking them, five
wild swans, in immature plumage — celibates for this
season — crashed up from a small lake, and flew down
the river with a mellow thunder of pinions. In the
drier part of the swamp, a pair of Eastern golden
plover were breeding. I lay down and watched them
for a time, but, as I already knew to my cost, the
plover is an exceedingly wary fowl, and it is gener
ally futile to try to fool her (or him either) on the
open tundra. She knows well enough that the supine
neutral-tinted thing lying on the moss is neither a
6

82 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
grass tussock nor a tree-trunk. And why the dickens
is it pretending in that foolish way, keeping her off her
eggs like this ? she wails angrily from the vantage of
a hillock a hundred yards away. Neither is it a bit of
use to try and tire her out. The patient plover will
settle down to a day-long vigil, sooner than return to
her eggs if she thinks that all is not well. Consequently
at the end of an hour I had done nothing more than
locate the probable breeding-area. I tried to comfort
myself with the quite vain reflection that probably the
birds had not begun to lay yet, and then, as it was close
upon two hours since we had landed, and Antonoff was
anxious to start in good time for home, I turned back.
On the way, on a mound in the middle of the
marsh, I came across a Yurak grave. The dead man
must have been buried in the summer, for he lay under
ground instead of in a wooden coffin. It is said in
Holy Writ that a man brings nothing into the world
and shall carry nothing out from thence, but evidently
this is not the Yurak belief A few pitiful possessions
were lying round the grave — an old cooking-pot, a
rotting sledge, and the bleached bones of his reindeer
which had been slaughtered by the tomb. Surely it is
a profound and poetical idea, this of the Yuraks, that
even inanimate chattels, after they have long been in
use, acquire a soul, which, after death, can follow that
of their owner, and serve him once more in the spirit
world. A little wooden scaffold was built over the
grave, and from this hung a bell of cheap Russian
workmanship. It tinkled softly as the wind swung it
to and fro. It was placed there in order that the

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 83
sound, ringing day and night, might scare away any
evil spirits which lurked round the place. The relics of
a forgotten life, the solitude, and the monotonous little
tinkle of the bell, all made this primitive cemetery seem
an eerie place, and I was glad to return to the house.
Here I found my companions gathered outside the door,
and learned on inquiry that Hachenkoff and Antonoff.
having finished their business together, had both gone
sound asleep ! Here was a dilemma. We did not
like to walk in and arouse them, for these were early
days, and we did not wish to give offence. On the
other hand, it was already after 2 a.m., and the red-
throated divers in the marshes were loudly proclaiming
a change in the weather.
While we were wondering what to do, the door
opened, and Mrs. Hachenkoff (for so I must call her
in default of a better name) came out to talk to us.
It was then that we learned something of the tragedy
of Och Marino. Vassilli Vassillievitch was the agent of
Antonoff. That is to say that he was the latter's tenant
for the fishing station, and was expected to pay his rent,
etc. , in fish. He was a good fisherman and trapper and
might have done well, had it not been for drink. As it
was, every kopeck that he could filch or earn was spent
in vodka. Vassilli Vassillievitch came of a respectable
family in Yenesiesk, and had gone through part of
his university course in Petrograd. It was then that he
had contracted the habit which now enslaved him. His
family, thankful perhaps to get rid of their black
sheep, had sent him down the Yenesei, and after
a year or two he had drifted to lonely Och Marino.

84 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
But in his exile, with the fretful obstinacy that is the
bane of such weak natures as his, he was constantly
hankering to return to civilisation, to re-enter the
schools and make a name for himself Meanwhile
during the long arctic night, he was slowly drowning his
life in vodka, as surely as he had already drowned his
youth. The girl had originally come to him as his servant.
Gradually they had drifted into closer intimacy. Their
first child had died during the previous winter. This
was the second one, and it was also very sickly. The
strongest fibre of the girl's nature was her adoration of
her good-for-nothing man. True, he did not work, but
then why should he toil and moil at the fishing when
she could labour for both of them ? She was a poor,
illiterate girl. He, on the contrary, could write and
read, and had seen Petersburg and Moscow. She
sympathised with him in his petulance, worked for him,
trusted him. She even encouraged him in his drinking-
bouts, because, as she humbly said, it must be so irk
some for a man of his powers to be shut up with such
an ignorant woman as herself. She hoped that he
would not return to Russia, because, if he did so, she and
the child would have to remain behind, but if it was best
for him  Meanwhile she kept the house clean and
tidy and managed the fishing business, haunted always
by the fear that the child, which was evidently her bit
of Paradise, would slip away from her to join its brother
in the little grave out on the tundra.
Before her story was finished, Vassilli Vassillievitch
came out to tell us that Michael Petrovitch was awake.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 85
and we therefore went back to the kitchen to fetch our
things. The baby was asleep, but we left a tin of con
densed milk with the poor young mother, who seemed
to look upon the English lettering on the label as a sort
of talisman. At any rate we hoped that her faith in it
might be of some comfort to her, even if it did not
benefit the child. But in the usual leisurely Siberian
fashion, these preparations, and the inevitable farewell
cup of tea, all took up some time, and it was already
five o'clock when we went to embark. Meanwhile the
prognostications of the divers had been justified. An
angry screen of clouds covered the eastern sky, and the
surface of the water was ruffled by the wind. However,
for the first two hours all went well, for we rowed
slowly against the stream inside the barrier of ice. The
water here was quite calm, but beyond we could see that
the river was rising under the wind. By and by we
came to the end of this ice breakwater, and were exposed
to the full force of the wind, which came rollicking
unchecked over two thousand miles of tundra. The
river was now flecked with foam, while the choppy
waves lashed against the ice and pounded the loose
cakes together. The sound of their dissolution, which
had lately been so hushed and sad, was now a continual
crashing roar. However, Michael Petrovitch decided
that it would be better to try and cross to the other
shore at this point rather than higher up, where the river
was wider. He himself was at the steering paddle, and
Vassilli and Nill at the oars. It was soon clear that we
should not have an easy passage. For every stroke we
scarcely seemed to gain a foot of headway, and to make

86 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
matters worse we were so low in the water that as we
drew away from the shelter of the ice, the crests of the
waves began to slop over the gunwale until the boat
was half -full of water. The storm in itself was nothing,
but Antonoff's boat was as wide and shallow as a saucer,
and we began to be afraid, not that it would capsize,
but that it would soon become water-logged. There was
a wooden scoop in the stern, and for a couple of hours
we took turns to bale out as quickly as possible. But
no sooner was the boat empty than the least movement
of her crew, or an extra large wave, would send another
rush of water over the gunwale and set us to work
again for our lives. At eleven o'clock we took stock of
our position, and found that for all our labour we were
scarcely half-way across the river. Everything in the
boat was soaking wet, and it seemed as if each of the
waves that went curling by must flU her altogether. It
was then that Vassilli gave out. The man was not in
condition for hard work in any case, especially after his
three weeks of ease on the steamer. Antonoff was
vexed with him for giving up, as he thought, so easily,
and jeered at him by way of piquing him into taking up
his oar again, but Vassilli was impervious to jibes.
" I am not accustomed to such work," he lamented.
" My speciality is musical instruments ! "
" I have an old mandoline at home," said Antonoff.
" It is a pity that we did not bring it. Then you might
have played a tune to us while we row."
Nill laughed loud at this sally, but Vassilli laid
down his oar and announced despairingly that he was
going to faint. A change could not be made without

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 87
some difficulty, for the boat was pitching violently, and
the least movement brought the water right up to the
gunwale, but Michael Petrovitch presently went to the
vacant oar, and Vassilli, with a sigh of relief, took up
the steering paddle. I set to work with the scoop in
the stern, while Mr. Hall baled out the bow with his
boot, and, between us, we managed to keep the water
down. But, blew it never so hard, nothing seemed to
ruffle the good humour of Michael Petrovitch. No
matter how much water came slapping over the side,
whenever I looked at him I met a beaming smile and
cheerful " Horroshie ! " i.e. "First-rate!" — a smile
which towards the end of our passage, what with the
wet and the cold, I confess I found it difficult to answer
equally gaily. He continually laughed and talked to
Nill, and tried to make him forget his fatigue by telling
him stories and recalling old adventures. And Nill,
who evidently adored his master, grinned all over his
ugly face and pulled at his oar like a hero.
But in spite of their efforts our progress was
desperately slow. There was, I remember, a high mud-
hill on the shore which we had just left. The snow lay
upon its face in curious ridges, which recalled the rows
of arches along a cathedral aisle. Subconsciously I made
that cliff into a landmark by which to judge of our
progress, and the detestable outline became, so to speak,
photographed on my brain, so often did I look back at
it, only to find that in spite of all our efforts we were
slowly drifting backwards with the stream.
We had left Och Marino at five o'clock in the morn-
ins, and it was three o'clock in the afternoon before we

88 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
were able finally to land on the farther shore. By that
time the wind had gone down and a wan gleam of
sunshine lighted the tundra. We reached an old
balagan, deserted since the previous summer. It was
half-full of water, but it was built in a warm-sheltered
corner with plenty of driftwood near, and in our
weather-beaten plight, it seemed like a haven of refuge.
Here we made a fire, and were glad enough to dry our
soaked clothes and have a meal, for we had had nothing
to eat or drink since we left Och Marino in the early
morning, and the men had been working hard all the
time. We then rested in the sun for a couple of hours,
and about six o'clock we started for Golchika.
The fickle Yenesei weather having given us a taste
of its bitter mood, now veered round and smiled at us.
It was a halcyon evening. To my thinking there is no
place like the Yenesei for skies — or maybe it is that the
country itself is so flat and bare that one appreciates
the more the noble lines and curves of the clouds that
lie above it. The sunshine draws up vapour from the
basking river, and piles it along the horizon in huge
cumulus masses. Then at once the east wind comes
along and tears and ravels these up into plumes and
banners of cirrus, which are blown across the sky and
tinted red and golden in the evening. Along the
northern horizon it is even possible to watch the actual
birth of these clouds. Almost imperceptibly, they
gathered like mist on the surface of the water and then,
rising above their parent river, they floated away into
the sunset like smoke rings blown from a gigantic pipe.
Large flocks of long-tailed ducks were resting close

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 89
inshore, and Michael Petrovitch shot a couple which
flew close to the boat. We also saw a seal — " Nyrpe,"
as it is called on the Yenesei — which thrust its melancholy
face out of the water about twenty yards from '^ the boat.
Antonoff fired at it, but his shot did not take effect.
The Siberians say that seals are fond of red, and
accordingly Nill was directed to stand up in the bows
in the hope that if the seal rose again, the sight of him
might lure it within shot. But I never quite understood
whether it was the colour of Nill's shirt or of his beard
which was supposed to be so attractive to the seal !
We reached Golchika at midnight in broad sunshine,
and found Mrs. Antonoff beginning to wonder at our
non-return. She had prepared a good supper for us,
and, needless to say, we did full justice to her pirogi,
eggs, and kaviare. And nobody knows the bliss of a
warm, dry sleeping-bag unless they have previously
spent forty-eight hours afoot, in a more or less soaked
condition for the greater part of the time.

CHAPTER V.
People of Golchika — Protyvik — Antonoff and his household — The
Prokopchuk family — Sylkin the Samoyede — His sayings— His
religion— The natives at Golchika — Their manners and customs —
The need for medical missions — The colonisation and future of
Siberia.
For the next two months my life at Golchika was a
double one. Much of my time, especially during the
first few weeks, was passed out on the tundra or beside
the river alone with the birds, but at the same time I
was necessarily brought much into contact with the
human inhabitants of the country. Golchika was a
regular hotbed of gossip. Not a dog could bark, not a
stone could be turned, but the neighbours knew all about
it. This is more or less the case in small villages all
the world over ; but at Golchika, in proportion to the
size of the place, we found it in an intensified degree.
The social life was honeycombed with small feuds,
small jealousies, and small intrigues ; and before we had
lived there for so very long, we found that willy-nilly
we became caught in the snare ourselves.
There were only three houses in Golchika which
were inhabited all the year round. The first belonged
to Prokopchuk, who was the oldest resident in the
place ; the second was that of our friend, Michael
Petrovitch ; and in the third lived Mr. Hall's host.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 91
Protyvik. The latter can be dismissed in a few words.
His was the poorest of the houses. It was very damp,
very dirty, and held nearly as many children as it held
cockroaches, which is saying a good deal. Antonoff
and Prokopchuk, however, both deserve further
description. Michael Petrovitch, and his wife likewise, came from
Little Russia. He was by profession a railway engineer,
and had a good post at Krasnoyarsk. Here, however,
his socialistic ideas, and his efforts to educate the work
men under him, brought him under the suspicions of
the authorities, and he was arrested. He spent some
time in prison, and then considered himself fortunate to
be exiled to Siberia. By some oversight he was sent
back to the Yenesei valley, and at once set to work to
make a home for his wife, who had remained with him
all the time that he was in prison. He told us, smiling,
how he went down the river with a number of goods
for sale to the natives, and how he found that the
stock-in-trade with which he had provided himself was
useless, and that he was obliged to spend all his ready
money in vodka in order to do any business at all. He
and his wife were just beginning to make a new home
for themselves, when there was an outbreak of brigand
age at Yenesiesk. The criminals were really a number
of exiles of the lower sort, idle and irresponsible youths
for the most part, but the authorities believed that
political agitation was at the bottom of it, and accord
ingly a number of exiles from Turukhansk were brought
down to Yenesiesk for examination. It was winter
time, and these unfortunates were compelled to walk the

92 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
whole distance — a thousand versts up the frozen river.
Some died on the way : others arrived in a pitiable
condition, and it is said that only a few of them were
able to appear in court, for the rest were all in hospital
after amputations for frostbite. Michael Petrovitch's
great strength and vitality helped him to struggle
through the terrible journey. But Madame Antonoff
had remained behind at Turukhansk with the know
ledge of the awful risk that her husband ran ; and
only a spirit as fine as hers could have come through
such an ordeal and kept so much of its youth and
brightness. By and by, however, a friend in high places managed
to obtain a pardon for Michael Petrovitch, and the
couple went back to their native province. But they
had grown out of touch with their old surroundings, and
did not prosper there. In official eyes, the stigma of
exile still clung to them. Besides, Siberia had taken
hold of them. They came back, and brought Katrina's
family with them into the new country. That was five
years ago. Leaving his father-in-law to settle in
Yenesiesk, Michael Petrovitch and his wife went down
the river to remote Golchika, and set to work to build
up a business there. The life suited them, for they
were both young enough to enjoy carving out a future
for themselves, and yet not so young but that they
wanted a comfortable home to settle down in. In
winter there were the traps to visit. In summer there
was the fishing and the trade with the natives who
came to buy and sell. In summer, too, Michael
Petrovitch went to Krasnoyarsk to purchase the winter

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 93
stores. In his absence Madame Antonoff not only
looked after the house, but attended to the business
and superintended the curing of the fish. She was a
wonderful woman — Madame Antonoff— and her unfail
ing kindness to the four foreigners who came to her
house is among the pleasantest of my Siberian recollec
tions. She could steer a canoe as well as any man, and
I well recollect meeting her in the marsh at the back of
the house one day. She was wearing her husband's
long boots, which were so much too large that she could
scarcely drag one foot after another. In one hand she
carried his gun, and in the other a duck which she had
just shot ; for, as she said in her housewifely way,
Michael Petrovitch had eaten nothing but fish for so
long that a duck would be a nice change. She very
sensibly looked upon her kilted petticoats and huge
boots quite as much of a matter of course as that she
should pluck and cook the bird when she brought it in.
The longer we lived at Golchika, the more instances
did we see of the goodness of heart of both Antonoff
and his wife. For instance, her two orphaned sisters,
girls of fifteen and sixteen, made their home there.
Their father had died suddenly, leaving them penniless,
and their brother-in-law had adopted them. Not only
that, but he also entirely maintained their drunken
brother who lived at Yenesiesk.
The two remaining members of the household were
Nill, and Anastasia, his wife. Nill, we already knew
after our excursion to Och Marino. Anastasia was
likewise red haired, a dumpy little body with round
eyes, who made the best pirog in Siberia. Nill and

94 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
Anastasia were both excellent people in their way, and
devoted to their master and mistress, but they did not
pull well in double harness. Perhaps Anastasia was a
little inclined to be over strict with Nill's peccadilloes.
At any rate there was sometimes a tiff in the kitchen,
and Madame Antonoff had to make the peace.
Otherwise the little wooden house was the most
cheerful in the world. To be sure, we only saw it in
the summer-time, but even in winter, when, for days
together, the inhabitants could not go outside, it was
impossible to imagine it as otherwise than happy. In
the kitchen Anastasia would look up from her baking
to nod and smile " Good-day." The two pretty girls
would greet us shyly, and hurry off to call their sister,
who, however busy she might be, would always give us
a welcome. Or else Michael Petrovitch himself, with
his bluff, hearty manner, would come in. Outside, Nill
whistled as he chopped firewood, and the lazy dogs
crowded round the caller and flogged his legs with their
bushy tails. Everybody in that house seemed cheerful
and contented.
The house of Prokopchuk, on the other hand, was of
a different type. It stood on the mainland on the left
bank of the Golchika River, about a verst from that of
Antonoff. In many respects it had a more favourable
position, for the natives, when they came to trade,
were able to walk straight in, instead of waiting for a
ferry to the island, a fact of which old Prokopchuk —
Gerasim Androvitch — took full advantage. We had
lived for some time at Golchika before we understood
the relations of the Prokopchuk household. Prokop-

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 95
chuk himself had been a gendarme. He was very
proud of the fact, and liked to boast that he had formed
one of the bodyguard of the present Czar, when, as
Czarevitch, the latter visited Siberia. We never
learned exactly why he left the police, but we suspected
that he retired under a cloud, for he could not have
been much past the prime of life when he exchanged
the streets of Petrograd for the tundras of Golchika.
His wife lived down at Krasnoyarsk, in order, so it
was said, to educate the younger children. Only two
remained with their father — the huge son, Joseph, and
a daughter, Marusia. Joseph, we had already seen on
our arrival. Marusia Prokopchuk was a gentle,
slatternly girl of nineteen or twenty. In face she was
curiously like her father, but without the fire and
humour which gave his countenance, dissolute though it
was, its queer attraction. Her sweet voice and grace
ful carriage were her great charms. Her dark eyes
were generally cast down, and her black hair was like
wise hidden under the ugly drab shawl of the country.
There was something almost Eastern in the beauty of
Marusia, which even the darkness of the northern winter
could scarcely bleach. The grandfather of Gerasim
Androvitch came from the plains of Poland, and perhaps
it was from this source, rather than from the more
phlegmatic Siberian Russians, that Marusia derived her
dark beauty, and her father his courtly manners and
wit. Mrs. Prokopchuk's representative at Golchika was
her sister, Anastasia Ivanowna, the same who had rated
Gerasim Androvitch for his conduct in the boat. She

96 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
was a big, taciturn woman, with a square, determined face
and a harsh voice. From the first she looked upon us
with suspicion, and she evidently ruled the household
with a rod of iron. Even Gerasim Androvitch was
afraid of her ; and as for Marusia, she was the slave of
her aunt, and obeyed her in everything. In fact it was
easy to see that the son and daughter of the house were
nothing more than unpaid servants — and hard-working
servants at that.
Although the Prokopchuks were at least as well off
as the Antonoffs, their house was neither so well kept
nor so comfortable, and the surrounding buildings were
damp and dirty. The kitchen opened off the storeroom
at the entrance. It was a small room, dark and most
evil smelling. One corner was occupied by the bed
belonging to the servant, Michael, and his wife and child.
The other was filled up by the great oven and cooking
stove. The rest of the furniture consisted of a bare
table and a few kettles and stools. The remains of
meals always stood upon the table, cockroaches swarmed
unmolested among the food, and the bed was strewn with
pieces of clothing. The bedroom, which also did duty
as parlour, was more pretentious, but it was always in
disorder. On the blue walls flamed cheap coloured
prints of ladies dressed only in a nightdress and a
wreath of roses. I once had the curiosity to count these
works of art, and as there were nine of them, including
one in which the same ladies were masquerading as
guardian angels, I suppose this must have been the ideal
of female loveliness of Gerasim Androvitch.
Below the house, on the river bank, stood a row of

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 97
storehouses and sheds. All around, partly covered by
the kindly grass, the hillside was littered with all the
ugly jettison of the household for the past seventeen
years. None of the Siberiaks seemed to care at all
about the outside appearance of their houses. Some,
which were models of neatness indoors, stood literally
in the middle of a rubbish heap of old boots, bones,
rags, and broken crockery ; and even the Antonoffs
were no better than their neighbours in this respect.
But it was not only the dirt and disorder which made
the home of Prokopchuk a depressing place to visit. It
was rather that there was something in the atmosphere
of the house and of its inhabitants. Why this should
have been it is difficult to say, for whenever we went
there we were always received hospitably, even by
Anastasia Ivanowna, while Gerasim Androvitch was
geniality itself
Gerasim Androvitch was the most striking person
ality in Golchika. Well over six feet in height,
upright as a fir tree, and with a military-looking
white moustache, he looked for all the world like a
Field-Marshal. His manners were polished to the last
degree, and his tact was unfailing. A greater contrast
to Antonoff could scarcely be imagined. They stood
at opposite poles. Antonoff's mien was open and
hearty : he was short and thick set. Prokopchuk
was tall and stately. Antonoff had been an exile :
Prokopchuk had been a gendarme. Antonoff was as
honest as the day : Prokopchuk- — but more of that
anon. Of the two, Prokopchuk had incomparably the
finer presence. Antonoff's downright sincerity had
7

98 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
won him the attention of the European workmen at
Krasnoyarsk, but the natives at Golchika, although
they could not but respect him, had not nearly such a
high opinion of him as they had of Prokopchuk, who
cheated them systematically. Indeed, they had a sort
of awed admiration for the latter, which was difficult
to understand unless one saw him in their company.
Then one realised that his influence was partly physical.
He towered above the little tundra men in stature, and
instinctively perhaps they felt that he must dominate
them intellectually. Therefore they gave him a homage
and confidence that Antonoff, for all his jovial bonhomie,
could never win from them.
The only time that Prokopchuk really lost his
dignity was, as has already been related, on the
occasion of our first introduction. Afterwards, even
when in his cups, he always preserved his stately
demeanour. If anything, perhaps his manners were a
little more gracious, in measure as his gait became a
little more uncertain, but otherwise he did not betray
himself One evening he came in to supper after he had
obviously been drinking. He shook hands with charm
ing politeness, seated himself with a deliberation which
was if anything a little over elaborate, and then with
engaging frankness asked us to excuse any eccentricities
in his conduct. " For a man is not always responsible
for his actions ! "
However, drunkenness, on the Yenesei at any rate,
is not looked upon as the disgrace which it is considered
in England. Rather is it pitied as a sort of regrettable
weakness, such as the tendency to sea-sickness would

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 99
be elsewhere. There is a saying that. It is an ill dog
that bites a drunkard or a child, and in this respect the
Russian law is as lenient as the canine. In Siberia it
is a punishable offence for a sober man to strike a
drunkard, however great the provocation may be.
There are two aspects of inebriety — the humorous and
the revolting. To anybody who wishes to make a study
of the subject I should say. Go to the Yenesei. We had
a practical illustration of them both, two or three days
after the events related in the last chapter. The steamer
of Mr. Kutcherenkoff, " the Alcohol King," arrived at
noon, and by the evening there were only two sober
men in Golchika. One was Michael Petrovitch, and
the other was Kutcherenkoff himself We were sitting
in our room when our host brought in a young Siberiak,
whom he introduced as Michael Prokopchuk, a nephew
of Gerasim Androvitch of that ilk. Prokopchuk, with
his wife and child, was just preparing to start on a
fishing excursion down the river beyond Sopochnaya
and suggested that I should go too. Of course the
offer was a tempting one, for it would have given me
the opportunity of seeing many places of ornithological
interest ; but like all such expeditions on the Yenesei
there was not only the question of the outward journey
to be considered, but also that of the return. In this
case, I could have travelled northwards with the
Prokopchuks ; but in order to reach Golchika in time
to catch the steamer back to the south, it would have
been necessary to walk home, making thirty-mile stages
from one balagan to another. This, combined with the
difficulty of bringing home any specimens that I might

100 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
have secured, made me refuse the offer, although Antonoff
guaranteed that young Prokopchuk was a trustworthy
guide. We were still weighing the pros and cons of
the proposal, when Nill and one or two more ran in
to fetch Antonoff. It appeared that the red-haired
Protyvik, who had been celebrating the arrival of the
" Alcohol King," had just insulted the wife of Michael
Prokopchuk. The latter immediately rushed out, and
fought Protyvik by the fishing station. When we
went outside shortly afterwards, it seemed as if every
body in Golchika was raving. Along each horizon
staggered figures, shouting and singing, and the
balagans were as noisy as the chooms. Mr. Hall's late
host was sitting in the swamp outside his door,
blaspheming hideously, and struggling with some re
straining friends who were nearly as drunk as himself.
Around him all his womenfolk, who were also the
worse of liquor, lamented hysterically. There were in
our medicine chest some patent capsules, one of which
was guaranteed to sober the most obstreperous
drunkard or maniac, if it was broken under his nose.
It seemed to be a good opportunity to test them, so
Mr. Hall fetched a couple and, so to speak, stalked his
raging host. Disgusting as the scene was, I could not
help laughing, for the Httle capsule seemed such an
inadequate weapon with which to quell the struggling
Protyvik. But before the experiment could be tried,
three stalwart friends seized the subject, and bore him
away to recover his senses in bed. Meanwhile, his
wife and several female acquaintances, who were in
little better state, were standing near and screamincy

AISUMMER ON THE YENESEI 101

Ik.

like bacchantes. Miss Czaplicka approached the most
violent of them, who happened to be Protyvik's
mother-in-law, and snapped the capsule in her face.
The effect was instantaneous. The woman immediately
dropped to the ground in convulsions. I really thought
that, with the best of intentions, we had killed her, and
so did her companions, who began to lament more
loudly than ever. Miss Czaplicka, however, directed
them to put her to bed, and by the following morning
there was not much the matter with her. As we
returned to the house, we met Mrs. Michael Prokopchuk
herself, very intoxicated ; and, saddest sight of all, on
the doorstep, crawling on all fours like a beast, was her
four-year-old child, quite bemused with vodka. The
sight made me feel glad that I had refused to go down
the river with the family.
Each time that a steamer arrived, Golchika was the
scene of similar orgies, but it is only fair to say that
it was never so bad as when Kutcherenkoff passed by.
The fault lies not so much with the people, who indeed
have such a desperate fight with the climate and con
ditions that it is hardly surprising that they should
take their rare pleasures in excess. The blame should
rather rest on those who, under the pretext of con
trolling it, actually encourage the traffic in alcohol. It
is true that the Government have tried to make certain
restrictions in the sale of drink on the Yenesei ; but
these laws are more honoured in the breach than in
the observance, and are easily evaded.-' For instance,
1 The above was written before the recent action of the Russian
Government with regard to the sale of alcohol.

102 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
technically it is illegal for a private person to carry
more than a certain quantity of liquor north of
Vorogovo. Kutcherenkoff overcame the difficulty by
arranging that his cargo should be registered as part
of the personal luggage of every one of his numerous
crew ! A year or two before, when the scandal could
no longer be winked at, the authorities impounded his
steamer. Unluckily they stopped him a few versts
south, instead of north, of Vorogovo. Consequently
when Kutcherenkoff issued a cross-summons for unlaw
ful detention of his property, he not only won his case,
but was able to claim compensation as well !
The natives drank as deeply as the Siberiaks, but
however~tntoxicated they might be, they were never
quarrelsome. The native settlement was on the left
bank of the Golchika River. Only one family lived
there all the year round. The rest came with the birds
in the spring, and, with the birds, went south in the
autumn. This was the family of Sylkin the Samoyede.
Sylkin was one of the institutions of Golchika, and was
by far the most Europeanised of the natives. He lived
in a sort of patriarchal fashion with his numerous
family in a small and exceedingly dirty balagan.
Those who could not find room inside, overflowed into
the choom, which stood beside it like a kind of annexe.
Sylkin was a person of some importance among the
other natives, and as he could speak, not only his own
language and Russian, but also the Dolgan and Yurak
tongues, he often acted as interpreter. He was a tall
and not ill-looking man ; but unfortunately, with the
European language and ways, he had acquired a good

Native C'fiu.hken.

Svi.KiN AND His Son, Nerobi.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 103
many of the European defects, and in many of our
dealings with him we found that he had a good idea
of feathering his own nest. Although, by his own
showing, he was not much past forty, it pleased him
to be thought elderly ; and by way of keeping up the
illusion, he always wore a pair of spectacles. When
looking at a distant object, he made a great parade of
adjusting and wiping these ; but those who watched
him closely might see that he peered out over the
rims. Sylkin was quite a link with the past, for he
could remember the famous Captain Wiggins, and had
rowed Mr. H. L. Popham about the rivers, when, some
years before, that distinguished ornithologist visited
Golchika. Sylkin and I were good friends, and often
felt the need of conversation. Therefore, knowing that
my Russian was very limited, he generally accosted me
as follows :
" Riba horroshie; pagoda horroshie" — then a
pause, and, triumphantly, "Pop-ham horroshie!'
Which being interpreted means, " Fish first-rate ;
weather first-rate ; and Popham first-rate ! " He was
also accustomed to quote a trite maxim :
" Malenki vino horroshie: mnogo vino nyet hor
roshie," meaning that a little drink is good, but that
much drink is not good. Needless to say, he was
fonder of preaching this doctrine than of practising it.
During the summer, three distinct races visit
Golchika. The Samoyedes are the most northerly
race. Their range extends from the Kamin Peninsula
to North-East Cape, and southwards for about three
hundred miles. The Yuraks are found between the

104 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
Taz and the Yenesei. Although quite distinct, they
are allied to both the Ostiak and Samoyede races, and
their language is said to have much in common with
the Samoyede tongue. The third race is that of the
Dolgans, who are of combined Ostiak and Tungus
origin. Their principal territory lies from the south of
the Samoyede country down to the Arctic Circle to the
east of the Yenesei, and they are said to have linguistic
affinities with the Yakut tribes of the Lena basin.
These threa races live side by side in harmony, and
intermarry, but they are perfectly distinct, both in
dress, language, and facial characteristics. They arrive
at Golchika as soon as the ice breaks up on the river.
Half of the family pitch their choom there for the fish
ing season, and the rest go back to the tundra to find
pasturage for the reindeer. In the autumn, they come
down to the Yenesei to fetch their friends, and the
whole family travels south to the edge of the taiga,
where they spend the winter. A few of the natives
fished for their own profit, but by far the greater
number worked either for Prokopchuk or Antonoff.
They hired a boat from one or other of the merchants,
and each evening brought their catch to the sorting
station and received payment for it.
At the time of our visit, there were only half the
usual number of chooms at Golchika. Instead of
twenty or more, there were only ten pitched on the
river-bank. We wondered a good deal at this, and
happened one day to mention it to Madame Antonoff.
Whereupon she gave us the following reason for the
scarcity of their numbers ; and the story is such an

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 105
illustration of the intrigues by which business is
carried on by the Lower Yenesei, that I cannot resist
quoting her story. She told us that on account of her
health, she herself had spent the previous winter at
Tomsk ; and that during her absence, her old father,
with her two young sisters, had lived at Golchika. In
the course of the winter, the old man died of heart-
disease ; and as Prokopchuk and Anastasia Ivanowna
were just at that time starting for Dudinka, whither
they went each year on business, Michael Petrovitch
wrote a letter to his wife telling her of her loss, and
gave it to Anastasia to deliver. But at Dudinka, the
couple met most of the natives who were accustomed
to spend the summer at Golchika. Thereupon they
carefully spread the report that the death in Antonoff's
family had been due to measles, and that the house
was consequently infected.
The natives have great fear of measles, which are
almost as fatal to them as smallpox is to Europeans ;
and such was their alarm, that more than half of them
would not settle at Golchika during the following
summer. Their absence made no difference to Prokop
chuk, who had several agencies at different places along
the river, and who, if he could not trade at one point,
did better business at another ; but it was a serious
blow to Antonoff. On his return, Prokopchuk, having
the monopoly of the trade, soon sold out of goods, and
then had the cool impudence to offer to buy more from
Michael Petrovitch. Antonoff, quite unwitting of the
wrong that had been done him, not only agreed to do
so, but as a mark of neighbourly feeling allowed him

106 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
to purchase them at wholesale rates. Meanwhile another
merchant in a smaller way of business fell ill of pneu
monia. Whereupon Prokopchuk gave out that this
was another case of measles. The terrified natives
immediately boycotted the unfortunate man, with the
result that he was ruined. Unable to sell his goods,
and in urgent need of cash, he begged Prokopchuk to
take over his stores at a reduced price, and needless to
say, Gerasim Androvitch was only too pleased to do so.
The first that the Antonoff family heard of this piece
of treachery was when Madame Antonoff herself passed
through Dudinka and learned of her father's death ; but
it was not until she reached home that she and her
husband realised the cruel trick that had been played
upon them.
This story shows something of the difficulties under
which the Yenesei merchant works, owing to the lack
of communication with the south. Michael Petrovitch
in particular used to lament grievously about the im
possibility of learning the rise and fall of prices in
Krasnoyarsk. This inconvenience hampered Prokop
chuk less because he was able to travel up the river in
winter, and learned what Dudinka could tell him of the
outside world, but he also used to look forward to the
time when wireless telegraphy would link remote
Golchika with the south. The telegraph wire now
extends as far as Turukhansk, and it should not in the
future prove such a difficult business to supplement it
with a wireless station having a transmission area of a
thousand versts.
Although the natives are gradually coming more and

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 107
more under the influence of the Europeans, it will be a
long time before they are finally submerged. In the
summer they come in contact with the Russians at the
fishing stations, but in winter, when they go into the
tundra, they slide back again into their primitive life,
away from vodka, and away from the hundred other
ills that are the curse of the white man wherever he
goes. The natives are the wards of the Empire, and
on the whole the Government fulfils its trust towards
them. They are judged by their own people, and in so
far as they do not come into collision with the Russian
settlers, they are allowed to obey their own laws. If
one Samoyede injures another, he is judged by his
prince. If he injures a European, the case is heard by
the native prince and a Russian official together ; but
for the most part the northern races are peaceable and
good tempered, and difficulties seldom arise. The grand
mistake is that the aborigines are taxed, not individually,
but by their clans or tribes. This system directly
discourages family life, and destroys the social relations,
which, as with so many other primitive nations, have
until now filled almost the part of religion to the natives
of the Yenesei. The tribes tend to break up and wander
off by themselves, in order to escape the tax which
would be levied on them if they were proved to belong
to their clan. Thus the old customs and ties are put
aside, and as their compulsory admittance into the
Orthodox Greek Church is at present the merest farce,
it will not be long before they have no religion at all,
either in the form of practical ethics or else in that of
faith and rite. At present, the majority of those who

108 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
live round the settlements have undergone baptism,
some of them several times over, in order to gain the
bonus that the Government pays at each christening.
A few years ago a couple of Samoyedes came to Golchika
from the tundra, and asked the pope to marry them,
and baptize their children. This ' was done, Michael
Petrovitch standing sponsor, and they ^ received the
gratuity. The following year, the same people appeared
again. Antonoff was away from home, but they saw
Prokopchuk, and went through the ceremony over again,
and received new Russian names. On the third year
they tried the trick once more, but unfortunately for
themselves, they were recognised, and the fraud was
discovered. But what else can be expected from a
people who, although technically baptized Christians,
yet have no instruction whatever in Christian doctrines,
and who say openly that they prefer the Russian god
to their own because He demands no sacrifice and
therefore His is a cheap religion. A sickness or mis
fortune drives them back to the gods of their fathers ;
and several times when there was illness in the chooms,
we heard the dull rumble of drums which showed that
the Shammaness or priestess was conducting the ancient
rites for the exorcism of the evil spirit.
Sylkin was wont to relate a naive tale which throws
some light on his attitude to his accredited religion.
One of his sons was taken dangerously ill. There
happened to be a doctor staying in Golchika at the time,
and he visited the child. Medicine was prescribed
("Only such a little drop of medicine in much water,
and he so ill ! "). Sylkin waited for a week, and still the

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 109
child was no better. Then, said Sylkin, he lost patience.
He solemnly collected all his ikons, and carrying
them up to the roof of the house, he spread them out
to the weather with ignominy, to show his contempt for
the Russians and their beliefs. Then he returned to
the gods of his own people. Alas for the moral— the
boy recovered !
The honesty of the natives on the Yenesei is a
striking contrast to the thievishness of the Siberiaks.
Sledges loaded with winter furs, chooms unguarded by
lock or key, are left out for weeks on the tundra, and
no one dreams of pilfering. If a native picks up any
thing that he thinks belongs to you, he will not rest
until he has returned it. This honesty is by no means
caused by lack of intelligence. The intellect of the
native is not a whit inferior to that of the European.
As I write I have before me models of sledges, fox traps,
etc., carved out of driftwood, and considering the rudeness
of their tools, the neatness and ingenuity of the work is
wonderful. Another point which must strike anyone
who comes in contact with them is their good manners.
If a Samoyede eats or drinks in your house, he never
puts down his cup without crossing the room in the
gracious Russian fashion to shake hands, and say thank
you for the meal. If cigarettes or sweets are handed
round, there is never any snatching or jealousy. No
body thinks of meddling with a stranger's property, no
matter how curious he may be concerning it.
Men and women are more or less on an equal
footing ill the choom. A woman is even permitted
to hold the office of Shamman or medicine-man. Some

no A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
of the Samoyedes have several wives, 'but those who
are -christened generally have but one. Women are
wedded, not for their beauty, but for their skill at work,
and their absence of nerves ! Love does not often
enter into the transaction. The amount of roubles and
reindeer that the parents of the young couple can supply,
seems to be the determining factor in Samoyede match
making. Nevertheless the men are fond of their wives,
and a widower will not remarry for four or five years
after the death of his wife.
Contact with the Russians has taught the natives
the full value of money, but it must all be in the form
of silver rouble or half-rouble pieces. It is difficult to
persuade them to barter in kind. If they bring furs
for sale, they like to see the price in cash, even if
immediately afterwards they exchange it for provisions
and felt. We often used to see small parties at
Prokopchuk's store. They trotted up on their little
sledges, and leaving the reindeer to graze outside the
door, filed into the kitchen. I have watched an elderly
and economical German lady buying a chicken ; I have
sat by and listened to the attempts of one of the canniest
horse-dealers in Co. Cork to sell a doubtful horse to a
brother coper of equal experience ; and I am well
acquainted with the romances by which English house
agents beguile their clients ; but these were all brief
and plain transactions compared to the dealings of
Prokopchuk with his native customers. If a party of
Samoyedes went to the house in the forenoon, it was
certain that they would not depart before the night, for
time counts for little in those regions of eternal daylight.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 111
After the wheels of barter had been oiled by many cups
of tea and vino, and the sale of their foxskins placed on
more or less of a business footing, both parties went
down to the store, and the huckstering began all over
again. We were never present at the latter part of
these mysterious negotiations — Gerasim Androvitch
never permitted anyone to hear how he clinched the
final bargain, but after a longer or a shorter time,
according as there was much or little vino in the house,
the natives were seen returning to their sledges, dragging
after them bundles containing felt, knives, kettles, and
souhari. Souhari are square chunks of coarse bread,
dried in the oven until they are as hard and crisp as
biscuit. Prepared thus, bread will keep for a long time,
and both Prokopchuk and Antonoff had large supplies
in their stores. The natives had a very shrewd idea of
the value of things. English goods, however cheap,
were greatly prized, and considered to be much better
than those of Russian manufacture. Sylkin, for example,
never tired of relating how once many years before he
had gone on board Captain Wiggins steamer, and had
been given a cup of " Angliski Koffe," i.e. English
coffee. He seemed to think that the name conferred
upon the drink some virtue which was absent from coffee
brewed in Siberia. The Samoyedes fully appreciated
good work. When I first went to Golchika, I wore a
pair of Cording's fishing boots for wading in the marshes.
These boots won universal admiration, and as soon as
they had shaken hands, our callers used to examine my
feet curiously, and feel the texture of the leggings.
" Voda nyet ? " they inquired, and when assured that

112 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
the boots were thoroughly waterproof, there would be
an approving chorus of "Horroshie."
It would not be a bad thing if everybody, no matter
who they may be, were compelled, as part of their
education, to spend a month in a choom on the tundra.
They would then learn the true value and real uses of
their possessions. The first thing that strikes one who
returns after a few days spent among the natives, is the
enormous number of useless and cumbersome chattels
which we have gathered round us as the price of our
civilisation. It is a real relief to meet people who wear
gloves, not for appearance sake, but to keep their hands
warm ; who use saucers under their cups, not as a
matter of custom, but because the tea must be cooled
before it is drunk ; who, when they yoke up a draught
animal, do not weigh it down with a ridiculous para
phernalia of blinkers and pad, but reduce all harness
to the essential minimum of a collar and traces. But
although they have few possessions, these are dearly
prized. When it takes you a week of labour to fashion
a pipe stem and bowl from driftwood and hammered
iron, is it to be wondered that you value it greatly and
set the price at fifteen roubles — the price of a reindeer ?
When your knife blade is made from an old Russian
file, ground and sharpened by many hours of polishing
on a flint stone, and when the wooden haft has been
turned, not by some factory process, but by your own
brown hand, no wonder that you are loath to sell it.
The needs of a native are very few and elemental. The
tundra gives him reindeer hides and foxskins for
clothing. The river brings him wood for his fire and

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 113
for his sledges. For six roubles, less than the price of
a foxskin, he can buy enough felt to make himself a thick
warm sakooy. In the old days he made his own crude
pottery, but now that he can sell his fish and his skins
he can afford to buy Russian kettles and crockery. But
even so he has not lost the instincts of the days when
he himself must fashion his goods with much labour ;
and although they are now more cheaply come by, he is
careful of them and never wasteful.
The wealth of most of the Samoyedes is in reindeer.
One young man had succeeded to so many herds from
father and uncle, that his deer, grazing on the tundra,
covered an area of six versts. No one else could graze
their herds where this man had camped, and as it was
impossible to count them all, six men on sledges used
to drive round and round the pasture, and where the
tracks showed that some of the deer had strayed away,
they used to follow and round them up again.
Most of the diseases of these poor people are due
either to dirt or to evil living. The inhabitants of the
balagans are in these respects as badly off as those of
the chooms. Immorality is fearfully common among
the Siberiaks, and consequently syphilis is a scourge
which attacks both races alike. I saw many bonny
intelhgent native children, but I saw scarcely a single
Siberian baby that looked as if it could grow up to
manhood. It was quite pathetic to see the faith and
gratitude with which both Siberiaks and natives
brought their sick to Miss Czaplicka, who had some
knowledge of medicine, and doled out simple remedies
from the medicine-chest to them. Much of the illness

114 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
was preventable — wounds which had become septic
through want of care, neglected ophthalmic affections,
and, especially among the natives, bronchial coughs and
phthisis. Sometimes the hut was turned into a regular
dispensary as patient after patient arrived for a poultice
or fresh boracic dressing ; and as each such invasion
meant a general scouring, not only of the utensils, but
also of the floor of the room, with Condy's fluid, we
found that an amateur dispensary entailed a good deal
of work. Three or four years previously the Govern
ment became aware of the condition of things, and sent
a mission to Golchika, including two doctors and some
nurses. One of the latter was that Madame Nerotova,
whom we had met as a merchant's agent on the Oryol.
The mission stayed at Prokopchuk's house and spent
the days very agreeably in drinking and card playing
with Gerasim Androvitch, while the people were
uncared for as before. Some disinterested person
informed the authorities of the scandal, but the only
result was to make the Government withdraw the
subsidy, so that now the people of Golchika have no
medical service at all — not even a bad one.
What is really required are a few devoted men, like
our own medical missionaries, who would minister to
the souls and bodies of Siberiaks and natives alike —
baptize, marry, heal the sick, and teach the people the
simple rules of hygiene. Such a medical mission ought
not to be difficult to establish. The first steamer
reaches Golchika, at the beginning of July ; the last
leaves at the end of August. For two months such
missionaries travelling on the river between Pustoy

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 115
and Sopochnaya would find an untilled field which
would abundantly repay their work. A great deal of
what is apparently loose morality among the Siberiaks
is due, not to the vicious tendencies of the people
themselves, but to the conditions of the country. It is
often impossible for a man and a woman to marry,
because they cannot find anyone to perform the rite.
There was a httle dilapidated church on the island at
Golchika, but service was held there only once a year,
when the pope came down the river from Dudinka for
the purpose. His visit just coincided with the fishing
season, and consequently very few of the balagan
dwellers of the district could spare the time to travel
on foot or by boat for forty or fifty versts to attend.
In winter the people cannot, in summer they will not
go to church. As the result, the inhabitants of the
Lower Yenesei live in deeper heathendom than even the
poor natives around them, who at least are bound by
their own tribal code of laws. They live beyond the
pale, with nobody to care for either their bodies or their
souls. Nevertheless, degraded and brutal as so many of
these balagan people appeared, I must confess that,
except from a purely academic point of view, I found
them more interesting than the natives with whom my
anthropological companions used sometimes to contrast
them to their disparagement. After all, it is they who
must take part in the future development of Siberia — a
part which the aborigines will never be able to play.
The resources of Siberia are immense both in and
under the soil, and as yet not a twentieth part of them

116 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
is developed. There are plenty of coal mines that have
never been worked. The people say, " When we have
burned up all the wood, then we will dig out the coal."
There are hundreds of miles of valuable timber. There
are thousands of miles of pasturage. There are minerals
of many kinds which have never been prospected. The
navigable rivers are the mightiest in the world:
nowhere is there any natural bar to a great railroad
system. The Russian Government realises the import
ance of developing the northern territory. For instance,
the young men of the Lower Ob, Yenesei, and Lena
are not called upon for military service, but are
encouraged to push forward the colonisation of the land.
Nevertheless, the European stock of a country where
the climate is so severe as in arctic Siberia, would die
out at the third generation if it were not constantly
recruited from the south. And naturally the new
comers who settle in those outposts of Asia are not the
best of their race. For the most part they are broken
men, criminals, and ne'er-do-wells, who have drifted
thither in spite of themselves. Of course the political
exiles are often of another class ; but an exile, even of
the highest type, when removed to lower surroundings
and cut off from most of the incentives that urge a man
to rise, is more apt to sink to the level of his environ
ment than to improve the tone of his neighbours.
Colonisation by deported labour has been tried
successfully in some parts of the world, but the colonists
must be freed locally, and given a fair chance to start
afresh. This unfortunately is not the case in Siberia,
where the exiles are constantly hampered by official

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 117
restrictions and espionage. Consequently those who
are undergoing a life sentence seldom have the spirit
or the opportunity to carve out more than a meagre
livelihood for themselves ; while those whose banishment
is temporary have no interest in the land, and hasten
to return to Europe when their time has expired.
There are few who, like Michael Petrovitch, return to
the place of their exile.
Therefore it is not upon those who are her citizens
by compulsion that Siberia must depend, but rather
upon free immigration from the west. And so far this
immigration has been slow. In the course of three
centuries perhaps only three millions of Russians have
emigrated to Siberia, and these have not always been
of the type most suitable for colonisation. But
during the last ten years, the number of settlers has
increased by leaps and bounds. Between 1902 and
1912 three millions of colonists entered Siberia, and
the population of such towns as Yenesiesk and Tomsk
has almost doubled. During the five years between
1909 and 1913, 75,850 square miles of new land has
been parcelled out for colonisation, and about two million
souls have settled there. During the same time about
6300 miles of roads have been constructed. Figures
such as these bring home the extent of this development.
It is not merely a new country which is growing up
year by year, it is half a continent, and that the richest
continent in the world. Plantations are among
ancient, primitive, and heroical works. If Russia
never did anything more than colonise Siberia, still she
would have amply justified herself as a nation.

118 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
There is a strong party in the country who look
forward to the day when Siberia shall receive her
autonomy, if not her independence. Whether this can
ever be in a land whose local needs and conditions differ
so profoundly remains to be seen. Siberia is as yet like
a giant in infancy, nursed by Russia. And Russia
herself, the youngest of the nations, is only just coming
into her own. She is still a country of enormous
possibilities, of the crudest paradoxes. With the most
autocratic government, hers is the most democratic
society in the world : with a church whose function has
dwindled into the effete repetition of ritual, religion is
the very fibre of her people. Apart from a strong vein
of Tatar blood, the Siberiaks are the siftings of the
Russians — even cruder, even less aware of their own
potential greatness. Nevertheless, if we believe that
nothing can finally check the onward progress of man,
then their development, though slow, is certain. Some
day the dream of such idealists as Michael Petrovitch
may be fulfilled, and a free United States of Siberia
extend from Chelyavinsk eastward to Vladivostock.

CHAPTER VL
The birds of Golchika — Seebohm — Popham — The effect of the season —
The curlew-sandpiper — The grey phalarope — The red-necked
phalarope — The little stint — The Temminck's stint.
Although Golchika is such a small and remote place,
we have three more or less exact lists of the birds that
breed there in the summer. To these my own notes
may make a fourth. The first is that of Seebohm in
1877. Owing to various accidents he did not reach
Golchika until 17th July, by which time, of course, the
birds were hatched out, and he only spent six days in
the place. The most notable species that he mentions
are the little stint, the Eastern golden plover, and the
rock ptarmigan.
The next account is that of Mr. Popham in 1895.^
Mr. Popham reached Golchika on 7th July, nearly a
fortnight earlier than Seebohm. He records the little
stint, grey phalarope, rock ptarmigan, bar-tailed godwit,
pomatorhine skua, grey plover, and Eastern golden
plover. The third account is also that of Mr. Popham
in 1897.^ He reached Golchika on 29th June, and
three days later proceeded down the river as far as the
Krestovskiy Islands, where he was lucky enough to
1 Ibis, 1897, vol. iii.
» Ibis, 1898, vol. iv.

120 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
take the first authentic eggs of the curlew-sandpiper.
On nth July, "having given up all hope of the ice
allowing us even to see Kuzkin Island," he returned
to Golchika. The birds of that neighbourhood men
tioned on this expedition are Eastern golden plover,
little stint, and the grey plover, although of the
last species he writes : " I certainly saw far fewer
birds on the marshes where they were breeding in
1895." I reached Golchika on 29th June, and spent two
months there. During that time I observed the
Eastern golden plover, little stint, grey plover, grey
phalarope, curlew-sandpiper, bar-tailed godwit, and
rock ptarmigan.
It is evident that there is great discrepancy, not
only between these four lists, but even between the two
lists given by Mr. Popham in 1895 and 1897. I think
that it is very doubtful whether, if four censuses were
taken of the birds in a district in England, there would
be the same amount of variation. For instance, on his
second visit, although he was aware of their occurrence
and was doubtless looking out for them, Mr. Popham
does not record the grey phalarope, rock ptarmigan, nor
bar-tailed godwit, and he observes a decrease in the
numbers of the grey plover. But the most remarkable
list is that of Seebohm, who made two or three
excursions into the marshes and over the tundra. On
the 18th he records: "I shot a couple of female little
stints, the first I had seen in the valley of the Yenesei,"
and on the 19th: "On the hills I shot a male little
stint." We are left to infer that these three specimens

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 121
were the only ones seen at Golchika; and yet, in 1895,
Mr. Popham records the species as numerous, and in
1914 I found it common both by the river and out on
the tundra. It is true that Seebohm visited Golchika
late in the season, but by 20th July, although the eggs
were hatched, the birds must have been feeding their
young, and must have been in evidence for some time
after that date.
The only explanation is that the bird population of
those high latitudes is a very variable one, and depends
upon the climatic conditions to a far greater extent
than in the south. The yearly cycle of the tundra is
very remarkable. For nine months of the year the
whole land lies under four feet of snow, and nothing
moves over the lonely white plain. Then in June, the
river bursts its ice, and for three weeks or a month the
whole country rings from end to end with the tinkle of
running water. It seems as if a great pulse drove
warm blood through the body of the frozen, stifled land,
when hundreds of little transitory brooks flow down
from the tundra to join the great flood that old Yenesei
pours out to the north. Now, although the ice breaks
up with a fair amount of uniformity between, let us say,
for example, latitudes 62° and 72°, yet the snow in the
country round does not disappear by any means with
the same concurrence. As we ourselves saw, the banks
at Platina might be nearly free from snow, while the
coasts of Golchika were white.
The birds migrate down the river, the bulk of them,
as Seebohm has recorded, probably arriving at the
Arctic Circle about the second week in June. Thence

122 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
they press northwards in the wake of the thaw, where-
ever they can find sufficient uncovered ground to afford
them food and drink. Sometimes, in their passion to
reach their breeding-grounds, they overshoot the edge
of the icy zone, and, landing in a country where an
arctic winter still prevails, they are obliged to return
southwards again — if they are able — and attend in due
course the advance of spring. If the season, for some
cause or other, is a late one, this bird host — this " aery
caravan" — is held up at the edge of the receding ice
cap and delayed, sometimes for days together. This
sometimes happens during migration in temperate
climates, but there the birds soon pass on, for the snow
seldom lies so deeply that no feeding-grounds are
uncovered. But on the Yenesei a bird may reach a
certain spot and summer there quite comfortably, while
a hundred miles farther north the country may not
support bird life at all. While she lingers there, the
physical need to breed may overtake her before the
winter has retreated sufficiently to allow her to reach
her usual haunts, and compels her to make her nest
and rear her brood where she can. Probably this is the
reason why I found the curlew-sandpiper not uncommon
near Golchika, while Messrs. Popham and Seebohm did
not see it there at all. I have no information whether
it was an early or a late season when these observers
visited the Yenesei, but the summer of 1914 was both
a cold and a late one. The ice broke up, and there
were signs that it would be an early spring, but before
the snow melted, the weather changed, and the east
wind brought up blizzards from the Taimyr. The

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 123
birds, who had hurried northwards at the first promise
of spring, were trapped and bound to make a living as
best they could, while they waited to proceed on their
journey to the river's mouth. The passions of the
season caught them unawares, with the double result
that the Golchika tundra was more than usually
populous that year, and a certain amateur ornithologist
was more than usually fortunate.
This, of course, is nothing but a theory, but there is
some evidence that tends to confirm it. The Samoyedes
from the north reported that the lakes on the Taimyr
never thawed, and that snow was lying on the tundra
all the summer. When I first reached Golchika, grey
phalaropes were common on the island for three or four
days. I shot several hen birds and found that they
were about to lay. Then the wind changed, and with
the warm spell most of the phalaropes disappeared.
Undoubtedly they had migrated farther north. But if
the cold weather had continued for another three or four
days, there is no doubt but that they would have bred in
the marshes. As it was, a few were caught, for I was
lucky enough to find five nests and take a young one
in down, whereas the other three expeditions had
recorded only one nest — in 1895. And next year there
may not be a single bird to be seen !
The great prize of my bird's-nesting at Golchika
was a nest of the curlew-sandpiper. This bird is
especially interesting to ornithologists, because, although
well known throughout Europe and Asia on migration,
its breeding-grounds remained a mystery for so many
years. The naturalist, Severtzoff, even suggested that

124 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
it must nest on the tops of the Pamir Mountains ! The
first nest ever found was that taken by Mr. H. L. Popham
at the river's mouth in 1897, and as the bird had not
hitherto been recorded from Golchika, I did not expect
to find it so far south. However, on 6th July, as I
was returning from a long round over the tundra that
lay in the northern angle of the Yenesei and Golchika
Rivers, all at once I saw a little rufous curlew, which
was standing on a tussock about twenty yards away,
watching me quietly. When I stopped she flew away,
but soon alighted again and looked at me. Full of
excitement, but still rather sceptical as to the likelihood
of finding eggs, I lay down and watched her, but at the
end of an hour and a half I could come to no conclusion,
for the bird only strolled about and preened herself
nonchalantly. I was not even certain of her sex, and
her solitude and her quiet behaviour made me doubt
whether, after all, she might not be a non-breeding bird.
Nevertheless, I marked the place and turned home
wards, meaning to come back next day. On the way I
saw two more curlew-sandpipers on a high slope of the
tundra, but they were very wild and would not permit
a near approach.
On the morrow I turned out early and tramped
over eight swampy miles of tundra. The second pair
of sandpipers were not to be seen, but the first bird was
still pottering round the same spot. To-day she was
a little more demonstrative, and flew about uneasily.
Once she uttered a sharp, anxious note : wick-wick-wick,
two or three times repeated. By this time I was con
vinced that the nest was close at hand, but it was

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 125
difficult to locate it ; for although the bird could dodge
me successfully enough behind tussocks of moss only
six inches high, my person unfortunately was too bulky
for these, the only available hiding-places. The ground
was on a very gradual slope. On the right hand
and on the left were two small tarns, still covered
with blue ice. In the distance grazed some herds of
reindeer, and once a Samoyede sledge glided swiftly over
a ridge. Heavy drifts of snow still lay in the sheltered
hollows, and the sleet showers that came slapping over
the tundra made me glad to wrap myself up in my
Burberry coat.
The bird had whirled away round the tarn at my
approach, so I hid myself as well as I could behind a
tussock, and settled down to wait for her return.
Twenty minutes passed — half an hour. " It's time she
was coming back," thought I, and turned my head care
fully to reconnoitre. And lo and behold, not thirty
yards behind, the sandpiper stood and studied me
contemptuously ! She had been watching all the time.
" What a fool ! " doubtless would have been her
comment if she could have spoken. It is no use to try
and gull the waders : up to a certain point I believe
that they can almost see you think !
I retired abashed to another hiding-place about
fifty yards farther up the slope. The bird at once
showed her appreciation of this move by flying towards
the spot where I had first seen her. She was so small
that it was very difficult to mark her as she tripped
between the tussocks. When I thought that she must
be settled on her eggs, I jumped up quickly. She took

126 A SUMMER ON THE Y^ENESEI
wing at once, but when I went to the place whence she
had risen, there was no sign of the nest. This happened
twice, but as she returned to the same spot each time,
I knew that the treasure was there all right, and that
patience would win it. The great difficulty in marking
down nests on the tundra is the absence of all landmarks.
You settle exactly in your own mind where the place is,
and then note the position by means of some hillock or
grass tuft on the skyline. This mark looks enormous
through the field-glasses, and you think that it will be
impossible to mistake it. When you look for it with
the naked eye you are not quite so sure : it may take a
minute or two to pick it up again. Then you stand up,
and away goes your bird — and your landmark likewise,
faded from the skyline, back into the tundra. I marked
the bird down by a dodge that I used when looking for
grey plovers' eggs under similar circumstances, and
which is described elsewhere ; but each time that I
flushed her, she seemed to jump up from a different
place. She was so little and so nimble that she could
run over the moss for some yards before she was seen.
The next time I gave her ample time to settle down,
and lay still in the wet, sucking lumps of sugar untU
I nearly fell asleep. Then all at once a Buffon's skua
came overhead, flying low in the squally wind. I
snatched my gun and shot him as he flew by, and as he
fell I saw the sandpiper spring up from a spot where I
had marked her once before. I left the skua and ran
up to the place. The bird began to call again, and
drooped a wing to decoy me away. Half a minute's
search and there was the nest at my feet. It exactly

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 127
answered to Mr. Popham's description — a little depres
sion in the moss, of an apple's diameter, and deeper
than the nests of most of the waders. The four eggs,
greenish in ground colour, were much blotched with
umber at the larger end, like those of a snipe. The nest
was so narrow and so deep that, as they lay, they were
tilted almost vertically, with their apexes pointing
downwards, and the blunt mottled ends uppermost,
flush with the surrounding brown tundra. In measure
ment they average 35 "1 x25"l millimetres. Compared
with those taken by Mr. Popham, my eggs are less
distinctly marked, and the blotches are more blurred
and confluent..
The discovery of this nest so close to Golchika
encouraged me to search the country further, and
although I found no more eggs, I was fortunate enough
to secure specimens of the young in down, as will be
told in a future chapter, and also had the opportunity
of observing the bird's behaviour throughout the
summer. As the result of these observations, I came to the
conclusion that this nest was not in a very typical
position. Judging by other breeding-grounds that I
located later on, I should say that characteristic curlew-
sandpiper ground was the slope of the dry, open tundra,
especially where the reindeer moss was more or less
broken up by tufts of grass, and where the bird could
have an uninterrupted view of the surrounding
country. Mr. Popham shot the female at the nest, and it is
significant that all my skins are those of hen birds. As

128 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
far as I know I did not see a cock bird while I was on
the Yenesei. While I was watching the nest, the male
did not come near, and later on there was no evidence
that both birds take charge of the young, as is the case
with the stints and other of the waders. However, it
is difficult to speak dogmatically, for the following
reason. As soon as the young were hatched, which
was about the third week in July, the curlew-sandpipers
came down from the uplands of the tundra into the
marshes, and while the chicks were still in down they
united into small parties. This tendency to flock to
gether during the breeding season was a remarkable and
suggestive feature of the bird life of the tundra. It
also made it very difficult to take a census of the
number of pairs breeding in a certain district. Until
the middle of July the birds seemed scarce, for they
were scattered over a wide area, and their behaviour
at the nest was so quiet that it was possible to walk
across the nesting-grounds and not notice them at all.
All this was altered when several broods met in the
marshes, for the old birds then became very demon
strative, and the species seemed to be twice as abundant
as before. There is no doubt that the young were
brought to these places, and were not hatched there.
On 15th July I carefully quartered one small bog while
looking for little stints' nests, and there was not a sand
piper to be seen. A week later two birds appeared,
and, judging by their behaviour, they evidently had
young ones close at hand, though whether they were
both females or a cock and hen I cannot say. After
wards I repeatedly met little parties like this in the

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 129
swampy parts of the tundra. When their haunts were
invaded the old birds would dash wildly round the
intruder with their white undercoverts flashing. Mr.
Popham says of the bird's call : " At one time I
thought I heard it make a sound like a dunlin, but
as I afterwards saw dunlins close by I was probably
mistaken." ^ The alarm cry which I constantly heard
was a shrill triple note : wick-wick- wick, repeated two
or three times, and uttered when the bird was both
at rest and on the wing. The curlew-sandpiper was
not as bold as the dunlin when the breeding-ground
was approached ; and when the young were hatched
the parents became very wild and circled rapidly over
the tundra just out of gunshot. At the beginning of
August, I secured a bird of the year in a big swamp
swarming with little stints and golden plover. It is a
wise provision of nature that these young waders should
sprout their flight quills before they are many hours out
of the egg. They fledge with incredible rapidity, and
once they can fly it is very difficult to approach within
shot of them. I stalked one bird which was following
its parent, but each time that I came within range, up
she would jump, call her youngster to follow her, and
escort him to another part of the marsh. It was
difficult to follow the movements of the bird, owing to
the swarms of mosquitoes, but at last I thought that I
had marked him down, and fired. But when I went to
pick up the specimen, I found to my disgust that I had
" shot at a pigeon and killed a crow," for it was not a
sandpiper at all, but a young dunlin. However, later
1 Ibis, 1898, vol. iv.
9

130 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
on I obtained a young bird in the buff-breasted plumage
of the first autumn. The nestlings have a black bill
and legs and chestnut down which is almost indistin
guishable from that of the little stint and dunlin, but
there is a rufous tinge on the breast which is recognis
able even at this early stage. How curious it is — this
red breeding plumage of so many of these arctic wading
birds ! We find it also in the knot, sanderling, bar-tailed
godwit, and phalarope ; and to prove that it has its
origin far down the stem of the race, we see the same
tint in the russet plumage of the ruffs of the year, and
in the bib of the mature little stint.
As soon as the young curlew-sandpipers are strong
upon the wing, they and their parents disappear. The
stints and the golden plover linger on untU the end of
August, but the sandpipers vanish early in the month.
The tundra is the sadder for their going. You may
walk for miles and not see a bird, except a plover or two
or a moulting bunting in the whortles.
The most charming birds were the grey phalaropes.
I saw them first of all on 1st July, when a little party,
both males and females, were feeding together in the
frozen marshes. With their brilliant chestnut plumage,
they looked more like passerine birds from some tropical
region than waders on the northern ice. You may
only speak of the male and female phalaropes by con
vention. You should, to be exact, say the female and
the male, for in this species the lady is entirely the
managing partner. She woos the mate of her choice
shamelessly, and later allows him to incubate the
eggs and take charge of the young. We wonder what

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 131
called for such a revolution in the order of the sexes,
and what the goal of such natural experiments may be.
Classificatory systems have sandwiched the
phalaropes between the plovers on the one hand and
the snipes on the other, but when seen swimming the
birds sit high in the water like little sea-gulls, and the
only limcoline things about them are their grey mantles
picked out with buff. When they run, as they love to
do, over the spongy sphagnum, their gait has the quaint,
perky dignity of the moorhen.
I found the first nest which contained fresh eggs on
8 th July, on the island at Golchika. It was within
fifty yards of a ramshackle balagan which had just
been taken over by some fisherfolk ; and it was lucky
that I found it when I did, or else the people, or more
probably their dogs, would certainly have done so.
The cock bird drew my attention to the place by flying
round anxiously while he uttered his drrrt-drrrt.
This note is like that of the red-necked phalarope, but
is shriller and quite recognisable where the two species
breed side by side. I sat down and watched him for
twenty minutes, and at the end of the time he ran on
to the nest, which was hidden in the grass like that of
a redshank. On the following day I flushed a cock bird from four
eggs on the other side of the island. This nest was in
a much drier situation ; nevertheless, the eggs lay upon
a good platform of dry grass, for the bird's instinct
taught him to raise them as high as possible above the
wet ground. I resolved to photograph this phalarope
at the nest, so I returned to the house and fetched my

132 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
camera and small green hiding-tent. It was not an
easy matter to pitch the latter, for the wind always
raves over that flat country, and even after it had been
weighted with timber it flapped so threateningly that
I did not expect much success. But the bird was most
accommodating, and in about ten minutes' time he slipped
quietly on to his eggs. I gave him time to settle down
comfortably, and then released the shutter. He
flounced off the nest, but more with surprise than with
fright, and in a quarter of an hour he returned, com
pletely reassured. After that our friendship ripened
rapidly, and the sound of the camera disturbed him not
in the least. Twice I left my hiding-place in order to
readjust the lens. Each time the phalarope ran off
the eggs to a little hillock twenty yards away and
watched me until I had re-entered the tent, and then
he returned at once. In spite of his gay plumage, the
bird was curiously inconspicuous. On the eggs he
fluffed out his red breast, which — a neat adaptation of
means to ends — in deference to his swimming powers,
unlike that of the other waders, was feathered closely
and thickly like that of a duck. But when he left the
nest he seemed to shrink to half his former size, and
his buff and black shoulder bands, and his long blade
like secondary feathers, harmonised exactly with the
long grass around him. I sat by the nest for the
greater part of the day, but all that time the hen bird
did not come near the eggs. Towards evening I
wanted to leave the tent, and in order to drive him
from the nest without scaring him unduly, I threw
some small pieces of moss at him. This had the

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 133
desired effect, but as he strolled doubtfully away, a
second piece fell into the nest. Without hesitation
the plucky little bird, disregarding the strange up
heavals of the tent, ran back and tried to clear the
precious eggs. I photographed him for the last time
as he stood over them, piping his solicitude lest they
should take hurt. I have seldom seen a bird that I
liked so well — so beautiful, so innocent, and so occupied.
There is something very touching in a cock bird's care
for his eggs. The hen is proverbially attached to the
nest, and it seems only natural that she should be so,
but her mate's pride and devotion is pretty to see.
I obtained another male phalarope and a newly
hatched chick on 16th July, but the young ones fledge
incredibly quickly, and by the beginning of August
there was not a bird to be seen in the marshes. The
grey phalaropes are the first migrants to leave Golchika
in the summer.
The red-necked phalaropes were much more common
than the last-named species, and they were also more
sociable. They began to nest about the same time
as the grey phalaropes, but they lingered much later
in the summer, and I obtained young birds in the
plumage of the year until the end of August. Our
British phalaropes are so tame in the breeding season
that they may almost be caught in a butterfly-net, but
the Siberian birds were rather wild, especially when
they had young ones in the neighbourhood. When a
red-necked phalarope was feeding in shallow water
she would begin to pirouette round quickly on her own
axis, and at the same time snatch up small particles

134 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
from the surface. After watching this performance
several times, I came to the conclusion that the water
was just too deep to allow the bird to reach the mud
at the bottom. Therefore, by the circular movement
of her body, she created an eddy which sucked the
floating matter to the surface, just as by stirring a tea
cup with a spoon it is possible to draw the tea leaves
to the top.
Golchika is a great stronghold of the little stint.
The morning after our arrival at the island I saw at
least a dozen of these pigmy dunlins feeding round the
house in company with a few Temminck's stints. The
latter were fractious, waspish little things, who chased
away any other bird which trespassed too close to their
own particular puddles ; but the little stints were much
too busy to squabble. Each was guzzling away as if
his life depended upon it. And so it did, and not only
his own life, but the life of the race also, for the
summer was short, and eggs must be laid and hatched,
and chicks reared into strong-flighted birds all in the
space of eight weeks. Most small birds, especially the
waders, have an intensely solemn demeanour. Perhaps
it is their long beaks, reminiscent of patriarchal beards,
that gives them such a ludicrously staid expression.
The little stint is the most serious of them all, and
exceeds both the dunlin and the snipe in gravity. His
deportment would be becoming in an archdeacon.
I found the flrst nest on 3rd July beside a little
lake. The bird rose quietly and alighted again at a
little distance. I had watched stints behaving like
this for the past four days, and had searched in vain

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 135
for eggs, but this time the bird rather overdid the
business. She, or rather he, drooped a wing and that
gave the show away at once. I sat down to wait, and
in two minutes the bird had cuddled down upon his
eggs again. After that I found many nests, both out
on the tundra, and also in the riverside marshes, in
company with reeves and phalaropes.
The bird shown in the illustration was photographed
on Golchika Island itself I went to the place armed
with a large reflex camera, racked out to its fullest
extent. It seemed rather like taking out a siege gun
to shoot rabbits, but the bird was so small that I feared
that she would not appear upon the plate at all unless
a lens of long focus was used. But this turned out to
be quite unnecessary. The chief difficulty was to get
sufficiently far away from the sitter (it was she this
time), who tripped round my feet, not afraid, but just
a little nervous lest I should accidentally crush her
eggs. When I touched the nest, she sprang up almost
as if she would have flown at me, and then toddled
sideways with wings trailing distractedly and puffed-
out feathers. The tameness of the little stint at the
nest is quite uncanny. It seems as if the life of the
race that she fosters has power for a season to raise
the bird above such commonplace matters as food and
fear, and fills her with a sort of ecstasy of maternity.
Later on, when the eggs are chipping, this passion to
brood rises to such a pitch that the bird will actually
suffer herself to be taken in the hand rather than leave
her nest. I use the words he and she indiscriminately
when writing of the stints, for both sexes share the

136 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
duties of incubation, although most of the birds that
I obtained at the nest were males. When the chicks
are two or three days old, both parents unite to care
for them, and become very noisy and rather wild when
the place is approached. One morning I watched a cock
stint whose nest held three moist chicks. One by one
he collected the broken eggshells and flew with them
to a spot some fifty yards away. This habit is general
among birds whose young are helpless in the nest, but
baby stints run almost as soon as they are hatched, and
it scarcely seemed worth the parents' trouble to carry
off the egg-shells.
Even before the chicks are fledged, the gregarious
instinct asserts itself, and the family party unites with
another family party until quite a large flock is formed.
These flocks linger on the sandy flats until the end of
August, when all the birds disappear before the easterly
gales as if they were swept away with a broom. Some
times the stints mix with the dunlins that also haunt
such places, and it is very comic to see the two species,
like pocket and quarto editions of the same work,
feeding side by side.
The Temminck's stints were also common at
Golchika, but they were to be found only along the
river-banks. For this reason they breed a week later
than Erolia minuta, for the shores of the river are
flooded at the end of June, and the birds must wait
until the water has subsided before they can begin to
lay. But one or two pairs nest early, and one of the
first clutches of eggs that I found at Golchika was that
of a Temminck's stint on a grave-mound in the little

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 137
cemetery beside the Antonoffs' house. Even where the
two species bred side by side there was never any
difficulty in distinguishing the nests. That of the little
stint, as a rule, was lined with dry willow leaves, while
that of the Temminck's stint was finished with grass-
bents. The eggs too are quite distinctive, although I
took two clutches of little stints' eggs which approached
to the type of Erolia temminckii.
When we came to Golchika the Temminck's stints
were courting. It was a very pretty performance.
The bird (he or she — the stints make no distinction of
sex) took wing suddenly, and spun away down the river
bank with a high shrilling call : Trrrrrr. Sometimes
it sank down, tired out by the spring ecstasy, but more
often it circled round slowly, head to wind, and hovered
for a while with rapidly vibrating wings and throat.
When a number of birds thus hung poised in the air
the effect was very charming. It seemed as if they
were so much in love with one another, and with the
day, that a sudden rapture lifted them above the
common earth and impelled them to take wing. At
such times they were fearless of man, but later on, when
the eggs were laid, they became rather shy.
On 16th July I pitched my hiding-tent beside a
nest with three eggs among some scrub willows. It
was impossible to disguise the tent in any way, for
there was no material at hand to cover it. I was
obliged to enter it in all its nakedness, and hope that
the green cover would not offend the eye of the
lady stint. However, a three hours' wait among the
mosquitoes was quite fruitless. The bird flew wildly

138 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
round the tent, but never once returned to her eggs,
and in the end I gave it up as a bad job. I was a
good deal hampered also by a drunken native, who
staggered through the marsh with a vodka bottle,
begging all the world to join him in his cups. That
is the worst of vodka. It must have some of the
properties of the mediaeval love philter, judging by
the kind of universal affection and philanthropy that
it seems to inspire in its victims !
On the following morning I called on our next-
door neighbours, and pressed into my service little
Nicolai Protyvik, the youngest but three of the large
family of that ilk. Of course I could not explain to
the small boy why I wanted him, but with the
delightful obligingness of his race, he followed me at
once. In fact, the only difficulty was to restrain all
the rest of the household from coming too, so eager
were they to find out what my business might be.
The photographer always has a bad moment when
approaching a marked nest. Will the bird have for
saken it, and are his preparations made in vain ? In
this case the eggs were hot, showing that the bird had
only just left them. Doubtless she was watching us
from somewhere close at hand. I crept inside the tent
with the camera and bade Nicolai go home at once. If
he did, I promised him sweets — konfetie — in the even
ing. But Nicolai's face fell, and he hung about
dissatisfied. What was the matter — didn't he like
sweets ? No use to give him kopecks, for at Golchika
there was nowhere to spend them. With a beseeching
smile and expressive gesture, he said ; " Koureet —

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 139
koureet ! " A thorough little Siberian, he wanted, not
sugar, but cigarettes !
Before he was out of sight the bird was back at the
nest, for this trick of sending an ally away from the
tent is one which seldom fails to deceive even the
wariest of fowl. But the Temminck's stint was un
usually shy, and at each exposure the click of the
shutter drove her away with a flash of small dagger-
grey wings. Then followed a wearisome time of waiting,
while she flew round and round the tent and tried to
find out what the sound-maker inside might be. She
never flew directly on to her eggs, but always alighted
a little distance off and ran up in little zigzag rushes
between the willows. Her small grey body and jerky
movements made her seem more like a mouse than a
bird. Here again I am taking the bird's sex for granted,
and yet, as I did not secure this stint, I have no idea
whether it was a cock or a hen. This case illustrates
pretty well the limitations of photography as a hand
maid to ornithology. Enthusiasts sometimes claim that
the camera has revolutionised the field-study of birds,
and this is so to a certain extent ; but what can be said
for the scientific value of a record which does not even
prove the sex of the original ! Bird photographers are
too apt to take it for granted that the bird at the nest
is necessarily the female, and each year a number of
pictures are published, definitely titled as to sex,
without any more proof than that the observer "judged
by its behaviour that the bird was the female." If such
workers could be persuaded to use the gun in connection
with the camera for a season, it would perhaps shake

140 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
their confidence in their own judgment in this
matter. I obtained both male and female Temminck's stints
at the nest, but whether the sexes incubate in turns, or
whether one bird takes over the whole business, I cannot
say. The chicks are much greyer in colour than those
of the little stint, which, except for their size, resemble
young dunlins. At the end of July, baby stints
swarmed everywhere. The Antonoffs' dogs spent most
of their leisure in rambling round the island and
gobbling up all that they could find. When hard
pressed I have seen these fledglings take to the water
and swim as cleverly as phalaropes.
For an expedition of this kind the choice of a camera
is not an easy matter, for it is impossible to carry a
number of bulky appliances about with you, and
therefore any instrument chosen must be able to do the
work of two or three. It is particularly difficult for the
ornithologist, for bird photography requires a specialised
apparatus. There is only one kind of camera that will
fulfil all requirements, and that is a reflex. The
objections to the reflex type are its weight and its
costliness, and also it is not very suitable for taking
nest pictures. But for the rest, the advantage of
focusing up to the moment of exposure far outweighs
the drawbacks, especially when the sitter is likely to be
anything so restless as a bird. All the ornithological,
and most of the other illustrations used in this book
were taken with a " Birdland " reflex camera, buUt
for me by Mr. Armytage Sanders of London. It is
expressly intended for bird photography ; and as far as

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 141
I know it is the only reflex of quarter-plate size that can
be used with a lens of fourteen-inch focal length. I
found the latter arrangement of inestimable use during
my Siberian trip : in fact, in very many cases it was
indispensable.

CHAPTER VIL
The Eastern golden plover — The bar-tailed godwit — The distribution of
birds at Golchika — The dotterel — Some other birds — The Siberian
herring-gull — The long-tailed duck — The king-eider — The wild
swan — The black-throated diver — The red -throated diver — The
white-fronted goose — The red-breasted goose — The migration of
geese — Scarcity of birds of prey — The blue fox — Some smaller
birds — The Lapland bunting — The red-throated pipit — he
autumn migration — Young blue-throats.
One of the commonest birds on the tundra was the
Eastern golden plover, or " Tilyoko," as the Samoyedes
called it. One of the birds met you half a verst from
the nest and whistled his mate off her eggs. They
then both escorted you to their boundaries, and there
you were, so to speak, handed over to the next couple
for espionage. This happened over and over again,
until for miles your progress was accompanied by a
chorus of plaintive pipes — klee-ee-kee — from that of the
bird who was running before you within gunshot, to
those on the distant ridges of the tundra, who could
only be seen through binoculars.
I found the first nest on 4th July. It contained
four slightly incubated eggs, and was made of broken
lichen haulms on the side of a long grassy slope. Both
Seebohm and Mr. Popham found the European golden
plover {Charadrius apricarius) on the Yenesei. Mr.
Popham says that where they breed side by side on

F.ASTEK.X Grl.DEN TlOVER (CiIARADRIUS 1). FUL\'US).

Lapland Buntinc (Calcarius l. lapponicus) immature plumage.

Little Stint ? (Kroi.ia minuta.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 143
the tundra it is possible to distinguish the two species
by their calls ; and he shot a bird with parti-coloured
axillaries which has been pronounced to be intermediate
between the eastern and western forms, but as far as I
know, I never met with anything but Charadrius
fulvus at Golchika.
The eggs hatch out about 20th July, and as in the
case of the curlew-sandpiper, as soon as the chicks are
old enough to run over the tundra, the parents take
them into the swamps, where, as they fledge, flocks are
gradually formed. On 1st August I explored a piece
of marshy land which lay about twenty versts from
Golchika. In a patch of ground of not more than a
quarter of a mile square, I counted no fewer than five
pairs of golden plover, the same number of curlew-
sandpipers, and many little stints. The latter for the
most part kept aloof and flocked only with their own
kind, but the sandpipers and plovers associated freely.
Little anxious parties made up of two or three of both
species swooped wildly over the marsh ; and I frequently
observed on this, as on other occasions, that no sooner
did a plover alight on a tussock than a sandpiper
pitched beside her. The two stood side by side, crying,
for a minute or two, and then dashed off together
to another perch. The bond between two species
so distinct was very interesting and even remarkable.
The wick-wick-wick of the curlew-sandpipers put all the
plover on the qui vive at once, just as the melancholy
klee-ee or kee-a-ko of the plover sent the sandpipers
buzzing all over the breeding-grounds in hysterical
" wisps."

144 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
This tendency to flock before the young were
fledged is easily explained. Sociabihty is one of the
principal laws of animal life. It is abnormal to find
a solitary species, and where such a one occurs it can
generally be explained, as in the case of some birds of
prey, by a peculiar mode of feeding. But more often
it is due to the change produced in the animal world
by the rapid increase of mankind. It is worthy of note
that there are species living quite an isolated hfe in
densely inhabited regions, while the same species or
their nearest cogeners are gregarious in uninhabited
countries.^ To some extent this is the case with the golden
plover. In our own country breeding-grounds are
becoming scarce. You must walk very many miles in
England to meet with a dozen pairs of nesting plover,
and thus the birds scattered over the moors have no
incentive to congregate until the autumn, when their
numbers are recruited by migrants from the north.
But on the tundra, where the birds are plentiful and
live under primitive conditions, their natural inclination
towards social life is very marked, and the same applies
to the curlew-sandpiper.
I used to wonder what brought the birds down from
the grassy hillsides where they nested into the
sphagnum marshes, and I came to the conclusion that
it must be the need of the young broods for water.
There is no doubt that it was the marsh that attracted
them. In August a number even came down to the
banks of the Golchika River, a mile or more from the
' Kropotkin, Mutual Aid among Animals, p. 20

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 145
nearest breeding-place. I shot a young bird there in
the spotted ochre plumage of the first autumn. He
still wore a little coronal of down among his new
frontal feathers. The golden plover do not leave
Golchika until the end of August, at which time I saw
flocks of twenty or thirty birds flying up the Yenesei.
The bar-tailed godwit was the last of the six rare
waders of Golchika, and it was the only one, alas ! whose
nest I did not find. It was very scarce in the district.
I saw only two pairs altogether. The Samoyedes
called this bird " Tufek." They said that she arrived
very early in the spring, and ran round the frozen
pools, tapping the ice with her long bill and crying
impatiently for the thaw. Like most of the bird-lore
of country people all the world over, this fancy
probably has a germ of truth in it. The godwits breed
on the highest parts of the tundra, which are the first
places to be freed from snow ; and I should think that
they lay their eggs very early, for birds that I saw on
12th July evidently had young ones close at hand.
The alarm note has been syllabled as lou-ey-lou-ey-
lou-ey. To me it sounds exactly like the clapper-
clapper made by sharpening a scythe on a whetstone.
There were three distinct types of country round
Golchika, and in a short time one learned to know
just what birds to expect in each. First there were
the river banks and the neighbouring swamps. Stints,
phalaropes, reeves, and dunlin were the representative
species in such places. Then there were the dry, stony
hills that divided the tundra from the marsh. Here
you might expect to find the shore-lark — a quarrelsome

146 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
dandy with a canary and puce gorget — a wheatear or
two, and scores of ringed plovers. Lastly, on the
tundra itself, there were golden plover, Lapland
buntings, curlew-sandpipers, and the dotterel. The
latter, although of less interest than most of the waders
of the neighbourhood, charmed me as much as any of
them. She is such a gentle, innocent little bird, and
both her tameness and her trim, sober-hued plumage
are so engaging. I found several nests, and also two
or three pallid, fluffy babies, who already wore the first
suggestions of the tangerine-coloured vests that would
be theirs by and by. Later, the dotterels gathered
into little family parties, or " trips " as the old English
fowlers called them, but all through June coveys of
unmated birds haunted the tops of the hills. Some
times, as you stumbled over the rough, mossy ground,
you would hear a little tinkle of notes, like falling drops
of sound, and half a dozen grass tussocks (so it seemed)
sprang into a flock of timid, throbbing birds, who
skimmed away over the tundra and pitched into in
visibility again a little farther on.
I was once lying behind a hillock, watching an old
dotterel with three young ones, who were already strong
upon the wing. Presently a rough -legged buzzard
circled overhead. I think that he was really on the
look out for lemmings, not for dotterel, but the mother
bird took it for granted that he had designs upon her
brood. With a soft chirrr, the three fledglings took
wing, for they were well able to take care of themselves ;
but the plucky little mother (who, like many human
mothers, could not understand that her babies had out-

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 147
grown the need of her protection) held her ground, and
began to curtsey sideways, and cry softly, shamming
a broken wing with pretty art. At first she and the
buzzard were at cross-purposes. He had not even seen
her brood, and if he had, he knew that it was waste of
time to chivy birds so strong upon the wing. If she
had known enough to lie Still while his sinister shadow
wheeled around her, all would have been well. As it
was, her flutterings tempted him, and he stooped at her
viciously. I could not see such an ending to her show
of maternal devotion, and so, exchanging my field-
glasses for the gun, I pumped 2 oz. of dust-shot into the
hawk. Of course, at that range, it scarcely ruffled his
stout breastplate of feathers, but the report made him
sheer off, and gave the gallant little plover time to escape.
Another bold parent was the willow-grouse. At the
end of July I found a brood in a little valley much
beloved by red-throated pipits and mosquitoes. After
a hot chase I captured three of the youngsters, and
imprisoned them in the camera case. As soon as the
mother heard them cheeping, she ran up with the greatest
solicitude, and I was able to photograph her over and
over again as she stood within ten feet of me. The cock
bird also showed much concern, but dared not venture
so close as his mate. From the photograph it will be
seen, in these high latitudes, the willow-grouse never
lose the white winter plumage entirely.
It is interesting to find that even the British Islands
are not so far south of the arctic avifauna but that five-
sixths of all the species I observed north of latitude 70°
are on the British lists. Of these, twelve species breed

148 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
regularly in this country, and most of the others are
frequent on passage. Some of them are so well known
in their European haunts that I shall mention them only
in passing. Such were the reeves and dunlins who nested
in the long grass in the marshes, and a single common
snipe who flew round the island, bleating his lonely
love-lyrics all day long. There were also some arctic
terns who nested in a vociferous colony close to the
river. The terns on the Yenesei had decadent tastes.
In this country they are the cleanest and most skilful
of flshermen, seizing only live prey in clear water.
But at Golchika they were the veriest little scavengers,
and hawked all day round the packing stations in search
of fish entrails and any refuse that might be thrown into
the water. Here they were helped by the gulls, hundreds
of which gathered round Golchika in August. These
were all the Siberian herring-gull {Larus fuscus anteluis),
as our ornithologists are pleased to call it, or the Siberian
lesser black-back, as nature seems to have designed it
to be called. It differs from our Larus fuscus in its
slightly larger size and paler mantle. Mr. Popham
informs me that when he visited Golchika, he found a
considerable colony of these gulls. No such colony
exists now, and although once or twice I found a few
pairs breeding at Och Marino and Sloika, I never
obtained any eggs. The birds seen round Golchika
were nearly all in the plumage of the second or third
year, and of nine that were brought to me by Sylkin,
eight were females.
The only duck that was common at Golchika was
the long-tailed duck. These birds were common on the

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 149
lakes, and flocks of unmated birds were seen on the
Yenesei until the middle of July, when they went into
the tundra to moult. I often heard their fine, harsh
clamour, or watched them preening themselves on the
blue ice-floes, as I crossed the swamps by the light of
the midnight sun. He who named the long-tailed duck
Harelda glacialis knew not only what was due to
science, but also what was picturesque in nomenclature.
So it is with the golden-eye — Clangula glaucion, and
the petrel — Oceanites oceanicus. The actual meaning
of the names may be nothing to the ordinary man, but
they please the ear, just as the National Anthem, or
the "Marche Funebre" played on the organ, may by
their stateliness and dignity impress a man who properly
has no soul for music. Even if we did not understand
Latin, we could not call the little dipper Colymhus
glacialis, just as vice versa we could not recognise the
great northern diver merely as Cinclus aquaticus. He
who gave the red-necked phalarope its trivial name had
not such a fine idea of the value of sounds as the
ornithologist who first called it Phalaropus hyperhoreus.
In one case the specific name falls flatly on the ear — it
is equally well suited to a new variety of chicken ; but
the other rolls off the tongue grandly enough, with a
certain sonorousness befitting a being whose life is spent
in battling with wind and wave in desolate and solitary
places. I never saw the king-eider at Golchika, but at the
beginning of July, Prokopchuk brought in a couple — a
splendid drake and a duck. Prokopchuk had a story,
though whether of his own invention or that of the

150 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
natives, I do not know, that the " ga-ga," as he called
it, is in some sense a bird of distinction ; and that if a
bird of prey harries it in the nesting season, the ducks
of other species will unite to drive the foe away. It is
curious how we human folk thus allow legend and
sentiment to gather round certain birds. Sometimes
it is by association, as round our own redbreast and
barn -swallow ; sometimes it is by their utility, as round
the eider-ducks of Iceland; sometimes, as in the case
of the " ga-ga," we can trace it to none of these things.
No bird has gathered such a wealth of myth around
its life-story as the swan. From the tragedy of the
children of Lir to the coming of Lohengrin, its legends
are so many and so beautiful that it was scarcely sur
prising to find the same sentiment on the Yenesei. The
wild swan does not nest at Golchika, although it is found
at the Sopochnaya, and the natives there hold it in high
esteem. Indeed, they invest it with the same qualities
with which the people of the south used to endow the
pelican. The swan is their personification of maternity.
The goose, they say, is a bad mother. When the young
foxes go into the tundra to steal her eggs, she will fly
screaming away ; but the swan will face the robbers,
and kill anyone who touches her nest. She will be
slain herself, rather than desert her brood.
The divers were the latest birds to breed at Golchika,
for they were obliged to wait until the ice on the lakes
thawed, and this did not happen until after the snow
melted. I took fresh eggs on 12th July. Both the red-
and black-throated species were found, but my experience
agrees with that of Mr. Popham, as against that of

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 151
Seebohm, that the former was much the commoner
of the two. The white-billed diver {Gavia adamsi),
which breeds on the eastern tundras, visits the Yenesei
occasionally during the spring migration.
I had met with the black-throated diver in Scotland,
but there I never heard more of its language than an
uncouth shriek. But, on the Yenesei, I constantly heard
a beautiful modulated whistle, two or three times
repeated, as wild and as far reaching as the call of some
wading bird. In fact it seemed such an incongruous
sound to proceed from the " ga-garra's " grotesque body
that, although I frequently suspected the blackthroat, I
never really solved the mystery of its authorship until
one day when lying watching duck beside a lake in the
tundra, a pair of divers flew towards me, unsuspecting,
and pitched in the water about two hundred yards away.
They began to play about the tarn, chasing each other,
diving beneath the surface, and swimming side by side
along the shore. Frequently, with rigid necks and
tilted bills, they uttered this weird, melancholy whistle,
which was audible for a mile or more. I think it must
be the love-song of their kind.
There was a small pool behind Sylkin's house, and
here a pair of red-throated divers hatched out two
young ones. Sylkin's boys caught one of the chicks
the same evening, and brought him to me. He was a
hideous little monster, whose scaly, sprawling limbs and
goggle eyes bore the saurian stamp that in his parents
was discreetly veiled with feathers. I had photographed
this diver in the Outer Hebrides during the previous
summer, and wanted a picture of the downy youngster

152 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
to complete the series. As the light was failing, I had
to put off the sitting until the morrow, and went to
bed with the foundling snuggled for warmth inside my
nightgown. At first he was a most uncomfortable bed
fellow, poor little wretch, and cried unceasingly until he
had warmed his cold webbed toes against me, and then
he nestled down quietly enough.
In the morning I tried to photograph him, but he
was a most troublesome sitter. Professor Newton ^ cites
the case of a young dabchick, which could not have
been more than twelve hours old, which crawled across
a table from side to side, " dragging itself forward by
means of its wings quite as much as propelling itself by
its legs." My diver easily capped this feat. With legs
and wings, he moved himself in rapid jerks, and crossed
a strip of mud thirty feet wide at a pace that gave me
all I could do to catch him. Whenever he was placed
in the water, he invariably swam ashore and crawled
into the grass. I am inclined to think that in very
early days divers are able, not only to progress on land,
but also make good use of that power. Otherwise it is
not easy to explain how it was that at Golchika they
were found so often upon small pools and streams at a
distance from where they were hatched, and how they
reached the river before their wings were fiedged.
The twin of my chick was reared safely. From the
first he was slightly bigger than his brother. It is usual
for one of a diver's brood to be larger than the other,
but I do not know whether the difference in size is due
to sex. He had all the care and solicitude that by
1 Ibis, 1889, p. 577.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 153
rights he should have shared ; and all day long his devoted
parents flew backwards and forwards between the pool
and the sea with flsh to satisfy his growing appetite.
When you visited the place, you might see the anxious
couple swimming to and fro with their bills raised in
that attitude of supercilious haughtiness that is
characteristic of these birds. After them paddled the
awkward squab, with his infant bill tilted also, in absurd
travesty of their gesture. He always seemed more at
ease when they took wing and left him to shift for
himself Then you could only tell that he was nervous
because every now and then he pretended to drink.
This little habit is typical of the adult diver when
uneasy, and it was interesting to notice it in so young
a bird. The divers laid their eggs so late, and the incubation
period was so long, that this chick, like many more, was
still in down by the middle of August, and I used to
wonder however he would acquire sufficient wing-
power to carry him hundreds of miles to the south
before the snow came. On 25th August he reached
the river. He was still quite unable to fly, and unless
his parents carried him, he must have crawled across
half a mile of sphagnum and driftwood, for there was
no outlet to the pool where he was hatched. He
screamed terribly, just like a child who fears a ducking,
and tried to clamber on to the back of his mother, who
dodged him each time by diving down and popping
up again a yard or two away. Three or four more old
divers came to look on at the youngster's initiation into
the home of his order, and between them they kept up

154 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
a hideous chorus of shrieks until nightfall. But after
dusk the little one must have mustered enough courage
to swim downstream ; for, with his parents in attend
ance, he passed the hut during the night, and by
morning he was swimming safely where nothing could
hurt him, out on the broad turgid breast of the Yenesei.
The commonest goose at Golchika was the white-
fronted goose {Anser alhifrons). Seebohm mentions
the lesser white-fronted goose {A. fnmarchus), but I
saw none of the latter species. The natives once brought
in a bean-goose that they had killed in moult on the
tundra, and another day they brought a pair of red-
breasted geese {Branta ruficollis), the only ones that I
saw on the Yenesei.
The march past of the geese began on 14th July,
and continued for a week. During this time the birds
migrated by day in twos and threes, in dozens, and in
battalions a hundred strong, to their moulting haunts
in the tundra. They gag-gaggled sedately to one
another as they flew, and each squad rigidly followed
the course of the Golchika River. Thus for four or five
weeks they loiter beside the inland lakes, as helpless as
nestlings, waiting for their flight quills to grow. Then,
during the latter part of September, they return in
leisurely troops, young and old in brand-new plumage,
to spend a couple of halcyon weeks on the flats of
Breokoffsky. When Mr. Popham took the eggs of the red- breasted
goose in 1895, he records that in each case the nest was
built at the foot of a cliff occupied by a peregrine falcon
or a rough-legged buzzard, " possibly for protection

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 155
from foxes." Prokopchuk, who took some interest in
birds, recognised this as a habit of the white-fronted
geese that bred near Golchika. He compared them to
the wild reindeer, who, in the summer-time, will bring
forth their young safely by the lairs of the wolves who
may hunt them to death later on. Possibly it was the
same wish for protection that led the bar-tailed godwits
mentioned by Mr. Popham ^ to nest in the breeding-
ground of a pair of Buffon's skuas.
It is impossible both to eat your cake and have it
at the same time, and the cold season that brought the
curlew-sandpiper and the grey phalarope to the southern
limits of their range, cut down the supply of lemmings,
and, with the lemmings, the numbers of the birds of
prey. Falcons and buzzards were scarce, and I saw the
snowy owl only three times altogether. Skuas, both
long-tailed and arctic, were seldom seen, but early in
July I picked up two or three of the former species dead
in the tundra. Probably they had been poisoned by
the baits laid down for foxes.
The failure of the lemmings probably affected the
numbers of foxes, and this directly touched the people
of Golchika, for much of their income is derived from
furs. From what I could learn, there were three kinds
of fox traps in use at Golchika. The first was a large
wooden contrivance on the dead-fall principle, by which
the victim was crushed by the fall of a baulk of timber.
The second, used by the Siberiaks, was an iron gin, like
an English rat trap, but with fangless jaws. The third,
I never saw at work, but a model was made by Sylkin's
> Ibis, 1897, vol. iii.

156 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
son, Nerobi. It works by means of a strong spring, which,
when released by the raising of the bait, allows a stout
block of wood studded with long iron pins to crash
down and impale the animal. When the Samoyedes go
fox-catching, they track their quarry to his lair. They
then scrape away the snow with a long-handled bone
instrument, shaped something like the " back scratchers "
that our ancestors used in a less polite age, and set a
trap at the entrance of the hole. They say that thus
the fox will not suspect human interference, as he would
do if he smelt the taint of hands on the snow. Some
times they smash the ice at the edge of a pool, and set
a trap at the place where the animal will come to
drink. A few years ago a mammoth was found close to
Golchika, and all through the winter the natives fed
their dogs and baited their traps with frozen meat that
was many times older than history.
In 1914, white foxskins cost thirty roubles apiece
for picked pelts. That was considered cheap. The
previous year the price was forty roubles (£4). That
was for winter skins. White fox is sometimes sold in
the summer, when it is grey in colour, and it is then
known as " crossed fox," because of the dark markings
on the shoulders. Real blue foxskins now fetch a hundred
roubles or more apiece. Not so very many years ago
they could be bought for five or ten roubles each, but
that was in the golden days of the fur trade, before the
poor native knew the value of his goods in the Western
markets. Nowadays it is almost as cheap to buy furs
in Yenesiesk as to buy them in the chooms.
At the end of August, some Dolgans came to

Blue Fox.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 157
Prokopchuk and sold him a blue fox cub, a couple of
months old. He passed it on to us, and for a week it
lived in a kennel outside our hut. It was a beautiful
thing, blue-grey from the tips of its furry ears to its
little tag of a brush. Even its eyes, set wide apart in its
droll, innocent face, were tinted to match its coat. The
koursa, as the Samoyedes called him, never really
became tame, although he showed more anger than fear
when handled, but he was an exacting charge, and was
apt to rouse his guardians at all hours with his screams
for condensed milk. He constantly mistook Jest for one
of his relations (now, alas, a flaccid pelt hung up in
Prokopchuk's store), and pursued her with hideous
squalls of affection, much to that respectable animal's
disgust. If he was given a piece of fish, he hastened to
bury it, growling very imposingly as he did so. He
would then find it again a few minutes later, and con
gratulate himself upon his achievement. And so on,
da capo until the delights of discovery had staled.
Poor little fellow ! It would have been impossible to
bring him all the way to England, and so when we left
Golchika, we gave him to Anastasia Ivanowna, who had
a notable gift for taming wild animals, and I trust that
he throve under her care.
The fox cub has tempted me from the paths of
ornithology, but there are few birds left on my list to
chronicle, except the little finches and their like. A few
pairs of snow-buntings lived among the bleached drift
wood by the waterside, and one or two white wagtails
bred in the roofs of the balagans. A pair of mealy
redpolls haunted the island for some time : I shot one

158 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
which turned out to be a non-breeding male of Linota
linaria. Wheatears and shorelarks were fairly common
on the dry hOls on the tundra. The latter were among
the earliest birds to breed, and on 20th July I shot a
male in the pretty spotted plumage of the first summer.
The Lapland bunting was most abundant. When I
first arrived at Golchika, the males were still in song,
and their brief, cheery music, uttered as they soared aloft
and then dropped down into the willows, often gave a
touch of liveliness to the dreariest scenes. They had
also a little long-drawn call which was so high pitched
that it seemed to have a kind of ventriloquial property.
More than once I scanned the skyline for a distant
golden plover, only to find that I had been deceived by
a bunting almost at my feet. I found many nests of
this bird upon the tundra, but my efforts to photograph
the parents feeding their young were a complete failure.
I hid the tent carefully, and sat with the camera
focussed upon a half-fledged brood for the greater part
of two days, and was not able to expose a single plate.
The old buntings frequently adopted the waders' trick
of shamming a broken wing in order to draw an enemy
from the nest. Later on, one became heartily weary of
the little monotonous double note, with which, as by
the strokes of a tiny gong, they announced a trespass
on their breeding-grounds. In August, the old birds
went up to the higher tundra to moult, while the young
broods gathered into flocks and visited the neighbour
hood of the balagans as confidingly as sparrows, which,
in the dun and brown plumage of their immaturity, at
a first glance they resemble.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 159
At Golchika, where all birds began to nest on the
same date, all eggs of the same species hatched out on
the same day. Thus you had Little Stint Day, when every
marsh and streamside buzzed with little stints ; Lapland
Bunting Day, when the tundra was full of Lapland
buntings, and so on. Red-throated Pipit Day came last
of all, for these were the latest of all the birds to breed.
They waited for the mosquitoes. The red-throated pipit
was the only bird on the tundra that was a songster.
He was of the blood royal of the skylark, and it was
fine to watch his glorious parachute from the upper air
to the accompaniment of a rain of melody. Like the
skylarks, these pipits were very quarrelsome. Each
pair occupied a certain patch of ground — generally a
shallow glen where a stream trickled down from the
tundra — and guarded it jealously. I have seen a bird
chase away a pair of ruffs of four times his own size, and
they constantly bickered with the shorelarks when the
latter strayed down from the hilltops.
The red-throated pipits fed their young for some
time after they left the nest. I have a note that I saw
a female with a bill full of mosquitoes on 7th August,
long after all other birds except the geese and divers
were able to shift for themselves. It seemed as if they
fed their fledglings almost up to the day of the return
migration, for about 15th August they all disappeared,
together with the mosquitoes.
It was not easy to obtain information about the
birds from the natives, partly owing to my ignorance
of the language, and partly because they themselves
divided all birds into two classes : those that could be

160 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
eaten, and those that could not. They were sapient
concerning the first division, which included ducks and
geese ; but they took little interest in the second, which
comprised most other birds. The following names were
given to me by an old Samoyede who recognised the
skins in my collection. I am indebted to Miss Czaplicka
for the proper English spelling of the native sounds.

Willow-Grouse

Abba

Pintail Duck

Nyavoie

Goose

Dgiotu

Golden Plover

Tilyokko

Godwit

Tufek

Seagull .

Tannykka

King-Eider

TuUoni

Golchika was the most difficult place in the world
from which to make observations on bird-migration.
This was partly owing to the enormous extent of the
country, but more so because it was so far north that
the different species that passed on their way up the
river were no guide to the region whence they came.
On the English coasts, a rush of greater wheatears
means a migration from Iceland, and the appearance
of bramblings and bluethroats spells movement in
Scandinavia. But in most cases, Golchika itself was an
Ultima Thule of winged things ; and the visitors from
the north were so often represented on its own breeding
list that it was impossible to say whether they were
passengers from higher latitudes or no.
I observed only two species which did not also nest
at Golchika. The first was a hirundine bird, which, on
14th July — a cold, wet evening — was observed hawking
backwards and forwards over a lake on the tundra. I

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 161

shot at it twice as it swung past me, and missed it both
times. What 's hit 's history : what 's missed 's mystery.
The identity of the stranger will never be known for
certain, but from its white rump, from its size, which
was greater than that of our common swift, and from
its dull underparts, I believe that the bird was the
Siberian swift {Cypselus pacificus), a native of Eastern
Asia, which ranges as far north as Kamchatka. At any
rate, a hirundine of any species is an interesting record
from the Yenesei tundras.
The next movement among non-breeding species was
noticeable on 12th August, when, for two or three days,
numerous little parties of turnstones passed the island.
The departure of the breeding birds is more
difficult to chronicle. The following dates are only
approximate, but they may give some idea of the
disappearance of species after species as the summer
declined :

Grey Phalarope .
Curlew- Sandpiper .
Shore- Lark .
Red-throated Pipit
Arctic Tern .
Red-necked Phalarope
White Wagtail
Little Stint .
Temminck's Stint .
Dunlin .
Ruff .
Lapland Bunting .
Snow-Bunting
WheatearGolden Plover
Grey Plover .
Ringed Plover
U

Departed August 5th.
„ August 15th.
„ August 10th.
„ August 15th.
„ August 18th.
„ August 18th.
„ August 20th.
„ (Most of the birds)
before August 25th.
„ (Most of the birds)
before August 25th.
„ About August 25th.
„ August 25th.
„ August 25th.
„ August 25th.
„ August 20th.
„ September 2nd.
„ August 25th.
„ September 2nd,

162 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
Prokopchuk declared that the snowy owl and the
willow-grouse sometimes lingered until October.
One of the most interesting little facts connected
with the autumn migration at the river's mouth was
the appearance of a number of young bluethroats of the
year during the first week in August, and they haunted
the river banks and balagans until the end of the
month. Mr. Popham^ also mentions that he saw
young birds at Golchika in August. As far as I know,
the bluethroat does not breed north of Pustoy, which
is a hundred miles higher up the river. It seems as
if with this species there was a tendency among the
young birds of the year to perform a wholly meaning
less migration to the north. The fact would not
perhaps be worth remarking if there was not some
slight evidence that the young of some other species
travel northwards during the few weeks that pass
between their flight from the nest and the time that
they must join in the great autumnal migration to the
south. What can be the purpose of such wanderings
when neither weather nor hunger press the birds to
move ? Is it possible that the call of the north, which
has been answered so many, many times in the life of
the race, can meet with a response thus early in the
life of the individual bird ? I wonder if it is so.
* Ibis, 1897, vol. iii.

CHAPTER VIIL
First days at Golchika — The coming of the steamers — Our hut— The
commissariat — A home-made sundial — The Lena — Disturbance
in the Prokopchuk family — "The Alcohol King "—Mosquitoes —
Native fishermen — The people of the balagan — An unwilling
ferryman — The spell of Golchika.
For the flrst fortnight of our stay at Golchika we
lived, as I have already mentioned, in the bakehouse
of the Antonoffs. During that time the place was
more or less in a buzz of excitement, owing to the
coming of the steamers from Yenesiesk, which brought
the first news of the outer world which had reached
the river's mouth since the previous September. A day
or two after the Oryol had returned, the Yenesei,
belonging to Mr. Kutcherenkoff, came in ; and, on
4th July, the Government steamer Turukhansk
appeared. With each of these ships, summer visitors
arrived at Golchika. Kutcherenkoff brought two men
to work in his fish-packing station. One was a young
Siberiak from Yenesiesk, Micha by name, and the other
was a Jew, a political exile of the lower sort, called
Cherniavinski. His sentence was for ten years, of
which he had already served eight in the service of
Kutcherenkoff. His crime was that he had belonged
to some proscribed society ; but his enforced stay in
Siberia had taken away his taste for politics, for he
x6j

164 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
was wont to declare that when he had served his time he
would never again meddle with politics. Cherniavinski
was the only soul, with the exception of our own party,
with whom I could talk in any language except Russian.
He often ferried me across the river when I went on
shooting excursions, and we found that we under
stood each other fairly well if he spoke in Yiddish
and I replied in German. These two men had been
sent to Golchika by Kutcherenkoff, ostensibly to help
with the fishing, but actually to keep watch over
the dealings of Prokopchuk, their nominal superior.
As Kutcherenkoff's packing station was on the island
beside that of Antonoff, Cherniavinski and his com
panion lived in one of the little balagans close to the
waterside. The Turukhansk also brought as passengers two
workmen for Antonoff. These were Alexis Petrovitch,
a tall, long-bearded Lett, and his handsome son Vassilli.
With the addition of all these newcomers, Golchika
became quite a populous place, especially when the Samo
yedes began to come in from the tundra. The native
settlement, which on our first arrival consisted only of
Sylkin's hut and two or three chooms, increased until
by the middle of July there were seven or eight
families encamped beside the river bank ; and the
neighbouring tundra was dotted with herds of grazing
reindeer. Much of the marsh was already free from
snow, and the rivers, which until now had overflowed
their banks, subsided until long stretches of sand lay
bare on each side of the mouths of the Golchika.
But meanwhile it behoved us to look about for a

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 165
new lodging, for, kind and hospitable as the Antonoffs
were, we could not occupy their bakehouse indefinitely.
Michael Petrovitch himself was to go to Krasnoyarsk
in the Turukhansk to sell his furs, and during his
absence, the house was to be rebuilt and enlarged.
It is true that we had brought a tent with us, but
Golchika is the worst place in the world for camping,
and its flat, boggy shores, under their covering of snow,
looked most uninviting. At this juncture, however,
Prokopchuk came forward with a proposal. On the
mainland, half-way between his house and the mouth
of the river, stood a disused bathhouse, which at one
time had belonged to his workmen. With a little
alteration it was turned into a capital hut, and a few
days later we moved into it.
The hut stood on the mainland, about half a verst
up the left arm of the Golchika River. From the door
you could see everything that went on in every corner
of the settlement. If you turned to the left, and looked
down the river and over to the island, you could see
the Antonoffs' house, with the two fishing stations in
front of it ; and, were you curious enough to take field-
glasses, you could see Anastasia hanging up her washing
to dry, and Nura and Tania gossiping with Vassilli, the
handsome young Lett. If you turned to the east you
looked up the Golchika River and saw the low hills
which bordered the tundra ; and nearer at hand, just
where the river disappeared behind a curve a quarter
of a mile away, was the low grey homestead of
Prokopchuk. If you looked straight in front, you saw
the shallow Golchika River and the island, and beyond

166 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
them, on the opposite mainland, the chooms of the
native settlement, which stuck up like a row of tiny
pyramids. And if this was not far enough, you might
climb on to the roof and look beyond the island and
beyond the chooms, right away to where of an even
ing the sun went down to the wide horizon of the
Yenesei. Our hut stood close to the water's edge. Like all the
balagans of the country, it was built of driftwood with
a turfed roof, and as the chinks were all stopped with
moss, it was as warm and cosy as only a wooden house
can be. There were two rooms in the hut, each with a
door which opened on to the river bank. The right-
hand one, which was taken by Miss Czaplicka, Miss
Curtis, and myself, was a little the larger of the two.
The smaller room belonged to Mr. Hall and Vassilli.
The wooden settles of the bathhouse had been left
in place, and when sheepskins and sleeping-bags were
spread upon them, they made luxurious bedsteads.
Each room had a stove. The Russian stove is a
notable institution — an iron box on four short legs.
It becomes hot in five minutes, and in half an hour
the room is warm. We used to do most of our cook
ing over these stoves — such at least as could not be
done outside over an open fire. Our balagan was a
sumptuous one, in that each room had a good window.
Along our sill Miss Curtis insisted upon arranging a
box of matches, a bottle of Worcester sauce, and a
piece of soap, because she said that it made the place
look like a shop. That it certainly did, and confirmed
the people of Golchika in their belief that, in spite of

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 167
our denials, we were really merchants, who had chosen
disguise as a subtle kind of advertisement.
When we had put up a few pegs and shelves the
hut began to look quite homelike. Gerasim Androvitch,
who, I think, was as pleased with the place as if he had
been going to live there himself, lent us a small table,
besides which we had brought another with us, and
also some campstools. Needless to say, there was not
a great deal of space for the possessions of three people
in a room twelve feet by fifteen, and therefore during
the daytime many things were piled up on the bunks.
Miss Czaplicka's bed contained notebooks and calipers,
and above it gradually appeared a fine assortment of
native implements — knives, pipes, and pieces of rein
deer harness — hung upon the wall. Miss Curtis was
fortunate in that her "stock in trade" consisted of
brushes and sketching books which would pack away
flat ; but my corner was the most crowded of all, and
whenever I was not occupying it myself there was not
a square inch which was not strewn with a collection
of birds' skins, photographic apparatus, and specimen
boxes. Although the Golchika flowed within twenty yards
of the door, it was too bitter and muddy to drink, and
all the water had to be fetched from a little stream
which ran down from the tundra, about a furlong
away. Wood was to be had for the gathering, for at
Golchika the river banks for miles are littered with
the timber which the spring floods bring down from
the forests. Most of the driftwood is willow and
poplar, thoroughly seasoned by the water, and the

168 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
inhabitants use nothing else, either for building or
burning. On 4th July, when the Turukhansk returned to the
south, we said good-bye to Michael Petrovitch, and we
did so with all the more regret that it was uncertain
whether we should meet him again before we started
for England. When Michael Petrovitch went to
Krasnoyarsk, he wore his town clothes. Instead of
the characteristic fur cap, black velvet coat, and
sapakgi,^ which he wore at Golchika, he cropped his
hair and put on a bow tie, cheap yellow boots, and a
bowler hat which was many sizes too small for him.
He fancied himself immensely in these clothes, and was
quite hurt that we should prefer his former suit.
After the Turukhansk had sailed away beyond
the misty, quivering horizon, Golchika settled down
seriously for the fishing season. Work went on, day
and night alike — in fact, there is no night in Golchika
during the summer. Everybody ate and slept when
it pleased him, but the usual hour for going to bed
was 3 a.m., and consequently, as a rule, nobody stirred
before midday. These hours were most inconvenient
to a photographer, for although the sun was shining
for every hour out of the twenty-four, yet when he
was low on the horizon the quality of the light was
not nearly so good as when he was higher in the sky,
but that was the time when most of the pictures had
to be made. The people seemed to come out like
rabbits when the best of the day was over, and worked
until the following morning. There was no standard
' Long boots.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 169
clock in Golchika. Of course our watches had been
set right when we left the Oryol, but in a week or two
they began to vary. One gained five minutes, another
lost ten, and so on. One morning we visited the
Antonoffs at an hour which we supposed to be eleven
o'clock, but which they declared to be only eight. In
proof of this they showed us a home-made sundial,
devised by Alexis Petrovitch, the Lettish workman.
It consisted of a nail driven into a block of wood, and
the noontide shadow had been checked by the compass.
Accordingly we all readjusted our watches, and for
several days tried to live by the new ruling. But we
soon discovered that something was wrong, for the sun,
instead of reaching the zenith at noon, arrived there at
ten o'clock. We therefore went to look at the sundial
again, and found that when Alexis had placed the
compass beside the indicator, the magnetism of the
latter had deflected the needle. When a wooden peg
was substituted for the iron one, the reading was quite
different. On 18th July, Kutcherenkoff, who had been trading
at the Sopochnaya, called at Golchika on his way south
wards. He had been very kind to us, and it was
mainly to him that we owed our comfortable quarters
in the hut, for his letter of recommendation had made
a great impression in our favour on Prokopchuk. I
had been working on the island all day, and on my
way home I called upon him in his steamer, which was
moored beside the fishing station. He invited me to
take tchai in his cabin, and we mutually praised the
weather, but that was as far as our conversation could

170 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
go. He knew no English and I knew no Russian, so
that we could only look dumbly at each other and
laugh apologetically at ourselves. Then, luckily, my
host had an inspiration and called his boatswain into
the cabin. This man was a Greek, who spoke both
French and Russian, and who, consequently, could
interpret for us. After that we got on splendidly, for
what I said in French the Greek repeated in Russian
to Mr. Kutcherenkoff, and vice versa. The merchant
was very entertaining, for he had travelled up and
down the river for many years, and as the Yenesei, in
spite of its size, is like a village street — a street seven
teen hundred miles long ! — where everybody knows
everything about everybody else's business, he had
many curious tales to relate. He himself, although one
of the richest merchants on the Yenesei, was the grand
son of a criminal of peasant extraction, a fact of which
he made no secret. One of the feats of his younger
days is still celebrated on the Yenesei. Many years before,
he and seven other men towed a load of a thousand
pouds up the river from Potapooskoye to Yenesiesk.
It took them a month to walk the distance, and they
wore no boots for the journey — " it was not worth
while," as he said with a smile. He had known Captain
Wiggins well, and also Schwanenburg, the Courlander,
who was associated with the efforts of Wiggins to open
up the commerce of the Yenesei. He told me that
Schwanenburg spent all his spare time in shooting small
birds {malenki pteetza) and never laid his gun aside,
even when at meals. He constantly left the cabin
and ran ashore to shoot some bird whose note he had

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 171
heard through the porthole. These reminiscences
interested me very much, for Schwanenburg collected
many specimens for Seebohm, and it is probable that
many of the skins now in the National Museum were
originally obtained by him. Captain Wiggins is still
a name to conjure by on the Lower Yenesei. People
even now relate how he made the journey to Kras
noyarsk in the winter-time by horse sledges. Not a
hundred yards from our hut there was an interesting
relic of one of this daring man's ventures. In 1889
a cargo of animal bones was sent to Golchika for
shipment to Europe through the Kara Sea. The barge
that carried them went ashore in the Golchika River,
and the remains of her hulk, under a heap of bleached
bones, can still be seen on the bank. It is pleasant to
find that those Englishmen, such as Captain Wiggins
and Messrs. Seebohm and Popham, who have visited
the Yenesei country, have left behind them a name
which is still remembered for their honourable and
honest dealing. It is to be hoped that those traders
of other nationalities, on whom the mantle of Wiggins
has fallen, and whom the ignorant natives and Siberiaks
therefore still call Angliski, will do nothing to destroy
this favourable impression.
After the departure of the Yenesei, we began to
look forward to the arrival of the Government steamer,
the Lena, which, with her barge, had left Krasnoyarsk
on 20th June and was due to reach Golchika on the
10th of the following month. We looked especially
to this vessel to bring our mails — the first that we had
received since we left home at the end of May. There-

172 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
fore, when the steamer arrived, ten days overdue, and
there was no post-bag for us, we were all very
disappointed. The coming of the Lena was made the occasion for
an orgy, both in the chooms and in the balagans, and
as the revellers were sometimes wont to make a descent
upon our hut, we were glad when, in the evening,
Madame Antonoff invited us to go to her house for
supper. Owing to the building operations, one side of
the kitchen had been pulled down, and the fireplace
had been taken out. An English " general " would
have given a month's notice if she had been asked to
cook a meal for about twenty people under such
circumstances, but Anastasia stolidly baked her pirog
and prepared the samovar over a makeshift stove in the
bedroom. Several of the Lena's passengers were in the
parlour. Among them was a Polish lady, the wife of
a political exile at Turukhansk. Her husband, who,
though but thirty-nine years old, had already spent
more than sixteen years of his life either in prison or in
exile, had been sent to the Yenesei for three years.
His sentence would expire in the following spring, and
they were both looking forward eagerly to their release
from the mosquitoes and monotony of Monastir. This
lady very kindly undertook to post our letters for us
in Turukhansk, and at her invitation we went aboard
the steamer for an hour. The Lena compared very
unfavourably with the Oryol as far as passenger
accommodation was concerned, for the cabins were both
cramped and dingy. She was, however, the fastest boat
on the river, and although the people along the river-

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 173
side complained bitterly about the conduct of the
officials, who would sometimes deposit goods a hundred
versts from their destination rather than trouble them
selves to put in shore for a second time, she carried
most of the Yenesei fish cargoes. '
The arrival of the Lena caused a great stir in the
Prokopchuk household, due to the unexpected appear
ance of a younger Miss Prokopchuk. This girl was
evidently of stronger stuff than poor subdued Marusia,
for during the previous summer she had told her father
roundly that she would no longer stay at home to see
her aunt usurp the place of her mother, and had gone
to Krasnoyarsk to educate herself Now she had come
to Golchika for a month to pay a farewell visit before
travelling to Europe. She was evidently the favourite
child of Gerasim Androvitch — perhaps in his case
absence made the heart grow fonder. We surmised
that she read him a lecture on the way in which he
was consoling himself during his " grass-widowhood,"
and told him that unless her aunt was sent away
immediately she would not remain in the house for a
day. It had been arranged that Anastasia Ivanowna
should go to Krasnoyarsk in the Lena, in order to buy
the winter stores. She, however, dreaded lest her
strong-minded young niece would destroy her own
influence over Gerasim Androvitch ; and at the last
minute she declined to start unless the girl accom
panied her. On the evening before the steamer re
turned, we went to pay a farewell call. We found
Gerasim Androvitch in a more or less inebriated con
dition, while the rest of the household wore that air

174 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
of gloomy preoccupation which generally means that
the guest has intruded into a family dispute. We
were invited into the bedroom, and the demeanour of
the whole company was so portentous that the state
meal which followed was as imposing as a sacramental
rite. Anastasia in particular neither spoke nor ate,
but only glowered at us from the end of the
table. Scarcely had we left the house than Marusia ran
after us, crying hysterically. Her aunt had just
attempted her own life by drinking a bottleful of
strong essence of vinegar. The patient was lying
outside the door, evidently in great pain. The women
of the household, who were all weeping loudly, made
no attempt to help her. Old Prokopchuk was hovering
round with a glass of raw cognac, which, if he had been
allowed to administer it, would probably have killed
the sufferer outright, for her mouth was terribly burned
with the acid. Rather dim recollections of the instruc
tions received some years previously during a course of
lectures on " First Aid to the Injured," counselled the
administration of an emetic, and the directions in the
medical chest prescribed mustard, magnesia, or baking-
soda and water for the purpose. None of these things
could be found in the house, however. Then someone
remembered that in emergencies plaster from the
wall, powdered and mixed with water, was a good
substitute. We immediately turned to the walls, but,
alas ! these had been painted bright blue, and we dare
not administer such a fearful and unknown dye on
the top of a dose of acid. In the end Miss Czaplicka

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 175
had the happy inspiration of condensed milk ! The
woman was very ill for some hours, but towards
morning she took a turn for the better. Probably
she had judged the dose of poison very accurately,
and by giving him a good fright, hoped to reinstate
herself in the affections of Gerasim Androvitch. The
jealous differences of aunt and niece were finally settled
by the arrangement that they should both go down to
Krasnoyarsk together ; and therefore Gerasim was left
alone for the summer, with nobody but Marusia to look
after him. At first he was very forlorn, and having
nobody to talk to at home, he used to make evening
calls at our hut. He frequently walked in with a
courtly greeting just about supper-time, and sat there,
making agreeable conversation, while the meal was
prepared. There was no false shame about Gerasim
Androvitch. He was above the convention, so common
in our society, of making a pretence of taking leave in
order that he might be pressed to stay. He accepted
his invitation and his welcome as a matter of course.
His son, on the other hand, came very seldom.
When he did so, he would neither talk nor eat. The
most that anyone could draw out of him was a sedate :
" Nyet spessibo." Often he sat in silence for an hour
after the meal was finished, because he was too bashful
to get up and say good-bye. Generally he was too
busy to call. All day long, he and little Michael, the
servant, worked on the river-bank, piling up great stacks
of firewood for the winter, or else in building new sheds
to house the stores that Anastasia Ivanowna would
bring back from Krasnoyarsk ; and every evening they

176 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
went over to the island to receive the fish that the
boats brought for Kutcherenkoff.
It would be too tedious if I were to tell of our
doings every day during our stay at Golchika, for
although really full of incident to ourselves, the details
of our life would make but humdrum reading. Immedi
ately after breakfast my companions set out to sketch
or visit the natives on the other side of the river, and
I went for a long ramble over the tundra with gun or
camera. We were usually out all day, and only met
in the evening. Vassilli was cook, but his culinary
efforts, although they were all right as far as they went,
required some supervision. We had brought flour with
us, but as we found that we could buy excellent bread
both from Madame Antonoff and the Prokopchuks, we
had no need to use it, which was fortunate, for VassUli's
attempts to bake on one of the wood stoves would not
have been very appetising. As the summer went on,
fish could almost be had for the asking. In Golchika,
indeed, it is a point of etiquette that if a stranger asks
for fish you shall give, not sell, it to him. The principal
fish caught was the omul, a kind of white -fleshed sea
trout. It made excellent eating and yielded a very
good red caviare. There was also the nyelma, or white
salmon. It was larger than the omul, and, I thought,
very nasty, for its flesh was pale and flabby, like the
flesh of what fishermen call a " spent " fish. Vassilli and
I sometimes provided ducks for the pot. We had been
warned that the flesh of these Yenesei duck was rank
and fishy, but all those that we ate were excellent.
Even the flesh of the king-eider, although a little tough.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 177
was quite palatable. The eggs of the long-tailed duck,
however, had a distinctly fishy flavour. I found a nest
with a newly laid clutch, and we scrambled them for
supper over a spirit-lamp. The result was excellent,
and the fishy taste was really an improvement to the
dish. Sometimes we bought a little reindeer meat from
Prokopchuk, but, on the whole, the venison was tough
and nasty. However, it made a change from perpetual
fish and tinned food. It is wonderful how the people
in those bitter climates manage to live without either
fresh or preserved fruit and vegetables. Potatoes and
lemons are both very expensive, owing to the cost of
freight down the river, and are only seen on the tables
of the better-to-do settlers. It is no wonder that
scurvy is very common in Northern Siberia.
The Lena and the mosquitoes arrived at Golchika
almost on the same day. We had heard so much of
these pests, and had brought such a defensive para
phernalia of veils and gloves that we were agreeably
surprised to find that things were not nearly as bad
as we expected. The mosquito season lasted only for
a month, and although they were very tiresome during
hot weather, yet for days together, if the wind was
cool, we saw nothing of them. I generally took a veil
on my excursions into the tundra, but owing to the
discomfort of it, and the difficulty of watching a bird
through the meshes, I seldom wore it. Luckily the
bite of the arctic mosquitoes was not nearly so virulent
as that of these insects in the south. The Siberiaks and
natives did not seem to mind the nuisance. I have
seen a Samoyede go calmly about his business while

178 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
half a dozen of the brutes straddled their bloodthirsty
probosces into his neck. It is only fair, however, to say
that it was an unusually cold season, and this may
have accounted for the moderation of their attacks.
A good deal of misconception prevails in England
about the climate of Siberia, and if I had been guided
by my friends, I should have gone out equipped as for
arctic exploration. Of course, in winter the cold is
severe, and in June and September it is often very
chilly, but during July and August the weather is
generally fair, and although never so warm as, for
example, a Scottish summer, yet there is plenty of
sunshine. A northerly or easterly wind is generally
cold, but in winter the Golchikan s say that the southerly
gales are the most severe. All the inhabitants had
something to say of the pourga. Sylkin, in particular,
was full of tales of this terrible blizzard of the tundra.
One night he and another man were returning from
Veronsova, a fishing station some four or five versts
south of Golchika. On the way they were overtaken
by the storm, and utterly lost their bearings. After
wandering about the tundra for some time, Sylkin
stumbled into a Samoyede cemetery, and realised that
instead of reaching Golchika, they were now about
three versts higher up the river. He scraped a hole
in the snow, and shouted to his companion to do
likewise. The storm lasted until the followiug day,
and when Sylkin rose from his lair, he found himself
alone. The other had not heard the call, and had
wandered on into the blizzard alone. His body was
never found. Michael Petrovitch had a yet more

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 179
terrible experience. He was out alone in his sledge
when the pourga overtook him. He and his dogs
were entombed in a drift, and lay there for six days.
Two of the team died, but the rest were able to drag
the sledge back to Golchika when the storm had
passed. August the 2nd was kept as a high holiday. It
was the Feast of the Blessed Ilia — a saint who seemed
to be a kind of Siberian St. Swithin, and exercised a
good or baneful influence over the weather, according
as his votaries did, or did not, observe his festival.
Vassilli believed firmly in the power of the saint, and
told the tale of a priest of Achinsk who urged his
parishioners to gather in their harvest on the holiday.
This displeased St. Ilia so much that he sent down
storms and lightning upon their crops and destroyed
them all. The Golchikans certainly did not tempt
his wrath by working. Instead, they all became
gloriously drunk. All day jovial parties reeled along
the river bank, and besought their neighbours to join
them in their revelry, for the native is a generous
fellow, and asks for nothing better than to share his
bottle of vino with his friends. We, however, kept
our door discreetly closed against such boon companions,
and allowed Vassilli, who was an expert diplomat, to
persuade them that we were not at home — as indeed we
were not, in the conventional sense of the phrase.
However, something must have annoyed the saint,
for although the morning was very fine, the sky clouded
over threateningly towards night. This was disappoint
ing, for on 2nd August, at midnight, the sun dips for a

180 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
minute or two below the horizon, and we wished to
see him set for the first time for two months.
On the following day I went for a long walk down
the shore of the Yenesei. The ostensible reason for the
excursion was to look for the nesting-grounds of the
Buffon's skua, but it was typical of many such rambles
that I took over the tundra and along the rivers in
August when the first rush of ornithological work
was over, and there was time to explore parts of
the surrounding country which had previously been
overlooked. I left home early in the morning, and crossed the
river to the native settlement. This, however, was
deserted, for all the inhabitants were out fishing.
Golchika Island lay at the point of a long, swampy
peninsula, which formed one side of a vast bay. The
shores of this peninsula were low and sandy, and
cumbered with driftwood. For more than a furlong
from the beach the water of the bay was scarcely knee-
deep, and along the shallows the boats of the natives
were moored for the day's fishing. They were clumsy,
flat-bottomed craft, hired for the season from the
Siberiaks. They were rowed by three short, broad-bladed
oars, two on one side and one on the other, and they
were steered, not by a tiller, but with a paddle. It
requires no little skill to steer a heavy Yenesei boat
against the wind, and the novice's first attempts gener
ally result in a wonderful and ignominious succession of
curves backwards and forwards across the river. When
they go a-fishing, the Samoyedes beach the boat upon
some sandbank, and one or two members of the family

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 181
are landed with one end of the net. The rest then row
out for a couple of hundred yards, gradually lowering
the net as they go, and presently return to the shore,
bringing the other end with them. Then the whole
family unites to pull the net in. Sometimes it is so
heavy with omul that one is reminded of the old
pictures of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes. At
others it is almost empty. But, whether the catch be
good or bad, the natives are always gay and full of
chatter. They accept fair or ill weather as it comes,
alike without either gratitude or grumbling, and if you
ask them whether it will be fine or wet in the morning,
they answer stolidly, " How can we tell ? We are not
acquainted with God ! " The fishing at Golchika has
been growing worse for the last eight years. The
record season's catch was 15,000 pouds, but in the year
of which I write scarcely 2000 pouds were exported,
though at Breokoffsky Ostrov, two hundred versts to the
south, one net alone landed 700 pouds of omul. Each
boat chooses its own pitch and works there all day.
In between the hauls, the natives sit on the sand and
smoke or make tea.
When I came up, a number of Siberian herring-gulls
were flying round the boats, and presently I shot one
bird, which fell wounded into the water. The oldest
and dirtiest of the natives gave a roar, and pushed off
his boat. I tumbled into the bows and took the oars,
and away we went in pursuit, while all the rest of the
family ran up and down the shore in high amusement.
The gull led us a fine chase into the river, and by the
time that we had retrieved it, both my Samoyede and I

182 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
were exceedingly hot. Just then a second boat came
along, manned by a regular kindergarten, the eldest of
whom could not have been more than twelve years
old. They promptly began to race us to the shore,
yelling with glee and splashing all over the place. The
natives thoroughly entered into the joke, and scooped
away with the paddle while I tugged at the oars, but
the kindergarten were already past-masters of oarsman
ship, and beat us squarely by half a length to every
body's delight. Afterwards I distributed cigarettes to
everybody who was over ten years old, and we parted
the best of friends.
After leaving the natives, I went along the shores of
the great bay, which were as firm and hard to walk
upon as a rolled gravel path. It was a treat to walk
along easily at a brisk pace instead of stumbling over
the sphagnum and tussocks inland. The tundra itself
was terribly heavy to walk upon, and what with the
frequent stoppages to identify some bird, I do not
think that we ever averaged more than two miles an
hour when crossing it. At the end of the day, one was
apt to suffer from a complaint whose nature will be
sufficiently indicated by its name — I christened it
tundra legs !
About twelve miles from Golchika, where a stream
ran down the beach, stood the small turf-roofed
balagan of Kuria. The sand was strewn with fishing
nets spread out to dry, and a couple of boats lay off the
shore. Four pretty Siberian girls, who were salting fish,
looked up much surprised at my approach. I asked
them to give me some boiling water to make tchai,

A Native Fisherman.

Natives Fi.shing by the Yenesei.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 183
whereupon they not only fetched tea, but in the hospit
able custom of the country brought out a fine fish. In
return I invited them to taste an angliski riha,i.e. English
fish, and loud was their laughter when I produced a tin
of skipper sardines. They told me that their names
were Maria, Olga, Elena, and Katrina. They were what
are known as townsmen on the Yenesei — that is, they
came down the river for the summer and fished for
themselves, not for either Antonoff or Prokopchuk as
the Golchika people did. The latter looked down upon
the townsmen as upon an inferior class. This family
had come from Turukhansk in the barge of the Oryol,
and had camped at lonely Kuria. Their flour sacks and
fish barrels were stacked beside the stream, and the rest
of their worldly goods were contained in two gaudy
Russian coffers. For six weeks they fished night and
day, hoping to earn enough to live upon for all the rest
of the year, and at the end of August they would travel
south again. They were all fine-looking girls, tanned
by the sun. None of them had ever seen a doctor, and
none of them could either read or write. All the
summer through they never saw a stranger's face unless
they went over to Golchika, but there was little enough
time for that. Day and night they worked at the fish
ing, hauling on the nets or packing their catch into
barrels. Each ate when she was hungry, and slept
when she was sleepy, without any regard for time.
And behind the balagan, the water ran down from the
melting snowdrifts with a little musical drip-drip, like
a clock whose perpetual ticking marked the flight of the
short, sweet northern summer. The life of these balagan

184 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
people was hard and monotonous enough. Nature had
provided them with only two things in abundance,
wood and water, both of which lay outside their doors.
Nevertheless they seemed very happy and contented,
and we had quite an enjoyable picnic on the shore, until
presently two men landed from the boat and joined us.
Neither of them seemed quite to have recovered from
the feast of the previous day, especially one, a hot-
coloured red-haired young man with a most unpre
possessing cast of countenance, and I liked him still
less from what I understood of his sly winks to his
neighbour and his remarks to the girls. He was very
inquisitive, and began to play with my gun, asking if it
was for sale. I replied no, but he still seemed so re
luctant to give it up that I feared he wanted to keep it
altogether. I therefore told him that it was a horroshie angliski
rouschye — a splendid English gun (English being the
equivalent of the treble X hall-mark in Siberia) — and
under the pretext of showing him how the ejector
worked, I persuaded him to give it up to me, and
slipped in a couple of cartridges. After this he did not
meddle with the gun any more, but instead tried to beg
first my binoculars and secondly my gold watch. I
took refuge in the ever-useful, " I do not understand
Russian," which always parried inconvenient questions,
and in order to distract his attention, suggested that
the party should be photographed. This proposal met
with great approval, and the whole family ran into the
balagan, whence they presently returned dressed in their
finest clothes — the women in holiday kerchiefs and the

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 185
men in their long boots and canvas weather-coats. The
red-haired man became more officious than ever, and
pushed them all into their places while he gave them his
views on photography. It is a curious thing that, all
the world over, a man who is speaking about his own
job never patronises his audience. It is only when he
talks some kind of " shop " in which he is only an
amateur that he is prone to condescend. If my
rapacious friend had been asked to explain the difference
between omul and nyelma, or some other (to him)
equally ridiculous question about fishing, he would have
replied simply enough. As it was, he gave himself great
airs, as he explained the camera to the rest of the party,
and lectured them pragmatically upon their behaviour.
He was the only one who could write, and after the
sitting, he laboriously traced some hieroglyphics in my
pocket-book, to which address a print was to be sent
from England.
After saying farewell to the balaganers, I went for
a long ornithological ramble over the tundra, the results
of which are chronicled elsewhere, and towards evening,
returned to Golchika. Most of the natives were still
away, and for some time I looked in vain for someone
to ferry me over the river. Presently a Yurak put
off in a tiny canoe, and when I hailed him, he very
obligingly turned back and took me in as passenger.
However, instead of turning down the river to the
hut, which was about a furlong away, he paddled
across to the island, and said that he was going to
the Antonoffs' house. I asked him again to take me
to the other side, whereupon he explained volubly

186 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
that if I would disembark here, and walk across the
island with him, that one of the men at the fishing
station would ferry me over the other arm of the
river. I sat where I was and repeated that I did
not understand Russian, and wanted to go to Prokop
chuk's. My Charon expostulated and gesticulated for
another five minutes. Then, finding me still im
movable, he scratched his head ruefully, and his
perplexity was so comic that I could not help laughing,
although it seemed too bad to trouble the poor man.
While he was standing thus, a woman came out of
one of the chooms, and asked what he was doing.
He evidently replied that he did not know what to
do with this mad Angliski. His better half gave him
some tart advice, acting upon which he tried to pull
the canoe up the beach with me inside it. However,
it was too heavy, and as he could not leave the little
boat in the water, he was forced to make the best of
a bad job. Shrugging his shoulders resignedly, but
quite good-temperedly, he embarked again, and paddled
round the island to the hut, where a glass of vino
made amends for his trouble in going out of his way.
Golchika was seen at its best late on those August
evenings, when the sun, just dipping to the northern
horizon, spread the glamour of sunset and afterglow
over the tundra. The low, flat marshes lay in the
profound stillness of dew-fall, and along the river-
bank, the little chooms, and their attendant stacks of
driftwood, were ranged darkly against the sunset.
Even the voices of the birds were hushed, except
when far away up the valley a diver whistled to its

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 187
brood, or a flight of waders passed overhead. A holy
peace seemed to brood over the whole vast land from
Yenesei to the Taimyr.
Then just as the calm was deepest, the tired Samo
yedes rowed home from the day's fishing. Their
subdued voices broke the silence, just as the passing
of the boats dappled the surface of the river with
ripples. Sometimes they sang — a low, monotonous
chant with a little catch in it — music at its baldest —
harmony as crude as the lip-lap of the lazy water
under the boat, or the footfall of the reindeer on the
tundra moss. Crude, mystic, and melancholy, their
song sounded the day's " Last Post," and the night
breeze, bearing it over the tundra, found an echo
there.

CHAPTER IX.
Bird's-nesting on the Golchika — A morning call— Grey phalarope —
Dunlin — A Dolgan — Red-throated divers — Pintail duck — Richard
son's skua — Peregrine falcon — Sylkin's perplexity — Willow-grouse —
Vino — A fish hunt — White-fronted geese — Grey plovers — A narrow
escape — A bird pirate — Plovers' eggs.
About fifteen versts from Golchika, up the valley of
the Golchika River, was a marsh containing a number
of small lakes. Sylkin said that several years before,
Mr. H. L. Popham had found the nest of the chorna
chika — either the long-tailed or pomatorhine skua —
there. He gave such a glowing account of the ducks
and geese which bred along the river-bank that I
arranged to go there with him, accompanied by Vassilli,
as soon as the floods caused by the melting of the
snow should have subsided sufficiently. This was not
until 11th July. Sylkin had promised to call for us
at 9 a.m. At five o'clock, however, we were aroused
by a very inebriated Yurak who beat upon the door,
crying out to his " sister " to give him some medicine
for his headache ! Vassilli, whose manner with the
natives was perfect, being a blend of patronage and
camaraderie, went out, and after some difficulty per
suaded the sufferer to go away and sleep off his carouse
at home. In the usual happy-go-lucky native way, Sylkin

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 189
did not arrive until noon. His canoe was just big
enough to hold three people, two guns, and a kettle,
and it needed some care to stow away my camera,
but in the end I was glad that I had taken the
latter. We rowed past the house of Prokopchuk, and
round the point beyond which lay the open tundra.
Vassilli and I soon landed on the left bank, and
leaving Sylkin to pull the canoe against the stream,
which here ran swiftly, we tramped over the bog.
The marsh was still half submerged, and in the drier
parts it was overgrown with dwarf willows which had
not yet broken into bloom. These willows were full
of Temminck's stints, but the latter are very late
breeding birds, and we found only one nest, which
contained fresh eggs. Presently, Vassilli flushed a
male grey phalarope from a clutch of four eggs. Like
all the nests of these species found at Golchika, the
situation was so wet that the bird must literally have
been sitting in the water. Reeves were very common,
but we did not stop to hunt for their nests in the
coarse herbage, for I was anxious to press on to the
breeding-grounds of the geese. In the rough tussocky
grass, we flushed a Lapland bunting from five eggs,
and Vassilli shot a long-tailed duck. Dunlin were so
common that their husky pchurr was heard everywhere,
but the Siberian dunlin seems not to use that shrill,
trilling call that is so characteristic of the bird's British
nesting-grounds. We did not beat this bog very ex
haustively, for it was within easy reach of Golchika,
and might therefore be worked another day. When

190 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
we reached the bend of the river, we waited until
Sylkin came up in his canoe, and made him ferry us
over to the right bank. This was even marshier than
the other side, and at each step we sank above our
knees into the sphagnum. Red and black-throated
divers were swimming on the brimming pools, and
Siberian river gulls were certainly breeding in the
vicinity, although we could not find the nests. I shot
another grey phalarope here — a female this time.
The nests of this species are not easy to find, for the
phalaropes do not advertise their whereabouts as do
the plover and stints. The sitting bird slips quietly
away through the herbage, or else flits round and
round the intruder like a great moth, uttering its
shrill drrrt-drrrt note at intervals. About a furlong
from the river-bank, where the flat marsh gave place
to a row of low hills, there was a choom, and the
surrounding tundra was dotted with herds of grazing
reindeer. Presently we heard a whoop, and one of
the natives dashed up on a sledge. He was a Dolgan,
as his handsome embroidered bonnet testified, and he
was evidently very eager to find out who we were.
The native, however, like most other primitive people,
has naturally good manners, and will not directly
question a newcomer. To be a stranger on the
Yenesei is a passport to considerate treatment and
courtesy. It is an unwritten law that a stranger shall
not pay for his fish. It is given to him freely. This
is very different from the custom of an English village,
where, too often, the cry is, " Here's a stranger — let's
rook him ! "

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 191
So this Dolgan only grinned at us in friendly wise,
until Vassilli told him that Sylkin was near by ; and then
he shook up his rein with a shout and dashed away
like the wind to find his old friend. For every native
on the tundra knows every other, from Dudinka to
Dickson, and from the Pyasina to the Ob, and re
cognises them by face and name whether they belong
to his own orda or not.
A little farther on, where the marshes were still
flooded, a pair of red-throated divers screamed anxiously.
I waded out for a hundred yards through the sedge,
and found the nest. When first built, the birds must
have been able to swim right up to it, but the water
had subsided, and now they were obliged to drag
themselves for twelve or fifteen feet over the sphagnum,
which was scored by their breasts as though by the
coulter of a plough. I was splashing my way back
through the swamp, when Vassilli whistled to warn me
that a chorna chika — a Richardson's skua — was stoop
ing at a bird in the willow scrub, about a hundred
yards away. We both ran to the spot, and found that
the prey was a pintail duck. At first I thought that
the bird was a female with a nest, for it only flopped
helplessly over the grass, as if willing to draw us from
the place ; but after it was secured it turned out to be
a drake in the middle of the moult, and quite an
interesting specimen, partly in breeding, and partly in
the so-called eclipse plumage. Most of the primary
wing feathers had been shed, and the bird was quite
unable to fly. The skua sheered off at my approach,
and I could not have a shot at it. It belonged to the

192 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
light-breasted form of the species, as did all the other
Richardson's skuas that I saw on the Yenesei. It is
probably the Eastern form of the race. Meanwhile
Vassilli went on to the higher tundra, and flushed a
peregrine falcon from an eyrie at the top of a steep,
grassy mound. The nest contained three eggs, which
all were hopelessly addled, and were so discoloured by
lying in the nest that it seemed as if the bird must
have incubated them for weeks. Vassilli tried to shoot
her as she swooped overhead, but she was too quick for
him, and kept out of shot, though her cries pursued us
a long way up the river. Half a mile farther on, we
picked up Sylkin and the kettle. There was no fuel
except the green willow twigs around, but Vassilli,
who, like a true Siberiak, could make a fire out of
nothing, produced a slip of wood from the bottom of
the canoe, and soon made a blaze which looked cheerful
enough, for the evening was dull and grey, and the
wind was uncommonly cold. Before us, the river,
broken up by shoals and sandspits, meandered away
into the tundra ; and on each side, the wide, flat plain
stretched on, so it seemed, into infinity. A curious
restlessness always seized me when I watched that
immense horizon. Not to speak of its own mysterious
lure, a whole ornithological wonderland lay behind it ;
but the tundra is one of the most inaccessible of hunt
ing-grounds in the world, and it will be many years
before the wonderful bird life that must exist in the
secret river valleys and mountains of the Taimyr is
thoroughly investigated.
Sylkin roused me from a brown study by a question

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 193
which had evidently been perplexing him all day.
Were there geese in England ? If so, why did I come
up the Golchika to look for their eggs ? If not, what
sort of a country could it be ? I therefore gave him a
succinct discourse on the migration of birds, which is
probably the shortest lecture that has ever been
delivered on the subject. Translated from the original
pidgin-Russ, it ran something as follows :
In sum,mer — weather warm — geese plenty to eat
— eggs and little geese at Golchika.
In winter — weather very cold — ice on river —
geese go to England to eat.
A promising piece of marsh lay in front of the
mound where we were resting, and this time Sylkin
went bird's-nesting also. He beat Vassilli hollow at the
work. This was partly because Vassilli cared nothing
for either eggs or birds unless he could turn them into
either an omelette or a stew afterwards. Presently he
put up a willow-grouse. The bird feigned a broken
wing, and Vassilli, falling into the trap, instead of shoot
ing her at once, followed her as she dodged through the
whortle bushes. When she had decoyed him for a
certain distance, she sprang up out of shot, and boomed
away unhurt, while Sylkin roared with laughter at
Vassilli's sheepish face. The bird had been sitting
upon eleven hard-set eggs. The nest was exactly like
that of a partridge, being a mere hollow scratched in
the ground. While I went back to the canoe to fetch
my camera, Vassilli tried to revenge himself on the
grouse for having fooled him, but she was wise, and did
not return. Meanwhile Sylkin had found a little
13

194 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
stint's nest and snared the female upon the eggs by
means of a string noose. I found another clutch shortly
afterwards, and presently flushed a red-necked phalarope
from a nest with three eggs. Lapland buntings were
very common in the coarse, tussocky ground where the
marshes abutted on to the mudhills, and we took two
nests, in each case with half-fledged young. Some
arctic terns were breeding in a deep marsh on our right
hand, but we did not look for their nests. Every half-
verst or so, a wide, muddy stream flowed sluggishly into
the river, and we were obliged to wait for Sylkin and
his ferry boat. He was having hard work, for the wind
and the current were both dead against him. Earlier
in the evening the sky had been full of sleet showers,
but these gradually cleared away, and by midnight the
sun blazed out from the fringe of the cloud rack. The
light was so rich and golden that it looked, even if it
did not feel, warm, but the birds, following their usual
custom, were all at roost ; and for three hours we saw
very few of them, except when a drowsy Temminck's
stint fluttered out of the willows. Vassilli and I beat
systematically round a large lake ; and presently he
put up a cock willow-grouse, which only flew for a
short distance and then perched on a hillock.
After his last mistake, Vassilli was burning to avenge
himself upon all the grouse tribe, so he stalked the
bird elaborately, and shot it. A long-tailed skua flew
past us. These bold, bad marauders fly up and down
the river night and day without resting, like spirits of
evil. About 1.30 a.m. we returned to the river-bank
to pick up Sylkin, The accounts of my excursions

•' ¦ .y.
\Yillo-\v Grouse ¥ (Lagoi'U.s albus).

%:

Eggs of Grey Plover (Squatarola
Squatarola).

Eggs of CuRLEw-sANDPirER (Erolia
ferruginea).

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 195
from Golchika seem so often to be merely the records
of meals that I am almost ashamed to say that here we
had some more food, six hours after the last. The only
excuse is that tramping over a swamp in the crisp air of
a Siberian night whets the appetite more thoroughly
than anything else that I know of. Vassilli and I had
bread and cheese ; to Sylkin, who, as a Samoyede, was
immune from ptomaine poisoning, we gave some ham
which had been condemned by our commissariat depart
ment at the hut. Sylkin, however, seemed to enjoy
his highly flavoured ration, to which was added a tot of
vino to keep the cold out. Vino on the Yenesei is the
popular name for prepared vodka. Vodka itself is
nearly pure alcohol, and the natives cannot afford to
drink it in its raw state. Therefore they dilute it with
water, and in order to preserve the burning flavour,
they doctor it with vinegar, pepper, or anything else
that will give it a sting. We used even to mix our
brew of vino with curry powder and Worcester sauce.
The hotter it was, the more the natives liked it, and
even the women can gulp down a draught that would
blister the throat of a European. Sylkin tossed off the
decoction approvingly, and quoted as a grace his
favourite maxim that a little drink was good.
On the opposite bank of the river stood a large
sledge. Vassilli and Sylkin discussed it for some time,
and then the former explained in graphic pantomime
that it belonged to the gods of the natives, to whom
they prayed. In some of the chooms there is a sledge
set apart for sacred purposes, and occasionally a white
foxskin is hung up outside the tent as a shammanistic

196 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
offering ; but whether this was really a kind of wayside
sacrifice to the spirits of the fiood and fell, I cannot say.
Close to where we sat, a large pool discharged its
water into the river by an outlet which descended the
bank in three cascades. Presently Vassilli discovered
that three fair-sized fish were lurking in the stream, and
he and Sylkin began a hunt, with the idea of driving
the fish into the shallows, where they might be shot.
They both became wildly excited and thoroughly wet,
while their shouts must assuredly have scared away any
birds that may have been roosting in the neighbour
hood. They would have continued their sport until
the sun was high, had 1 not called them away at last.
Half a mile farther on, a pair of white-fronted geese
crashed up from some willow bushes. The goose had
been covering five hard-set eggs, and the gander was
standing beside her. Mr. Popham also remarks that in
this species, contrary to the usual custom of the duck
and goose tribe, the male bird visits the nest with the
female. I shot the goose, and as she fell, I heard a
delighted cry of " Horroshie myaso " ^ from my hench
man, who was panting up the hill behind. He wavered
for a minute, custom warring with his desire to pick up
the bird. Then custom conquered, and out came the
inevitable pocket-book.
"Pa Russki, myaso; pa Angliski  ?"
" Oh — goose ! " said I.
The goose eggs were photographed in situ, a process
that both Sylkin and Vassilli thought a mere waste of
time ; and considering that the makers of exposure
1 Good meat.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 197
calculators do not reckon that their customers may want
to make pictures at 1 a.m., the attempt was not unsuc
cessful. The nest was a small depression on a high
ridge of tundra, lined with down, but it was more like
a duck's nest than that of a goose, for the down was
arranged neatly round the eggs instead of littering the
surrounding grass.
While I was packing up the eggs, a pair of plover
began to pipe close by. To my surprise and delight,
the binoculars clearly made them out to be grey plover
— the first that I had seen on the Yenesei. They were
undoubtedly breeding in the neighbourhood, but to find
the nest was more easily said than done on that bald
expanse of tundra. Clearly the only way was to watch
the bird on to the eggs, but in order to do this, it was
necessary to get rid of my two companions, whose only
idea of birds'-nesting was to wander aimlessly about
until they either noticed the eggs or accidentally trod
upon them. An ignorance of Russian was a disability
under these circumstances, but Sylkin quickly grasped
what was required of him, and went off. It was more
difficult to dispose of Vassilli, but at last I thought that
I had done so by bidding him go away for an hour to
shoot geese.
As soon as he was out of sight, I took covert under
the river-bank. When the coast was clear, the plovers
quickly recovered from their alarm, and ventured back
into the neighbourhood. My hopes were rising propor
tionately, when all at once they both took wing and
flew screaming up the hill. Judge of my feelings, when
into the field of my binoculars walked Vassilli, with a

198 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
levelled gun, whose report threatened to sound the
knell, both of the plover and of the chance of finding
the nest. Luckily the shot did not take effect, for it
was Vassilli's rule never to fire unless the bird was at
least a hundred yards away ; and before he could reload,
I said what I thought so loudly that both he and the
plovers fled over the hill. After such a shock to her
nerves it seemed hopeless to expect the bird to return
for some time, even if she ventured back at all ; so,
whistling to Sylkin, I walked on up the river to the
lakes. The actual river-bank here was of sand, overgrown
with close, springy grass and golden moss. The whole
appearance of the place was so much like that of a
typical English warren that one quite expected to see
rabbits popping in and out of their burrows. On the
other side of the sandbank lay a tract of deep green
marsh studded with small meres, and beyond the marsh,
the ground sloped gradually up to the higher tundra.
It all seemed so homely and so fertile that it was
difficult to believe that we were really in the heart of
the wilderness. It would not have been surprising to see
a large country house built on the hill, with lawns
sloping down to the river and golf links beyond. One
felt that one had often walked in such places before.
As it was, though there were slots of reindeer in the
moss, the place was profoundly solitary except for the
birds. Half a dozen geese rose gag-gaggling from the
waterside, and I took another nest of four eggs.
Divers of both kinds were plentiful, and bred together
on the same pools. Sylkin found two more nests, one

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 199
of the red- and the other of the black-throated species.
The little stint was scarce and the Temminck's stint
was not seen, but I saw a turnstone, the first that I
observed on the Yenesei. I took another clutch of grey
phalarope's eggs, and then went inland to look for the
king-eider, which, although I did not put much faith
in the report that it bred so far south of the
seacoast, Sylkin declared bred there. Presently two
long-tailed skuas flew overhead. A red-necked phal
arope was flying over the marsh, and immediately
one of these harpies made a most unprovoked attack
upon it. Double and dodge as she would, the victim
could not escape, for the skua, who, with his long
rectrices for a rudder, well knew all the tricks of
wingcraft, followed every zigzag ascent and dive like a
pursuing thunderbolt, and fairly hunted down the poor
little bird. This chase seemed to be undertaken purely
out of wanton mischief. Most birds seldom attack
another unless they need it for food, or see that it
trespasses upon their breeding-ground, but the skuas
will harry anything that comes in their way, just for
the sport, and for the pleasure of hearing the poor
thing scream. They are almost as diabolically cruel as
our own hooded crows.
By far the most interesting birds in this marsh were
two more pairs of grey plovers. I lay down for some
time to watch them, but there was so little covert that
this was no easy matter. They were wilder than the
first pair, and evidently had young somewhere in the
marsh, but it proved impossible to mark them down.
I should have liked to explore farther up the valley,

200 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
but the water there was too shallow for the boat, and
as I had now spent twenty-two hours afoot, most of
the time in tramping over heavy marsh, I did not
feel physically capable of walking another verst. The
men, too, were getting tired and hungry, and began to
look longingly behind them. We therefore turned back
down the river, but when we reached the place where
we had first seen the grey plover, there were the two
birds still flying round the spot. This was more than
I could stand, so I explained in elaborate pantomime to
Vassilli and Sylkin that I was going ashore again to
find the nest. They both looked rather sulky, and
then went off to a neighbouring creek to eat bread
and cheese, while I lay down under the bank of the
river. With two observers who worked together, that nest
could have been located in half an hour. As it was, it
took four times that length of time to find it. The
tundra sloped upwards from the waterside, and it was
not difficult to keep the birds under observation, but
between the river-bank and the bottom of this slope
there was a deep hollow filled with snow. Consequently,
when the plover was marked down to a given spot,
instead of walking straight up to the eggs, as can
sometimes be done, I was obliged to take my eye off
the place while crossing this gully, and found myself
hopelessly at a loss when I reached the other side. At
length I tried a dodge which afterwards proved very
useful when looking for the nests of other waders on
the tundra. A scrap of paper is pegged down (with
the ever-useful hairpin) where it is roughly calculated

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 201
that the nest may be. The observer then hides up
until the bird returns, and then by flushing her for a
second time, he can judge the position of the eggs from
the paper. Sometimes, as in this case, it is necessary
to try the trick for a third or even for a fourth time,
always moving the marks, and thus narrowing down the
area of search. The male bird nearly caused me to fail
at the outset, for he found out my hiding-place, and
stood for an hour on a sandbank, piping out to his
mate that there was a great big brute of a human being
lying in wait under the river-bank, and mind she didn't
go near the eggs until it had gone away 0 ! However,
in about two hours' time, I was able to flush the bird and
walk right up to the eggs. The latter were lying on
a ridge about two hundred yards from my hiding-place
in a little hollow in the reindeer-moss. I was too cold
and stiff to fetch the camera stand from the boat, so I
disarticulated my gun, and using the barrels as a rest
for the camera, made a couple of exposures upon the
eggs. Presently Vassilli came up, and in order to make
the identification complete, I told him to shoot the bird.
He stalked one, which from its fine plumage I took to be
the male, but which afterwards proved to be the female.
In the colour of the eggs, and also in the language, the
grey plover seems to stand half-way between the golden
plover and the lapwing, but it is a lumpier, less elegant-
looking bird than either of the smaller species. The
note that I heard over and over again that morning in
tantalising monotony was a threefold one, pee-a-weep,
as if a lapwing were calling with the pipe of a golden
plover. Seebohm gives the alarm note as a monosyllabic

202 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
kbp, or a double kl-eep, but the note that I heard on
the Golchika was distinctly three syllabled. When the
nest is approached, the bird has a way of dashing
violently down from a height, and then whizzing
aside, which is very reminiscent of the lapwing's aerial
antics over our English water meadows. At other
times the flight, although rapid, seems heavier and
less graceful than that of the golden plover, but
this may be only the effect of the bird's more solid
build, and conspicuous colouring. On the wing, indeed,
the grey plover, with its violent rushing flight and
pied plumage, frequently reminded me of a domestic
pigeon. After this success, we turned homewards. We were
all very cold by this time, and as I watched my followers
refreshing themselves with a drink of the Worcester-
sauce-and-alcohol beverage, I almost envied them, for
at least the mixture must have felt hot inside. As it
was, we had no wood to make a flre, and even if we
had, we could not have made tea, because as all other
receptacles, including the camera case, had been filled
with our previous prizes, the plover's eggs were packed
away in the kettle !
So ended an interesting and not unprofitable night's
work. The only fly in the ointment was that the
clutches of both geese and plover were so far incubated
that in the case of the latter at any rate it was not
possible to blow them properly. This, however, is
one of those drawbacks that must be reckoned
with in working in a place like Golchika where the
season is so short, and the difficulties of reaching

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 203
the birds' breeding haunts during the spring thaw
are so great. At least the memory of that quiet
river under the midnight sun, and the calling of the
birds on the surrounding tundra, is one that for me
will never fade.

CHAPTER X.
The charm of the tundra — The reindeer sledges — " Into the tundra " — A
wet drive — The sense of locality — A difficult passage — The choom —
A wet night — The Dolgan family — Sunshine on the tundra —
Photographing the Eastern golden plover — A goose hunt — Good-bve
to the tundra.
To us, whose maps are speckled all over with the names
of hills and rivers and townships, there is something
arresting in the blankness of the map of Northern
Siberia. Here and there a hair streak of river wanders
up into the Arctic Ocean : the rest is emptiness. And
actually when you visit those parts your first impression
is the same — of great rivers pressing to the north, fed
as they go by nameless lesser rivers ; and around and
beyond them, a grey and wind-swept waste, unbroken
either by valley or bluff, stretching away into the
lonely distance. In the country of the Yenesei, the
natives themselves have no name for the vast land
that lies on either side of the river. When they enter
it, they say simply that they are going "into the
tundra." For those who live beside it, the tundra has a weird
kind of fascination. Its vastness, its loneliness, its
hopelessness grip you. At first, when you explore it,
you think that you are the first human being who has
ever walked there, and feel as solitary as Robinson Crusoe

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 205
on his desert island. But in a day or two, you realise
that, on the contrary, the tundra is a place with many
highways, and a deal of trafficking. Sometimes, as
you trudge across a sphagnum bog, and believe yourself
to be all alone except for the golden plover, you hear a
long, low ai-aie, and over the ridge comes a little
sledge, drawn by reindeer and guided by one of the
little tundra men. It skims smoothly over the moss,
and disappears swiftly and silently from view.
Presently you realise that where you are standing is
not really a solitary place at all. It is part of a
country, which is as exhaustively mapped and charted
as any in the world. And each day, as you look at
its shrouded, quivering horizon, you want to thrust
it back farther from the limit of your knowledge, and
long to learn a portion, however meagre, of its secrets.
Unfortunately, however, travelling in the tundra
is difficult during the summer. The only possible way
of crossing it is by sledge ; and in the hot weather, the
natives are unwilling to work their deer, for the animals
are then moulting their coats and are liable to be galled
by the harness. Most of the herds are taken far out
into the tundra for pasturage, and only now and then
does a team visit the banks of the river. Therefore,
for nearly three weeks after our arrival at Golchika,
1 could only explore the surrounding country on foot ;
and, wandering on from one rolling ridge to another,
gaze impotently at the mysterious distance and vainly
long to reach it.
Then at last a chance came. It may be remembered
that on our excursion up the Golchika, Vassilli and I

206 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
had seen some Dolgans. These men were three brothers,
and during the summer, Prokopchuk employed them as
his shepherds to take his reindeer out into the tundra.
A few days after the events related in the last chapter,
two of the brothers came to buy food at Golchika, and
Prokopchuk arranged that we should accompany them
back to their choom, which was pitched at a place called
Sloika, about forty versts east of Golchika. They were
to start on the following day, and of course we gladly
consented to go back with them.
A reindeer sledge is not a very roomy conveyance.
All luggage has to be cut down to the minimum, and
therefore, besides a gun and a camera, my personal
baggage for the trip consisted of a pair of dry socks to
sleep in. We strapped our sheepskins down upon the
sledges, and the rest of the space was given up to the
kettle, cooking-pot, and food. Each traveller had a
sledge to himself, and these sledges, each drawn by
four deer, were tied one behind the other to the sledges
of the Dolgans. Vassilli, the eldest of the two brothers,
led the procession, and after a few false starts we
moved off at a smart trot.
As the punt is on the river, so is the reindeer sledge
on the tundra. You may do what you will with it —
turn it this way and that, let it slide down an eight-foot
drop, ride in it up a slope of forty-five degrees, or drive
it full tilt at a four-foot dyke, and it wiU never overturn,
but glide easily and safely from one bank to the other.
Before we had gone half a verst, we had a practical
illustration of this, for just where we were to leave the
flat bank of the river to turn up into the tundra, there

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 207
was a brook of running water. Even in a hunting
country, it would have ranked as a fence, and the other
sledges turned aside to ford it. Vassilli Sotnikoff,
however, drove straight at it with my sledge following
him. His deer took the channel in their stride, and the
sledge lumbered safely after them. But one of my
team, slipping in the boggy ground, leaped short, and
down plunged the sledge into the stream on to the top
of the hindermost deer. As I clutched at my seat with
both hands, I had a vision of struggling bodies straining
gallantly at the traces. Then, with a splash, the sledge
was jerked up the opposite bank, with me, exceedingly
wet, still clinging on behind.
A soaking more or less made little difference, how
ever, for as we turned aside from the river-bank, and
trotted up the steep incline which led to the higher
tundra, the rain came down thick and fast, wrapping all
the landscape in a veil of mist. Before us, stretching,
so it seemed, into infinity, lay the old sled track, along
which generations of Samoyedes had travelled "into
the tundra." For a couple of miles after leaving the
river, this track was quite plain, but presently it grew
fainter and fainter, and finally disappeared altogether.
To right and left the country lay as flat as a plate, and —
to the inexperienced eye — almost as featureless. There
was not a hill by which to take bearings, no sun by
which to set a course. Here and there the ground
was broken into gullies down which poured turgid
streams, and in the angles of the slopes, besmirched snow
drifts still lingered. More often our way lay over broad,
flat moss-hags, broken and here there by a low mound,

208 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
from which a snowy owl or buzzard flapped majestically
at our approach. Vassilli, however, never hesitated, and
drove unerringly ahead. Every five or six versts he
stopped to give his deer a breather, and we stood up to
shake the water from our knees and stamp our cold feet
back to warmth again. Then, as soon as the reindeer
had snatched a mouthful of moss, and Vassilli himself
had lighted his long brass-bound pipe, he pulled the
teams into position, and away he went once more. As
a rule, however, there were severalfalse starts. The deer
were harnessed by a trace which was fastened round the
neck, and then passed under the near fore-leg, and as
long as the sledge was moving all was well ; but as
soon as the traces slackened, the hind legs of one or
other of the deer usually became entangled in the
harness, and there was nothing for it but to stop the
sledges and put the matter right. This happened so
often that I could not help being secretly both amused
and exasperated by the stolid patience of the natives,
who were conservative enough to prefer the delay and
inconvenience of the frequent halts to release the deer,
to devising some more effective system of harness.
The pace of the deer was a steady seven-mile jog
trot, and they scarcely dropped into a walk even for a
piece of ground as rough as a Scottish moor, or a swamp
where the water spurted high on either side of the
runners. Sometimes we raced down a slope so steep
that the sledge slid down upon their haunches, or else
rattled and bumped through the bed of a brawling
stream. It says much for the stability of the sledges
that during that thirty -mile drive only one of them was

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 209
overturned, and that was mine. My team, following
their leaders too closely, cut a corner as we slid into the
bed of a torrent. The right-hand runner caught a pro
truding stone, and the sledge turned completely over,
tumbling me and my gun and cooking-pot into the
water. At this mishap the Dolgan brothers laughed
like schoolboys as they picked up the overturned sledge
and released the struggling deer from the traces.
But no matter how thick the mist, nor how winding
our way, Vassilli never hesitated, but chose his path as
confidently as a Londoner who walks from the Marble
Arch to Piccadilly. As an example of his absolute
knowledge of the country : we were crossing a wide
sphagnum swamp, when he presently turned aside to
a little knoll, which, to the untutored eye, was exactly
like hundreds of others on the desolate plain. Here he
jumped off the sledge and picked up a small object. It
was a tobacco-pouch which had been forgotten during a
halt on the previous journey, and for which he had now
returned. That a native should have a general sense of
direction highly developed is not so remarkable, for it
is a faculty which in a greater or less degree is shared
even by civilised man ; but that he can remember one
spot amid hundreds, all so similar, and identify it again,
is sufficiently wonderful. Several times we noticed this
instinct for locality, if one may call it so. A party of
Samoyedes once came to buy from Prokopchuk. They
had travelled from what the Golchikans call "the
other tundra," i.e. from the country which lies hundreds
of versts to the eastward, in the basin of the river
Lena. Their leader, an elderly man who could speak
14

210 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
scarcely any Russian, remarked naively that he had
not visited the Yenesei tundra since he was a boy, and
had half forgotten the way to Golchika ! On another
occasion we were at the chooms one evening, when we
saw half a dozen Samoyede boys and girls just starting
for the tundra. Their people were herding reindeer
about a hundred and thirty versts away, and they were
going out to join them. Both boys and girls were rid
ing astride the deer, and behind them, on a sledge, they
carried a little tea and soushki for the journey, and also
a canoe in case they came to a river. They were all in
high spirits, and neither they nor the crowd who had
collected to watch them start seemed to think it at all
unusual that a party of children, none of whom were
more than fifteen years of age, should thus set out alone
on a two days' journey into the wilderness.
Towards six o'clock in the evening, we descended a
long gradual slope from the higher tundra into a river
valley. It was raining harder than ever, and the bitter
east wind seemed to drive the rain through waterproof
and jacket alike, and chilled us all to the bone. We
thought gratefully of the comparative shelter and warmth
of the choom, which now lay not far ahead. However, it
turned out that we were not to reach it as easily as we
expected. The river, though shallow enough, was wide,
and the wind, blowing with the current, drove long
white tongues of foam down the channel. Vassilli shook
his head as he dismounted from the sledge and drew
a little bark canoe from under the overhanging bank.
He first tried the ford with Miss Czaplicka, the lightest
of our party, behind him in the boat.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 211
" Sit still, or death ! " was his dramatic and rather
disquieting command in broken Russian to his passenger
as he cautiously pushed off his little craft. But it was
soon evident that it would be hopeless to try and cross
at this point. The current was so strong that even
Vassilli, with all his skill with the paddle, could do no
more than keep the canoe's head to the wind, and so
prevent it from drifting broadside on and overturning
in the rough water. He was soon obliged to give up
the attempt and return to the bank.
It would have been impossible to find a more forlorn-
looking party in the whole of Asia. Although it was
only six o'clock, and, according to the calendar, still the
season of perpetual day, the sky was so lowering that
a grey twilight seemed to brood over the wet tundra.
Out of the misty mud-hills to the east, the nameless
river flowed, no man knew whence, and disappeared
among the mud-hills to the west, no man knew whither.
Little lonely streams, whose sources were visited only
by the tundra foxes and the wild-fowl, ran down to
meet it. We seemed to be the only living things in a
land where there was no colour, nor any sound at all
except the swish of the wind over the lichens ; and as I
looked around I had the fantastic idea that here was a
world in the making. It seemed, as if in obedience to
the enunciation of some great law, the waters of a new
chaos had rolled sullenly back and let the land in all its
nakedness appear for the first time. I seemed to see
earth in its beginnings, as I stood with my back to the
wind, wriggling my toes in my wet boots to make sure
that they had not been frozen off altogether, and watch-

212 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
ing the raindrops drip from the flanks of the patient
deer, while Vassilli and his brother Nicolai debated as
to what to do next.
Suddenly a shout was heard, and Maxim, the
youngest of the three brothers, appeared on the opposite
bank. By his directions, we went to another ford, a
couple of hundred yards up the river. Here, although
the channel was wider, it was less deep, and the current
was less rapid. Moreover, there was a sandbank in
midstream where we might break the passage. Every
thing was unloaded from the sledges, and, one by one,
Vassilli ferried us across to the sandbank. Then our
goods were brought over also, and although we had cut
all baggage down to the minimum, it needed several
journeys, for it would have been disastrous to overload
the canoe. At length only Nicolai was left behind.
He led the deer, team by team, down the bank, and
drove them into the river. After the first couple had
entered the water, the rest followed them readily
enough, and then Vassilli paddled over for the last time
to fetch his brother. Meanwhile, a tragedy occurred,
for, during his absence, the last team landed on a muddy
spit, which was almost as unstable as a quicksand.
Before the deer could be driven on to firmer ground
the treacherous surface melted beneath them, and they
sank down over their hocks. With some trouble three
of the deer were dragged ashore, but the fourth could not
rise, and when we hauled it out, we found that in its
struggles the poor brute had broken its hind leg
grievously. There was no help for it. Vassilli cut it
out of the harness lest it should hinder the others, and

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 213
we were obliged to leave it behind on the sandbank, for
any delay might have resulted in the same accident
befalling all the rest of the team. The second channel
was much easier to cross. In fact, it was not necessary
to use the canoe, and we made the passage safely by
kneeling on the sledges, while the deer waded up to
their bellies in the water. After relashing our goods
upon the sledges, we made ready to go on to the choom,
which was now only a verst ahead ; but Maxim went
back to bring in the wounded deer, which was hobbling
painfully to the ford. Animal suffering is always
painful to see, and although we knew that in this case
it was accidental and could not have been avoided,
nevertheless, the suffering of the beautiful innocent thing
saddened us all very much. I must confess, however,
that the behaviour of that reindeer, although it did not
reduce my regret, considerably modified my views as
to the depth of animal suffering ; for no sooner had it
limped ashore painfully on three legs, than it put down
its head and began to graze as placidly as if its leg were
not dangling merely by the sinews !
Ten minutes later we reached the choom, which stood
upon a little knoll in a sheltered valley. A clear stream
bubbled past the door, and all around the slopes of the
valley were dotted with grazing reindeer. Not so very
long before, I should have thought that the little tent,
hidden away in the heart of the tundra, was the very
acme of dreariness and solitude. But two months of
travel in Northern Siberia overset many preconceived
notions, and now, on the contrary, we welcomed the
small brown dome. In our wet and hungry plight it

214 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
seemed like a haven of refuge — almost homelike ; and
we pushed aside the door flap and crept inside gladly.
A bright fire was burning in the middle of the floor, and
beside the fire sat old Maria Sotnikoff, the mother of our
three guides. Although she sat cross-legged upon a
heap of hides, and all her household goods would have
packed easily into the old wooden coffer beside her ;
and although her choom was suddenly called upon to
house just twice as many people as it was designed to
hold, no gentlewoman in civilised lands could have
received her unexpected guests with more courtesy and
composure than did Madame Sotnikoff. She graciously
shook hands with each of us in turn, and although she
understood little Russian, and was too deaf to hear our
greetings, she smiled at us kindly, and pointed out our
quarters for the night — the guest-chamber, so to speak —
which was that half of the choom which lay to the left
of the doorway. Meanwhile, the three brothers, who had
waited behind to unharness the deer, came in, and we
all gathered round the fire for supper. But first of all
Maria took her sons' wet outer garments and hung them
up to dry. Later, as we waited for the kettle to boil,
I watched our hostess across the hearth, and I could not
help admiring the methodical way in which she set her
primitive house in order. I have not often seen greater
neatness and precision in far more pretentious rooms in
Europe. First of all she took the little squat table that is
found in most of the chooms along the Yenesei, and
dusted it carefully. On this she set three pink cups
and saucers of cheap Russian crockery. In my ignorance,
before visiting the Yenesei I had believed that saucers

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 215
were among the most easily dispensable of the innumer
able superfluous chattels with which our civilisation is
cumbered. But in the choom the saucer is as important
as the cup, for the tea is poured out into it before it is
drunk. Indeed, we found that the natives actually
despised our saucerless mugs, and regarded ours as an ill-
appointed tea-table. When the kettle boiled, the meal
began. There were three courses — tea and soushki,
reindeer meat, and fish. The men were too hungry to
talk much, and what they did say related chiefly to the
loss of the deer. As the price of a good draught rein
deer may be anything from fifteen to fifty roubles, they
were much troubled at the accident. After supper the
beds were brought out, and each of the brothers, taking
off his outer garments, crept into a warm reindeer-hide
sleeping-bag. I noticed that although their hands and
faces were so dark, the skin of these Dolgans' arms and
chests was as white as the skin of a European. The
Dolgans, however, are a cleanly race : I have seen
Yuraks and Samoyedes who were so dirty that it seemed
as if their skin must long ago have renounced its proper
function. All through the night the wind and rain yelled
over the tundra. A choom is a marvellously weather
proof dwelling. Like all things which have evolved
slowly from the practical experiments of hundreds of
generations, it is the simplest and most effective adapta
tion of means to ends ; but, at the same time, even a
choom has its limitations, and long before morning
the pitiless rain had beaten an entrance and was
dripping dismally on to the hearth. It was too cold

216 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
to sleep in the wet sheepskins, and for the greater part
of the night we lay awake, listening to the rustle and
grunting of the reindeer as they grazed outside.
Our hosts were early astir, and the first to awake
was the hard-working little mother, for she must make
the fire. Now a fire in the northern tundra, you must
know, is not a lavish heap of wood and coal, sprawled
all over the hearth to squander or replenish carelessly,
whenever and however you please, as it may be in the
south. In the tundra, fuel is of peculiar preciousness
— all wood must be carried from the banks of the Yenesei,
which may be scores of versts away, for the only
timber found upon the spot is that of the little green
willow scrub. Hence, when a fire is laid for kindling,
each chip and twig is placed after a careful plan, and
when it is lighted, the pile is watched jealously and
raked together scientifically from time to time, in order
that the kettle may boil with the maximum of speed
and the minimum of fuel. Before the tea was made,
the three sons awoke and washed in turn. Each took
a mouthful of water from the scoop in the bucket by the
door, and let it trickle from his mouth over his hands.
We, who had not been educated up to this rather feline
but decidedly practical means of obtaining warm water,
contented ourselves with a splash in the icy stream
outside. These ablutions over, the Dolgans had a good
breakfast of fish, while we ate the European fare that
we had brought with us, and which, I am bound to say,
did not look nearly so good as theirs did !
The Sotnikoffs were in better circumstances than
many of the natives in those parts. Each spring they

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 217
came to the north with their reindeer, and during the
short arctic summer, they wandered over the tundra
from one pasturage to another. When autumn came,
however, they packed up their goods on the sledges, and
travelled southwards for four or five hundred miles to
the border of the great Siberian forests. Here they
had another choom. Were they not afraid to leave it
unprotected all through the summer, lest someone
should steal it, we asked ? They shouted with laughter
at our simplicity. " Who would touch it ? " they asked,
scornful of the very idea, for they knew the scrupulous
honesty of their own race.
No doubt this migration was well enough for the
three young men ; but it seemed little short of marvel
lous that the little, fragile old woman, who could
scarcely hobble fifty yards from the choom, door, should
travel thus on an open sledge through the first snows
of a Siberian winter. Maria, however, seemed to
regard the journey with as much equanimity as a
London housewife regards the annual holiday trip to
Margate. Vassilli, the eldest of the brothers, was a
middle-sized man with a little hair on his face. His
cast of countenance was the least amiable of the three ;
and we heard later that, although of marriageable age,
he remained a bachelor willy-nilly because all the girls
of his people were afraid of his temper ! Nicolai, on
the other hand, had a round face with such a joyous,
comical expression that it was not possible to look at
him without smiling in sympathy. Maxim, the
Benjamin of the family, was a small edition of Nicolai.
All three were as merry as schoolboys, and had the

218 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
simple ready humour of children. Nicolai, wishing to
light his pipe, opened the match-box, only to findit empty.
His discomfiture drew shouts of laughter from the
others. Maxim, when putting on his boots, found that
the stitching had given way, and that his bare toes
protruded in what English children call a " potato."
He and his brothers rolled to and fro with merriment
at this unexpected appearance, but Maria shook her
head and hastened to mend the hole with twisted
reindeer sinew.
This morning there was plenty of time for such
jokes, for it was still raining heavily, and there was
little temptation to go out and be wetted to the skin,
especially when there was nowhere where damp clothes
could be dried. Meanwhile there was a good oppor
tunity of studying the choom, which, for the benefit of
those who have never seen one, I may briefly describe.
A choom is a little conical-shaped tent about fifteen feet
in diameter. There is one upright pole in the middle ;
and a number of more slender rods leaning in towards
it, and tied together in a bunch at the top, support the
cover. According to the weather, the smoke escapes,
or does not escape, through the opening at the apex.
The only inside fitting is a cross-bar which is lashed
from one of the side poles to the centre upright, and
from which hangs a wooden hook for the cooking-pot.
The outside covering is made of skins sewn together.
Indeed, so all-important is the reindeer to the poor
Siberian native, that it is no wonder that it is difficult
to buy good skins in Golchika. Fawn skins are plenti
ful enough, and only cost a rouble or two, but the

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 219
larger hides are all used in the chooms. The Sotnikoffs
had about three hundred reindeer under their charge, of
which about half belonged to Prokopchuk. This, how
ever, was not a large number for one family to own,
for reindeer are delicate creatures, and in some years
are subject to a form of epidemic disease which carries
them off in hundreds. The Samoyede reindeer are
smaller than those used by the Tungus, and judging by
the head of one that I saw from Dickson Island, they
are not so heavy as the wild deer. The draught
reindeer are gentle and tractable. Seebohm says that
on the Petchora, haviers are used in the sledges ; but
all those that I saw on the Yenesei carried fine horns,
although of course at that season they were still in
velvet. In winter a team will go a hundred and fifty
versts in a day, but in summer they are in poor con
dition, and cannot travel more than thirty miles.
Their scenting powers are wonderful, and when lost in
the pourga, they will travel miles to find a choom,,
guided by the smell of the fire ; but they have none of
the homing faculty of dogs, and will run to a stranger's
camp as readily as to their own. I once saw Joseph
Gerasimvitch flay a newly-killed carcase within thirty
yards of where a team were standing. Cattle under
similar circumstances would have been driven frantic
by the smell of blood, but the reindeer paid no attention
whatever. In the afternoon the skies cleared, and as I started
on a solitary ramble up the valley, I saw the tundra
under another guise. Last night we saw its dour side,
its greyness, its loneliness, and seemingly under the

220 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
scourge of the wind and the rain, its hopelessness. The
frame of the land was just as the ice had left it. Its
horizons lay in long, open curves, all angles planed away
by the firm hand of the glaciers. Most likely the form
of the swamps and the rivers had not changed since
the mammoth lumbered over the frozen mudhills. But
to-day I felt more clearly the promise of the tundra —
its huge fertility, its immensity, its strange, indefinable
magic. Nowhere, except in the Alps, may be seen such
a profusion of flowers- — forget-me-nots, lupins, saxifrage,
pedicularias, and poppies — purple, blue, crimson, and
orange — and in the hollows the willows were fragrant
with bloom. On every hillock stood a plover in gold-
studded livery, playing on his wild pipe, or malingering
piteously to lead me from his hidden nursery. Down
in the hollow, a pair of godwits whistled to one another
in notes like the striking of flint on steel, and red-
throated pipits dropped carolling among the flowers.
As I walked quickly beside the river-bank, little waders
ran before me down the sandy spits, too busy to be
afraid, and a fine willow-grouse rose with a whirr and
boomed away over the hill. Beside the ford, the gulls
flew to and fro, and stooped at their own purple shadows
on the sandbanks. And yesterday there had not been
a bird to be seen, and all the flowers had hidden their
rain-drenched heads ! All this transformation had been
caused by a little sunshine. It was like a resurrection.
The river ran tranquilly, reflecting a clear sky. Yester
day the monotony of its broad, flat banks had oppressed
us by its drabness and dreariness. But to-day, its very
monotony lent it an added charm. It had no history :

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 221
it served no human purpose. It came out of nowhere,
flowed a little way, bubbling contentedly in the sun
shine, and then disappeared into nowhere. In some
sort the river was typical of the tundra itself. The
tundra is a land of the present. It has no past. No
history was ever made there, and its people scarcely
reckon the flight of years. It has no future. What
can you do with a million square miles of lichen and
moss, which for nine months of the year are frozen fast
and deep ? The life of the tundra is an eternal present.
Thus it was an seon back ; thus it will be an seon hence.
It is one of Pan's pleasure gardens. Of which — alas ! —
there are so few remaining in this small and much-
trodden earth.
To me, passing along the tops of the hills, flew a pair
of golden plover, zealously feigning a broken wing.
One was shy and kept her distance : I am ashamed to
say that I think from her plumage that this was
the lady. The other was a bold bird, and ran so close
to me that, time and again, he might almost have been
caught in a butterfly net. Presently I lay down to
watch the couple. The male bird soon dropped his
plaintive whistle, and began to pick up imaginary worms
— which, to those who know Ploverski, is a reassuring
sign ; but his mate speedily discovered my whereabouts
and told all the tundra about the espionage. However,
by and by she had to go off to attend to a Buffon's
skua who was trespassing too closely, and as soon as
she had gone, her mate came back to the neighbourhood
of the eggs. I watched him for over an hour, and
finally, after marking him down, once or twice, I found

222 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
the nest. It contained one newly-hatched chick and
three chipping eggs. The old bird need not have made
all that fuss about the skua, for without field-glasses
he could never have found her treasure. Both eggs and
young were tinted wisely. The chick was dusky and
golden-green as the moss on which he crouched ; the
eggs, modestly marbled with umber and grey, were drab
like the lichen. Each was a mighty successful piece
of scenic painting in miniature, and quite invisible on
the tundra. The cock bird was so tame that I determined
to return the next day and photograph him at the nest.
The second night in the choom, was much more
comfortable than the first had been. It was dry, and
not really cold if you stuck your feet into the ashes of
the fire. The dogs came in to share the warmth. There
were two of them — Malchik and Ouss. Both were trained
to herd the deer, but while Ouss was quite a rising
practitioner, Malchik was a fool. Ouss knew his superi
ority, and traded on it. He would not allow his brother
to sit by the fire, scarcely would he permit him to enter
the choom. They were both prick-eared, long-coated
curs, with tails curled tightly over their backs like Chow
or Pomeranian dogs.
I turned out early on the following morning, and
went to call on the golden plover with my camera. It
was a beautiful day, and under a cloudless sky, the
tundra was for the first time buzzing with mosquitoes.
The pests swarmed everywhere and turned photography
into a regular martyrdom. It was impossible to focus
the camera through a veil, and I speedily found that most
of the decoctions which are recommended as preventives

Dull fuel ¥ (Charadrius morinellus).

Grey Phalaroi-e J (Phalaroi'US fulicarius).

Temmi.nxu's Sti.nt (Erolia tenlminckii)

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 223
were more of a protest than a protection against the
attacks of the Siberian Culex damnabilis. Luckily,
however, the male golden plover was a most obliging
sitter. He even returned to brood his newly-hatched
young while I was lying in the grass not five yards
away, and by the use of a lens of 14" focal length, I
exposed about two dozen plates upon him as he ran
round the nest. This sort of " fluke " photography is
often very successful as far as picture-making is con
cerned, but it is, or ought to be, as poor sport to the
naturalist photographer as hunting a bagged fox is to a
fox-hunter. Nine-tenths of the pleasure and profit of
nature photography is derived from watching the bird
under natural conditions. To lure an anxious creature
within range of the lens by the cheeping of its own
chicks seems to savour so much of seething the kid in
its mother's milk that I always feel rather ashamed of
having done so, and as if I owed the poor bird an
apology. However, this plover is so excessively wary
that to photograph it from the ordinary hiding-tent
would be a long and difficult business.
When I returned to the choom, the rest of the
party were at breakfast. Ouss was sitting in the family
circle on the look out for titbits, but Malchik as usual
was made to keep his distance. The men said that he
was a fool — dourak. I had a fellow-feeling for him,
because a pair of bar-tailed godwits had just shouted out
the same thing to me when I could not find their brood
among the rushes. I therefore called him inside, and
told him that some day I meant to found a Sodality for
Incompetent Fools, both human and canine. Ouss

224 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
promptly rolled him over into the fire ; but for once in
a way the family took his part, and he received the
scrapings of the cook-pot with abject gratitude. How
ever, to show how unequal things are — two minutes
afterwards, when Ouss looked insinuatingly at our plates,
I found myself feeding him on choice morsels ; and
Malchik, who was too deprecatory to ask for any for him
self, looked on hungrily and got none. Therefore the
fool was dealt with according to his folly, and every
thing was as unfair as before.
The Dolgans were going out to shoot geese for
Prokopchuk's larder, and invited us to accompany them.
Vassilli took his ancient muzzle-loader and the little
canoe, and we started out on reindeer sledges.
Up on the higher ground, the mosquitoes were less
virulent than in the valley, but it was very hot, and
from horizon to horizon, the whole country seemed to
leap and quiver in the sunshine. Tennyson wrote of
the Lotus-eaters' land, "where it is always afternoon."
Out on the tundra it was like a perpetual Sunday
morning. A Sabbath stillness brooded over the vast
sunlit plain : one almost expected to hear the distant
tinkle of church bells. Away from the river valleys
there were no flowers among the reindeer-moss, and few
birds except an occasional golden plover.
Here and there, however, we passed a small moss bog,
which seemed to form a kind of oasis for birds. Little
stints sprang up at our approach, and red-necked
phalaropes — koolik, as the Siberiaks call them —
shepherded their young out of the way of the sledges.
We were crossing one such bog when a curlew-sandpiper

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 225
jumped up right in our path, and I caught sight of a
downy youngster dodging through the grass. Without
taking my eye from the spot, I leaped off the sledge, to
the amazement of our pilot, Vassilli, who thought that
I had suddenly gone mad ; and after a short chase,
succeeded in capturing a couple of young curlew-sand
pipers in down, the first that, to my knowledge, have
been taken by an English ornithologist. A little farther
on, by some scrub willows, where the deer halted for a
breather, I shot three ptarmigan, the only ones secured
during the trip. They were very tame, and the report
of the gunshot that sealed their comrades' fate only
caused them to crane their necks inquiringly.
By and by we reached the bank of a small river.
On the farther side was a bog, in the midst of which,
like a gem in an ample setting, was a small lake — the
goose nursery. Vassilli took the canoe, and drove the
deer into the stream. They were glad enough to swim
and drink, for the poor things were very hot ; and
Ouss, who had run all the way behind the sledges, was
panting like a steam-engine under the weight of his
thick pelt. Arrived on the other bank, we sprang on
to the sledges and drove off at full gallop over the bog,
in order to take the geese by surprise and cut them off
from the water. At the other side of the lake was a
slope of rising ground, and down this, three or four
broods were already waddling to the lake. Nicolai
tumbled off his sledge and, shouting to me to follow him,
he ran off with Ouss scampering at his heels. He
easily beat me in the race, for the shores of the mere
were spongy with sphagnum, and I soon dropped into s,
'5

226 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
breathless walk, as much the result of laughter as
exhaustion. Nicolai, running on ahead, had floundered
through the marsh, and had given hot chase to a family
party of geese. The young birds, although they were
not yet able to fly, were strong pedestrians, and they
were adepts at dodging. Each time that their pursuer
clutched at one, the gosling doubled under his arm
like a football player and sprinted away in the opposite
direction. Ouss, who thoroughly entered into the game,
fastened into the pinion of an elderly gander, who was
running with outspread wings before his progeny. The
bird immediately sprang into the air, and sent the dog
sprawling, with a mouthful of feathers, while the
fluttering and cackling redoubled. In the end Nicolai
and Ouss between them caught two birds. The rest
beat them altogether, and reached the water. Here,
however, they had to reckon with Vassilli, who had
launched the canoe, and now pursued them with his
fowling-piece, which made almost as much noise and
smoke as a 45-cm. siege gun. It seemed cruel thus to
shoot the birds in the nesting season, but it was
necessary to take fresh meat back to Golchika, and
the surviving goslings were old enough to look
after themselves. All the geese that I saw at this
place belonged to the white-fronted species {Anser
alhifrons). Between them, the Dolgans captured
enough birds to load a sledge, but they professed to be
disappointed with their bag, and said that if it had not
been a late season the adult geese would already have
been in moult, and unable to fly at all. As it was, only
the goslings were taken ; the old birds flew to and fro

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 227
overhead, screaming imprecations upon the violators
of their sanctuary.
On the following morning our provisions were
finished, and as our hosts had none to spare, we were
obliged to return to Golchika. It was with the greatest
regret that we said good-bye to the little choom with its
freedom, its friendliness, and its hospitality ; and its
inmates shook hands with us over and over again in their
hearty native fashion. Before leaving, I bought his cap
from Vassilli for the sum of three roubles. It is made of
white wolfskin fringed with dog's fur, and is a perfect
specimen of Dolgan beadwork. Maria was a notable
worker, and each bead is sewn by deer's sinew into its
proper place in the ancient pattern that is handed down
from mother to daughter in the Dolgan race, and
reduplicated again and again in every generation. It
is before me as I write, and its faint, musty odour recalls,
as nothing else can do, the memory of those two days
spent in the little choom out in the tundra, and of its
quaint and kindly owners.

CHAPTER XL
Swerifskye— Its reputation — We go there — Mnogie vino — A stroll on the
tundra — A night in the open air — Walk to Och Marino — Mirage —
A search-party — Birds and men at Och Marino.
The other day I took my old school atlas from the
shelf, and turned up the map of Asia with greater
interest than it received in the days when we learned
in our geography primer that, " Western Siberia, an
immense region where a few dwarf Samoyedes
dwell, and where miserable convicts are cruelly made
to work in quicksilver mines, is watered by the Ob,
Yenesei, and Lena Rivers, whose mouths are mostly
frozen." Four towns were marked upon the Yenesei
— 'Krasnoyarsk, Yenesiesk, and Turukhansk of course,
and then, right up at the top, in type covering
a space which actually represented about three
hundred miles, and challenged attention with the
name of the river itself, was Swerifskye. Nobody
knows what made the worthy cartographer introduce
Swerifskye into his map. In the year of grace 1914
the place consisted of two balagans and three native
chooms built upon a shingle beach. Even Golchika
was a gay and populous place compared with it.
Swerifskye was on the other side of the Yenesei, and
on a clear day you could see the stacks of firewood,
2a8

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 229
and the smoke from the balagans, quite distinctly.
But when we proposed to row over there, the Golchikans
shook their heads. From their account, Swerifskye
was of as evil report as the Cities of the Plain, and
its inhabitants were thieves and murderers all. There
was a legend that, during the previous summer, two men
from the south had gone there to fish. Some days
later they went on board Kutcherenkoffs steamer,
and besought him to ship them home in any capacity,
for they could no longer live with the people of
Swerifskye. However, instead of deterring us, this made us the
more anxious to visit the place ; and as at about the
same time Madame Antonoff wished to go down to Och
Marino to see how Hachenkoffs fishery was prospering,
we agreed to join forces and hire Sylkin's boat to
take us across the river. Sylkin was quite ready to go,
because some Yurak friends of his were living in the
Swerifskye chooms. However, he took it for granted
that the outing was to include his family as well as
himself ; and when he brought the boat to call for us,
it had already a full cargo of children and dogs. We
were obliged to explain to him that we could not cross
the Yenesei with either a Noah's ark or a kindergarten,
and waited while he ejected all the dogs, and most of
the children. Then, after picking up Madame Antonoff
and Nill at the fishing station, we started off. Sylkin
took the paddle, and his two boys were at the oars.
The elder son, Nicolai, had been baptized in the
Orthodox Church, and wore a Christian token round
his neck, but the younger, Nerobi, was still un-

230 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
christened. Possibly his father's experience with the
ikons, which has been mentioned elsewhere, may have
had something to do with his heathen state. At any
rate, when Madame Antonoff tried to persuade him
that if he would go to the pope he would receive " a
nice Russian name and a nice new Russian shirt,"
he only glowered defiantly, and, retorting, " I want
neither your nice Russian name nor your nice Russian
shirt," he remained a pagan.
Madame Antonoff, who, naturally, had seen much
of the natives and their ways, also told us another
story, which, although irrelevant here, I cannot help
repeating. A Samoyede came to her one day and,
laying his hand upon his heart, declared that he had
a worm inside him which would not lie still ! She tried
in vain to reason him out of this delusion, and at last,
to humour him, she gave him some simple draught and
sent him away. Half an hour later he came back
and complained that her prescription had done him no
good at all — he had drunk the medicine and laid the
empty bottle inside his shirt, but the worm was still
there !
It was a distance of only ten versts to Swerifskye,
but before we arrived the wind began to rise ominously.
By the time that we beached the boat before the
balagans, we saw that it would be impossible to go on
to Och Marino that night, as had been our previous
intention. As the boat approached, excited figures
reeled out of both huts and chooms, very much as
tipsy wasps tumble out of an apple core, and we guessed
that there was what Sylkin called mnogie vino {i.e.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 231
much drink)^in the place. Here was a kettle of fish,
for the weather was too bad to return to Golchika, and
a balagan during a carouse is not the most desirable
lodging. To make matters worse, the most sober of
the Siberiaks came forward with the news that Vassilli
Vassillievitch Hachenkoff, whom Madame Antonoff had
intended to visit at Och Marino, had left his fishing,
and consequently his rent, to take care of itself, and
had been living for a fortnight at Swerifskye, drinking
hard all the time. There was nothing to be done but stay
where we were and hope that the wind would soon go
down. Fortunately there was not much vodka left
for Sylkin and his sons. My companions, escorted by
a jubilant crowd, went down to the chooms, while T
went for a ramble over the tundra.
Swerifskye stood at the entrance to a broad, shallow
valley, which had been planed out of the river-bank
by some glacier of the older world. I explored this
glen for some distance, and then struck out over
the tundra, but it was late in the season, and I saw
nothing of particular interest. The golden plover were
already strong upon the wing, and the Lapland buntings
had gone up to the higher ground to moult in privacy
among the whortleberries. I saw no curlew-sandpipers,
although in some spots the ground looked very suitable
for them, and neither did I see, as I had hoped to
do, any Buffon's skuas, I shot a couple of dotterels,
a female and a young one just fledged, and at the end
of three hours, as the wind was remarkably cold,
and it began to rain, I returned to the fishing station.
Sounds of high revelry came from the chooms, but none

232 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
of our party were in sight. I tried the door of the
nearest balagan, and found Vassilli Vassillievitch lying
in a drunken slumber in one corner and Madame
Antonoff keeping watch in the other. Nill lay across
the door like a faithful dog ; but when I came in he
evidently thought that his guard was relieved, and
lumbered out. It was dark and damp in the balagan,
but at least it was warmer than the wet beach outside.
Madame Antonoff and I sheltered there for some time,
until, lulled by the snores of Vassilli Vassillievitch, we
both fell asleep. About ten o'clock the remainder
of the party turned up, very wet and very hungry.
They had gone for a walk, and had fallen into a bog on
the way home. We therefore made up an immense fire
on the beach, and bivouacked there for the night. The
sky was clear, and although the wind was as cool as an
English November, the sand was quite dry, and we
slept very comfortably in sheepskins. One of our party
commandeered an empty fish barrel, and spent the
night in this Diogenes-like dormitory. She declared
that it was very cosy, but the rest of us preferred
to creep under the lee of a piece of driftwood.
In the morning we made a fire and cooked breakfast,
and during the meal we held a council of war. The
weather was too bad for the boat to venture either to
Golchika or Och Marino, but Madame Antonoff was
anxious to take Vassilli Vassillievitch back to his home.
It seemed that during his absence the girl had been
left all alone in the house with the ailing baby. Twice
she had sent messages by the natives, entreating him to
return and bring food, for she had nothing but black

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 233
bread and salt fish to give the child. In his maudlin
way, Hachenkoff was fond of her, and between his
drinking bouts he wept continually because he feared
that the child would die, and that it would be buried
under its mother's name and not under his own.
By and by a message came that he was awake and
sober, and Madame Antonoff sent word bidding him to
come and speak to her. But Vassilli Vassillievitch had
a guilty conscience, and presently he was seen slinking
away to hide himself in the tundra. However, Nill, to
whom his mistress' word was law, gave chase, and haled
the culprit back to the camp. Whereupon Madame
Antonoff gave the good-for-nothing creature a lecture,
which left him with nothing to say for himself, and sent
him back immediately to Och Marino under escort of
the grinning NUl.
We decided to walk down the river to Och Marino
and spend the night there, returning on the morrow to
Swerifskye to pick up Sylkin and the boat. If the
weather did not improve, we should have to remain
where we were, and as we had brought only two days'
provisions with us, we should have to depend for food
upon the charity of the balagan people.
Snowdrifts were stUl piled up along the western
shores of the Yenesei, for the mud-hills screened them
from the. sun, and although the water drip-dripped
from their flanks, yet they never melted all the summer
through. Among these mud-hills, I stalked and shot a Siberian
herring-gull, and also procured a couple of turnstones,
the first that I had seen on the Yenesei. During this

234 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
day, and for a day or two before and after it, small
parties of these waders might be constantly observed.
It was the second week in August, and probably these
were non-breeding birds of the previous year, who
migrated southwards before the nesting birds had
reared their young along the shores of the Arctic Ocean.
This coast of the Yenesei, as I must call it, for it
sounds inadequate to speak of the bank of a river which
is fifteen miles in width, was in places spread to a depth
of eighteen inches with a deposit of driftwood, pounded
almost to sawdust by the action of the ice and the
spring floods. This wet vegetable fibre was very tiring
to walk upon, for at each step one sank knee-deep into
the spongy mass. The beach was also strewn with
pieces of graphite, and stones containing traces of
copper-ore — tokens of the unexploited wealth of Siberia.
There is no such place as the Yenesei for mirage
effects. Whatever the state of the weather may be, a
distant coast-line, or even a boat a couple of versts
away, seems to hang in the air with a bar of shining
water beneath it. Moreover, even in cold weather, the
whole skyline of the estuary seems to leap and quiver
as if with heat, until it is almost impossible to distin
guish the lines of a distant ship or beach through the
telescope. Both appearances are probably due to the
fact that the water, coming from the south, is much
warmer than the air of the Arctic. Consequently a thin
layer of atmosphere immediately overlying the surface
of the river becomes heated ; and, being of different
density to the chilled air above, it plays curious tricks
with the refraction of the light.

The Xe^tini; Place of the Curlew-sandliper.

Siberian Gulls (Larus f. antelius).

Fox Trai' on the Tundra.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 235
The people of Swerifskye said that it was only
eleven versts to Och Marino, but from the time that it
took us to cover the distance, and the measurements of
the map, it seemed a good deal more like twenty.
Neither the natives nor the Siberiaks have any idea of
distance. If they tell you that it is ten versts to a
given point, it may just as well be five or fifteen. They
are as vague about distance as they are about time,
neither of which are of any account in their immense
country. Several times we had to wait for Hachenkoff,
who was in a sad state of collapse. He plodded along
before us, with Nill, who guarded him like a detective,
striding behind.
When we were half-way to our destination, we met
a search-party that had come out to look for our
prisoner. Such a pitiful search-party, trudging wearily
over the sand ! It was the poor young woman from
Och Marino with her baby. For two weeks she had
waited, hoping each day that the man would return
to her, and at last, in despair, she had started out by
herself to walk over to Swerifskye and drag him away
from his boon companions. Her only friend was a little
Yurak girl, who helped her to carry the baby. When
Hachenkoff saw the two forlorn little figures hastening
over the waste to meet us, he had the grace to hang his
head, while the poor girl burst into hysterical tears of
anger and relief We left Madame Antonoff to make
peace as well as she could, and walked on towards the
house. When we had visited it before, the surrounding
swamps had been impassable with snow, but now the
grass grew green and luxuriantly round the pools, and

236 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
the sandy shores were bright with flowers. Ringed
plover, dunlin, and little stints ran through the herbage,
and some Siberian river gulls were evidently breeding
by the lakes where I had seen them more than a month
before. The house was locked, so we sat down to wait
for the owners, who were trudging along wearily behind
us. Our consciences smote us for asking the poor
woman for hospitality ; but unwitting of the circum
stances, we had brought nothing with us except some
meat lozenges, which, although their advertisers claimed
for them that each contained the essence of two and a
half oxen, did not make a satisfactory supper after a
fifteen-mile walk. However, the arrival of unexpected
visitors makes less difference to the housewife in Siberia
than in most other parts of the world ; for there is
always an abundance of fish, and as each balagan bakes
its own bread in large batches, the larder is never
empty. The guests, moreover, are not particular as
to beds, and if their own coats are not sufficient for
palliasse and blanket, a rug on the floor is all that is
needed. Nevertheless we could only admire the pluck of the
poor little woman, who, when she returned footsore and
heartbroken, instead of giving way to her fatigue and
trouble, first smoothed her hair and washed her own
face and that of the child before preparing the evening
meal. She herself had more colour in her cheeks than
when we saw her last, for she worked all day in the
open air at sorting and packing fish ; but the baby
looked more sickly than ever, and was evidently fading
fast. Hachenkoff, who in his weak way was fond of it.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 237
hushed it while his wife prepared the samovar ; and as
it pressed its face to his shoulder, there was something
grotesque and, at the same time, tragic in the likeness
between father and child. We were so hungry that the
meal of black bread, salt fish, and " brick " tea seemed
one of the most delicious that we had ever tasted.
Afterwards I went out shooting in the marsh, being
anxious, if possible, to procure a specimen of the downy
young of the Siberian herring-gull. The birds were
evidently nesting on the tussocky islands in the lake.
I shot two adult birds, but persuaded myself that it
was too cold and too far to swim out on the chance of
finding eggs. A grey plover, a species that I had not
noticed on my previous visit in July, was also breeding
in the marsh. I watched her for a long time, and
finally came to the conclusion that she must have young
ones hidden somewhere among the herbage, for she
would run to one spot and shuffle upon the ground to
decoy me into following her, and then go through the
same antics in a totally different place, as if she were
trying to protect first one fledgling and then another.
There were a number of Yurak chooms pitched
farther down the river, for there is quite a Yurak colony
at Och Marino in the summer-time. Seebohm, writing
on his visit to the Yenesei,'^ says that it is difficult to
discriminate between the Samoyede and Yurak tribes,
and came to the conclusion that the former is a general
name for any native.
The word " Samoyede " is certainly used in a general
sense to describe the tribes on the Yenesei ; but the
* Birds of Siberia, p. 400.

238 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
dark race to the east of the river to which it is most
commonly applied is distinct enough from the Yuraks,
from which it differs in dress and language. On the
western side of the river it is more difficult to discrimi
nate, and it has been suggested that all the so-called
" Samoyedes " of the tundras west of the Yenesei are
really Yuraks. It must not be forgotten that in former
days the Yenesei must have been a much greater barrier
to intercourse between the different races than it is at
present — a barrier as wide as the Straits of Dover ; and
it would not be surprising to flnd two distinct, though
allied nations, sprung originally from a common stock,
living on either bank. All the native races are very
cautious in giving their names to a member of another
orda, as they call a man of a different nationality,
probably because they suspect that the inquirer may be
an official on the search for information. Both Siberiaks
and aborigines are careful what they divulge, lest it
should be used against them later by the authorities,
and made a basis for further taxation or inquisition.
Even the most innocent questions about the fishing are
answered guardedly, and it is possible that Seebohm
was suspected of some ulterior motive for his inquiries :
hence his difficulty in obtaining information.
That night at Och Marino was the most uncomfort
able that we had ever spent, or hope ever to spend
again. Mr, Hall and Nill slept on the floor in one
corner of the kitchen, and the Hachenkoff family in the
other. My two companions and myself shared the
wooden settle with Madame Antonoff. Each hour,
Vassilli Vassillievitch called for tea and vodka to steady

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 239
his nerves, and when he was not drinking, he smoked
cigarette after cigarette, as quickly as the native girl
could roll them for him. Added to this, it was not
long before other, and even less desirable, companions
made their presence known, and their raids soon
banished sleep. We were all heartily glad when
morning came, and we could have a breath of clean air,
and a cold splash in the river outside.
The wind had dropped completely, and we chartered
a native boat and three Yuraks to row us back to
Swerifskye. Our hostess came down to the beach to
watch our departure. This morning the poor girl's face
looked as radiant as it ever could look, because her
man had come home to her. Vassilli Vassillievitch
himself sat huddled sulkily beside the stove, and
answered nothing when Madame Antonoff said good-bye,
and hinted kindly but gravely that the patience of
even the most long-suffering landlord must come to an
end at last. But his wife flared up at once in his
defence. She would not hear a word about his neglect
of herself He was too good for this work, she said, and
other folks were jealous and carried slanders of him to
Golchika. She would not even admit that she had
been solitary all by herself while he had been carousing
at Swerifskye. But all the same, her green eyes looked
a little wistful as the boat pushed off, and left her
standing all alone on the shore. Then the babe wailed
for her fretfully, and she ran back quickly to the house.

CHAPTER XIL
A native postman— An invitation — We go to Kazachye — A midnight
visit — Simeon Prokopchuk and his family — Mezenchyne — The long-
tailed skuas — A night on the river-bank — The tragedy of the
balagans — The flowers of the tundra — The return to Golchika —
Appeasing Gerasim Androvitch.
One day, about the middle of August, a native who
came to Golchika told us that one of the Samoyedes at
a neighbouring fishing station had a letter for us. He
said that the letter had been given to this man for
delivery by one, Simeon Prokopchuk, a brother of
Gerasim Androvitch, who lived with his family in a
balagan about fifty versts higher up the river. Our
informant said that he had tried in vain to persuade
his friend to let him bring the letter. The Yenesei
native looks upon a letter as a most sacred trust. He
may carry it about with him for weeks before he has
the opportunity of delivering it, but he will never lose
it, and to no one but the addressee will he give it up —
not even to his prince.
On the following morning, the man himself, Katya
by name, came over and delivered an exceedingly dirty
and ill-spelt document to Miss Czaplicka. While he
was drinking tea, with the regulation thimbleful of
vino, she read it, and found that it contained an invita
tion from Simeon Prokopchuk to visit him and his

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 241
family. We were beginning to tire of the hut, but
there were certain difficulties in the way of the
excursion. The chief of these was the lack of a boat.
The only one available was that of Prokopchuk, which
was so large and heavy that it required two men to
row it. Then someone suggested that Joseph Gerasim
vitch — the Giant, as we had nicknamed him — might be
persuaded to go. The Giant was shyly amiable, but
non-committal. The season was getting on — there was
the firewood to be gathered in. Clearly further pressure
was needed. Next day we called on Madame Antonoff
and persuaded her to allow the two girls to come with
us to Kazachye for the night. At the time the Giant
made no remark when he heard that Nura Antonoff
was to be one of the party, but on the following day,
about noon, he arrived in the boat with his holiday
shirt on and his curls well brushed. Evidently the
business of the firewood was not so very pressing after
all. We dared not ask whether he had obtained his
father's leave to take the boat.
Nura and Tania were waiting at the fish station.
With them was poor, depressed Marusia Prokopchuk.
She looked so forlorn, returning all alone to her
drudgery in the kitchen, that we persuaded her to
come too. And it was worth while to offend Gerasim
Androvitch five times over just to see her eyes light 'up
with pleasure at the invitation. But we were not to
start yet. There was a favourable wind, and the Giant,
like all Siberiaks, was nothing if not resourceful. He
went down to the shore and returned presently, striding
along like Polyphemus with a young tree-trunk over
i6

242 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
his shoulder. In less time than it takes to tell it, the
pole was transformed into a mast, and an old tarpaulin,
purloined from the store, made a square sail. Not only
that, but Joseph pressed into our service Micha, the
chubby-faced youth from the fish station, who was only
too glad to earn a holiday by taking an oar.
Once out on the Yenesei the wind freshened, and
we were able to sail nearly all the way. Indeed, the
river was more choppy than some of the party found
quite pleasant ; but the waves, which had looked so
formidable on our voyage from Och Marino in Antonoffs
canoe, seemed nothing at all in Prokopchuk's unwieldy
lodka. Once or twice, as we luffed, some water slapped
over the gunwale, but the only thing that was really
wetted was Vassilli's coat. As he and his possessions
were by his own care or good fortune generally exempt
from the accidents which befell those of the rest of us,
I looked to see what he was doing. He, however, was
lounging in the bows of the boat, singing sentimental
songs to himself and snugly wrapped up in the sheep
skin of Joseph Gerasimvitch. For that was the way of
Vassilli. The common misfortunes of other mortals
never affected him. I believe that even the brimstone
of Gomorrah would have run from him as water runs
from off a duck's back. Under all circumstances Vassilli
slipped into the warmest and driest place, and the
astonishing part of it was that, sooner or later, you
yourself began likewise to indulge him.
About eleven o'clock in the evening, Joseph put the
helm over and turned inshore. A broad and shallow
river flowed down from the tundra, and at its mouth,

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 243
on a green slope, stood the wooden house of Simeon
Prokopchuk. Evidently the family were all asleep, for
nobody came out to meet us except a pack of dogs.
We felt like a troop of housebreakers as we marched
up in a body in the dead of night. Joseph Gerasimvitch
and his sister entered first, and soon returned with
their uncle. Simeon Prokopchuk was a short, thick
set man, with neither the good manners nor the
good presence of his brother, Gerasim. He had
been a publican in Yenesiesk, and a number of
empty vodka bottles on the roof showed that he still
maintained the customs of the pot-house. His right
hand was twisted and crippled, and he had one of the
ugliest and most repellent countenances that we saw
on the Yenesei. However, in spite of the rude way in
which we had aroused him, he was all hospitality, and
ushered us into the kitchen, A flickering candle sent
our monstrous shadows dancing over the ceiling. Before
the stove, just awakened from sleep, stood Mrs. Simeon
Prokopchuk. She was a large-limbed woman, who, if
she had not aged by much toil and child-bearing, would
have been strikingly handsome. When she had shaken
hands with us she went quietly to fetch the samovar,
as if it were quite a matter of course that a party of
ten should turn up unexpectedly in the middle of the
night. As she worked she explained that she and the
younger children had only just returned to the house.
They had passed the summer in a balagan at Mezen
chyne, a fishing station about eight versts farther up
the river, where the eldest son, Nicolai, still worked.
This house, although not so well furnished as that of

244 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
Prokopchuk at Golchika, was incomparably more com
fortable than the balagan at Och Marino. On a shelf
stood a couple of tins of condensed milk and cocoa,
which betokened a certain amount of luxury. Presently
our hostess took us into the inner room, which was
larger than the first, and well furnished, A heap of
furs lay on the floor. She turned them back, and
underneath was the prettiest sight — five little naked
children, warm and rosy with sleep, nestled together, for
all the world like a litter of kittens, with their fists
crumpled into their eyes. The proud mother pulled the
youngest out of bed in order to exhibit him, where
upon he opened his sloe-black eyes and yelled lustily,
until she gave him back to his eldest sister, aged six, who
cuddled him up and stifled his wails with the coverlet.
As soon as the samovar was singing, we hastened to
prepare supper, with the help of the Antonoff girls.
They had brought bread and a pot of fresh caviare, and
as we had tea, sugar, sausage, and cheese, we soon had
a good supper on the table. We sat down, a party of
twelve, to eat it with much merriment, in spite of
the usual shortage of cups and saucers. On all
these excursions we found that although we seemed
to have provided ourselves amply, yet somehow in
the end there were more thirsty throats than there
were cups to supply them. After supper Joseph
Gerasimvitch declared that he meant to walk on
to the fishing station and see his cousin, Nicolai.
Micha offered to go too, and, to our secret relief,
Simeon Prokopchuk said that he would accompany
them. We none of us liked our host, whose notion of

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 245
conversation it was to blacken the characters of his
acquaintance, and we were very glad that he was to
spend the night elsewhere. When they had gone, and
we had washed up the tea-things, we spread our sheep
skins on the floor. Our hostess gave us an armful of
splendid furs, and we slept comfortably in the kitchen,
or rather the Siberian members of the party did. For
my part, I had an inconvenient English hankering for
fresh air, and could not sleep in the close atmosphere
of the balagan. At 5 a.m. it became unbearable, so I
went out to finish the night on the river bank, where,
although chilly, the wind was at least cool and clean.
It was a beautiful morning, and we decided to walk
on to the Mezenchyne balagan, whither the Siberians
had gone overnight ; for there were some Samoyede and
Yurak chooms there, and our anthropological com
panions were anxious to visit them. The river bank
here, as on each side of the Yenesei in this district,
rose into a range of low mud-hills, which had been
scooped into all kinds of bluff and grotesque shapes
by centuries of flood and snowfall. A rough-legged
buzzard or two, soaring over the tundra, and a few stray
gulls, were all the bird life to be seen. The actual
shores of the Yenesei are curiously lonely. I often used
to think how much I should like to introduce a couple
of oyster-catchers to dabble at the water's edge, or even
a sandpiper or two, to give animation to the scene.
We reached Mezenchyne a little after midday. It
was a typical summer station, with two small balagans
and three chooms pitched close to the beach. Nets
were spread out to dry everywhere, and heaps of fish

246 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
offal lay on the sand. Joseph Gerasimvitch, with his
uncle and Micha, were in one of the balagans. They
were cooking fish, and invited us to join them. While
we were taking cover in the smoke from the raids of
the mosquitoes, Simeon Prokopchuk, who was almost
as anxious to oblige us as was his brother at Golchika,
told Miss Czaplicka that, about fifteen versts away, in
the middle of the tundra, were the remains of a mam
moth. The actual place was known only to one of the
native Yuraks, who had discovered it. Miss Czaplicka
had long wished to secure some specimens of mammoth
bones, and therefore she most pluckily decided not to
rest here, but to take the native as a gufde, and push
forward at once, accompanied by Mr. Hall. They
therefore took a little food in their pockets and started
out immediately, hoping to reach our base at Kazachye
on the following day. The three girls seemed to find
plenty of entertainment, judging from the peals of
laughter that came from the balagan, where they had
taken refuge from the mosquitoes and also from the
eyes of their chaperons, as I am afraid they regarded
us. Miss Curtis wanted to go to the chooms to sketch
the Samoyedes, and we arranged that she and I should
meet at the balagan at six o'clock and walk back
to Kazachye together. The only drawback to the
arrangement was that we should thereby be obliged to
keep the boat out for a second night, and we none of
us liked to think of what Gerasim Androvitch might
say. However, he was fifty versts away, and, as they
say in Ireland : It is time enough to shake hands with
the devil when you m^et him,

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 247
A pair of long-tailed skuas were flying between the
shore and the tundra with suspicious regularity. I
followed them for some distance up the dry bed of
a watercourse, which harboured such myriads of mos
quitoes that it was only by smearing myself with a
lard-and-tar ointment that I could watch the birds at
all. About a mile from the balagan I found the object
of the skuas' care — a gross and awkward youngster.
He looked so ugly, as he sat upon a hillock, squalling to
be fed, that I did not much mind shooting him. In
this, however, I was foiled by half a dozen of the native
dogs, who kept me under respectful but vigilant sur
veillance. Curiously enough, the old skuas objected to
the dogs much more than to the human intruder ; but
the fledgling was very wide awake, and never allowed
me to come within range of him. Eventually I shot
the cock bird, and the other two flew away. Afterwards
I went up to the higher lying tundra, but as my canine
retainers persisted in following me, and quartered the
ground on either side as they went, I bagged nothing
but a young ruff in the ruddy plumage of the year. I
returned to the balagan with my attendant pack to
find Miss Curtis waiting for me. She said that Simeon
Prokopchuk had accompanied her down to the chooms,
and whUe there had received some drink. He had
incited the natives to all sorts of antics, and as he was
now lying asleep in the balagan, we thought that it
would be a good opportunity to make our escape.
It was a beautiful evening, with just that touch of
crispness in the air that in England belongs to the first
autumn frost. In its own way the fall of the year is

248 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
as tonic as the spring, and carries no sadness with it.
Then, as at all the great seasonal changes, we put our
mistakes behind us and turn over a new leaf. This
year pheasants will fly higher, and foxes will run
straighter, than they ever did before. Therefore I like
the autumn weather well, and put it second only to
the spring in the mercies that are vouchsafed to us in
this good world.
The sand by the waterside was hard and firm for
walking, and we soon outstripped the Siberian girls.
By and by we saw three figures following us in the
distance. They could, we thought, be no other than
the tipsy Simeon Prokopchuk, with Joseph Gerasimvitch
and Micha, and we were annoyed to see that the three
girls were lingering behind. We felt more or less
responsible for the young Antonoffs, and had not much
trust in their discretion. We also had a disquieting
suspicion that a flask of cognac had been left on the
table, and we hurried on quickly to put it out of sight
before the master of the house came home. However,
our fears were needless ; for when half-way through
supper the loiterers appeared, giggling and rather
flushed, their escort consisted only of Joseph, Micha,
and their cousin Nicolai Prokopchuk, a slender, good-
looking boy of about nineteen years of age.
After supper the girls spread their beds in the
inner room, and Miss Curtis and I were expected to
do the same ; but the thought of eleven people behind
those hermetically closed windows daunted us, and as
it was a fine night, we resolved to sleep out on the
river bank in our sheepskins. We explained our

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 249
intention to our hostess as well as we could do so in
halting Russian ; but she, poor soul, was much dis
tressed, and poured out a long explanation, of which
we could not understand a single word. We therefore
smiled and said " Thank you," and " Good-night," which
custom had taught us were the most intelligible words
of our vocabulary, and then we went down to the river
side, where we made for ourselves a very comfortable
bed between two trunks of driftwood. The darkness
was never deeper than a soft twilight glow, and the
mysterious shining spears of the aurora borealis
mingled with the glamour of a night-long dawn.
However, we awoke with one accord at four o'clock,
and found that the rain was pattering down smartly.
We sat up and agreed sleepily that we certainly ought
to go indoors, and then turned round and went to sleep
again. Two hours after, when we awoke for good, need
less to say we were very wet, but any amount of rain
was preferable to the air of the balagan.
As we entered the house for shelter, we heard
heavy snoring from a small and noisome den which
opened off the porch. We pushed open the kitchen
door cautiously, expecting to find the floor encumbered
by the sleeping forms of Joseph and his friends.
Behold, there was no one in the room except Vassilli,
who lay at his ease on the settle by the stove. It
dawned upon us that through our mad English craving
for fresh air, fate had once more played into the hands
of our henchman. Madame Prokopchuk had taken our
(to her)incomprehensible conduct as an extreme symptom
of our distrust of the three young Siberiaks, and accord-

250 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
ingly they had been banished to the bathhouse. Hence
the mysterious snoring outside. But Vassilli had pointed
out that, as our servant, he must be above suspicion ;
and therefore he had enjoyed the warm kitchen all by
himself, while the rest of the party were either crowded
into one room, or slept in the bathhouse or on the
river-bank, as necessity or inclination drove them.
While we were wondering how to pass the time
until breakfast, our hostess came into the kitchen.
We were surprised to see her astir so early, and were
still more surprised, and sorry too, to find that she
had spent the previous day in making bread for us,
and had come out at this hour to attend to her baking.
In vain did we assure her that we had brought plenty
of food for our party. She would take no refusal until
we had breakfasted off the very best fish pirog that
we ever tasted. We made her join us, but she had
scarcely eaten a morsel before the children awoke, and
her day's work began by the washing and dressing of
all five.
\ The tragedy of the women in those Siberian
balagans has still to be written. The lot of the over
worked wife and mother in civilised lands is hard
enough ; but there at least she may sometimes have
the luxury of a good grumble with a sympathetic
neighbour. But these women in the wooden huts of
the Yenesei never see another white woman from
month's end to month's end, and the loneliness and
monotony of their lives must be terrible. This woman
had already five little children, all under seven years
old, and a sixth would soon be bom, In the summer-

Balagan Folk.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 251
time she worked at the fishing all day, and when the
natives came to trade she worked at night as well.
The winter would soon come, and then the whole
family would be shut up in two rooms for the greater
part of the day ; but indoors or out, summer or winter,
she dared not spare herself. There was the bread to be
baked ; the house must be swept ; the children must be
clothed ; and there was no one but herself to do all these
things. Truly these women are burnt up in the cause
of civilisation. In Siberia, as is said to be the case in
so many of our own colonies, it is no uncommon thing
to find a man of middle life who has outlived two or
even three wives. Up on the hill behind the house
stood a large wooden cross, with two little ones beside
it. This was the grave of the first Mrs. Prokopchuk
and her two infants. Each time that this poor woman
stepped out of the door she could see the tomb
of her predecessor, who had already gone the road
along which she herself was travelling. What would
she do when the child was to be born, we asked — was
there any other woman near ? No, she answered, but
her man was a master at the work. He had received
all the other children at their birth. (We thought
of Simeon Prokopchuk, with his crippled hand, and
of the vodka bottles on the roof) In spite of the
hereditary taint that they could scarcely hope to
escape, these children were the healthiest that we
had seen since we came to Golchika. In that country
the climate is so so severe that it is very difficult
to rear a child, and, besides, there is no milk. Most
of the infants are weaned upon tea and bread. The

252 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
result is that the women all suckle their babes until
they are two or three years old, and both mother and
child suffer in consequence. As soon as it was known
that we had some condensed milk among our stores at
Golchika, one woman after another came and asked to
buy some for her children.
The girls and their squires still slept, and as the
rain had passed away and the sun was shining, I went
for a ramble up the valley, for there is a great fascina
tion about those little lonely rivers of the tundra, up
which no boat ever sails. In this bay the river-bank
was more sheltered than at Golchika, and the flowers
were scarcely past their prime. The slopes were starry
with white saxifrage, lemon-coloured poppies, and for
get-me-nots, and in the sunny corners blue larkspurs
grew knee high. Here was even that beautiful orange
ranunculus which grew so luxuriantly near Yenesiesk.
In Siberia, where the summer is so short, the flowers
run through a ridiculous season of six weeks — an
epitome of a cycle which, in England, requires a whole
year for its completion. In our country we begin
decorously with the sober butterbur in January, and
then follows a course of white and golden bulbous
things. These give place to buttercups and daisies,
forget-me-nots, iris, and rose, and these again to flaming
gold and purple flowers — ragweeds, thistles, and
marjoram. On the Yenesei it is true that a sort of
Eastern butterbur raises its pallid head before the snow
has gone, but in a day or two everything else crowds
on to the top of it. The changes are rung quite
correctly through white and yellow — cistus, garlic, and

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 253
buttercups — to blue and saffron — poppies, lupines, and
forget-me-nots — and lastly to purple and red — valerian
and heath ; but all the blooms chase each other through
a space of six weeks, and you have no sooner realised
their coming than they have gone again. It is just
the synopsis of a summer, and already the whortle
berry leaves were tinged blood-red with autumn. The
only butterflies that hovered over the flowers were two
species that were evidently nearly allied to the brim
stones and tortoiseshells of our English waysides ; and
there was also a small day-flying moth, with wings
prettily variegated with primrose and umber. ^
But although vegetable life was at its heyday, the
tide of bird life had already begun to ebb towards the
south. The Temminck's stints, the last of the waders
to breed, set their signs manual in the criss-cross
patterns of their toes as they paddled over the mud,
but the willow-grouse and the little stints and the ruffs
were already strong on the wing. Young snow-buntings,
bluethroats, and wheatears flitted along the river-bank,
and a couple of long-tailed ducks chaperoned their
broods out of the ken of a soaring buzzard.
Even the remnant of the mosquitoes could not
disturb the Sabbatarian calm of the tundra. It was
good to be alive and listen how the birds on the sand
banks gave thanks for the good weather that a kind
Providence sends to the Yenesei in August to make
amends for the storms that are to be. Even the Giant

1 A specimen has been identified by the authorities at the British
Museum as Hyphoraia subnebulosa (Dyer), which has been described from
Alaska.

254 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
and his two companions felt the influence of the day,
and occupied themselves idyllically in picking wild
flowers. Of course the Giant's nosegay went to pretty
Nura Antonoff.
About four o'clock in the afternoon, our two com
panions arrived on reindeer sledges. They were accom
panied by a number of natives, and also by Simeon
Prokopchuk, who had slept off his carouse. Miss
Czaplicka, always tireless where there was work to be
done, began at once to take measurements of the natives'
skulls. The rest did mysterious business with Prokop
chuk, and then sat down to an uproarious meal of
tea and vodka. The difference between Simeon and
Gerasim Androvitch was nowhere more seen than in
their dealings with the natives. The latter never per
mitted the least familiarity, nor allowed them to take
any liberties. Simeon Prokopchuk, on the other hand,
indulged in horseplay with them, and encouraged them
in all sorts of antics. There was, in particular, one big
boisterous Samoyede, with a shock head of hair, who
was evidently in the condition described in Ireland as :
"not to say drunk, but he had drink taken." He
gambolled about the beach, danced with our host, and
was so far on the high road to get out of hand altogether
that we were glad to take our leave. We promised to
send our poor hostess some milk for her babies, and in
turn she offered to sell some furs. If afterwards it was
found that she had the best of the latter bargain — well,
as the Malay proverb says : If there are W07'ms in the
earth, why dig them up ?
We left Kazachye that evening, and as the wind

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 255
had fallen completely, we were obliged to row most of
the way home. The two young Prokopchuks were both
very uncertain what their reception would be, after their
two nights' absence. Joseph was tempted to shirk the
interview with his father by spending the night at the
fish station. However, he was too generous to leave
Marusia to bear the blame alone, and so, in the end, he
went home with her.
The hut was quite quiet as we rowed up to it, but
as the boat ran ashore, the door opened and the tousled
head of Gerasim Androvitch looked out. He had
very obligingly come down to sleep there during our
absence, for a good deal of pilfering went on round the
houses in the settlement when there was no one at
home to look after the property. Marusia and her
brother slunk home at once, but we persuaded Gerasim
Androvitch to stay for an impromptu supper. This
invitation, and a glass of cognac, softened his heart,
and next day his son and daughter escaped without
the scolding that they had expected.

CHAPTER XIIL
The fall of the year — The departure of the chooms — The arrival of the
Yenesiesk — First news of the war — Packing up — A dinner with the
Antonoffs — Church parade at Golchika — the Turukhansk and
Lena arrive — Stormbound — News of home — The Oryol again —
Joseph Gerasimvitch — Disappointed hopes — The English steamers —
A native wedding — Nosonovsky Ostrov.
August the 14th, the day on which we returned from
Kazachye, was the turning-point of the summer. It
was difficult to say exactly wherein the change lay, but
there was a subtle difference in the air, and on the
following morning, as surely as if the great fiat had
gone forth to the proclamation of trumpets, we knew
that summer was over and autumn had begun. Those
who live much alone in the wilderness are the first to
discern the great seasonal changes, and act upon their
warning. That very day the natives in the settlement
began to repair their nets after the season's fishing, and
cut up wood to build their winter sledges. Yet more
promptly the birds responded to the change. Even the
least observant of my companions remarked upon the
sudden flux of feathered life on the mud-banks in front
of the hut. All day long, turnstones, stints, and ruffs
came and went in companies, and the divers left the
tundra lakes and flew down to the river, screaming
jubilantly as if in anticipation of their autumn journey.
256

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 257
And although we civilised folk were less sensitive
to weather influences than either the birds or the
Samoyedes, yet we too felt an indefinable something —
perhaps a legacy from the days when our fathers were
as simple as they — which made us long to pack up our
things and likewise take our leave of Golchika.
At this time our plans were rather nebulous. Miss
Czaplicka and Mr. Hall had arranged to travel back to
Turukhansk by the Oryol, and from thence make their
way into the tundra, in order to study the Tungus
tribes. Miss Curtis and I were to return to England
for the winter. We wished if possible to obtain a
passage on one of the ships of the Siberian Steamship
Company, which, each year, sends an expedition for
trading purposes to the mouth of the Yenesei. This
expedition was expected to reach Golchika at the end
of August ; but there was always some uncertainty
about its arrival, owing to the condition of the ice in the
Kara Sea, which in some years completely closes the
Yenesei against shipping. If the Angliski parahod
(English steamer), as the Golchikans called it, did not
arrive, we could return to Krasnoyarsk in the Oryol,
and from thence make our way overland by the Trans-
Siberian Railway. Our hopes as to the punctual arrival
of the steamer were a good deal dashed by the report
of some Samoyedes who came to Golchika at the begin
ning of August, They had travelled up from the wild
tundras which lay far away at the mouth of the river,
and they said that, farther north, they had been unable
to fish, for the season was so cold that the ice on the
lakes had never broken up at all. However, in any
17

258 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
case, we had to make all preparations for an early
departure, for on 25th August the river steamers —
Oryol, Turukhansk, and Lena — were expected to arrive,
and we must be ready to leave for the south. There was
plenty to be done. Specimens must be packed up,
stores must be examined, and good-byes said.
And we were not the only people in Golchika who
were making ready for an autumn flitting. One by
one the chooms disappeared from the other side of the
river. Almost every evening we could see against the
sky the tangle of reindeer horns which told that the
sledges were coming in from the tundra. It was quite
sad to walk along the river-bank and see the blackened
patches, now strewn with rubbish, which showed where
a choom had once stood, and no longer meet the kindly
brown faces which used to peer round the doorways
and wish us " Good-day " as we passed.
On the 25th of August three of the remaining chooms
were moved across the river, and pitched just above the
house of Prokopchuk. Towards evening I was stroll
ing up the valley, when far away I heard the strange
long cries with which the natives urge their reindeer.
Presently, across the marshes, came a score of sledges.
The drivers dismounted on the opposite bank and turned
the deer into the water. At first the leaders were
reluctant, but one of the natives launched a canoe and
headed them out into the stream. The rest followed
docilely enough, and soon the whole herd of perhaps a
hundred and twenty deer were grunting and splashing
their way across the river. I thought that there was
something familiar about the man who paddled his little

Cjiooms AT Golchika.

\'assili.i .Sotnikoff and ius Reindeer.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 259
craft to and fro so adroitly to hasten the laggards, and
soon recognised the white wolfskin cap of our old friend
Vassilli Sotnikoff from the choom. I greeted him and
asked him where he was going.
He waved a vague hand towards the south as he
answered in the naive fashion of his race : " Daleko,
daleko " (far away, far away). That is all that you can
ever learn from a native. He is going " into the tundra,
far, far away." I asked after Nicolai and Maxim and the
little old mother. Nicolai was here with the sledges,
but the rest were waiting in the tundra. They had
come here to buy tea and soushki for the journey. To
morrow they would all go south before the snow came.
Already the nights were cold, and their warm clothing
had been left behind them in their winter choom at the
border of the forest. We said : " Prastchai" (farewell)
many times, and wished each other luck in pidgin-Russ.
Next morning all the sledges had gone, and the
river-bank was deserted. Cold embers and a litter of
worn-out garments and cracked cooking-pots were all
that was left of the summer settlement. The people
had all gone "into the tundra."
This same morning — the 26th of August — was hot
and still. Soon after midday we were returning from a
walk, when we saw Vassilli gesticulating like a madman
from the roof of the hut. There, just off the island,
was a steamer at last. Robinson Crusoe was not more
delighted than we, for a ship meant news of the outside
^orld — the first that we had received for weeks. We
tumbled pell-mell into the boat and rowed off in haste
down the river ; but as we reached Kutcherenkoff's fish

260 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
station, we met a boat coming ashore from the vessel.
A smart gendarme officer sat in the bows, and beside
him was none other than our old friend, Mr. Chris
tensen, from Krasnoyarsk. A minute later we were
shaking hands with him on the bank.
I remember our first words, spoken laughingly :
"Well, have you arranged for us to go home in the
English steamer ? "
But his reply struck all the laughter out of us.
" You must go home that way, for you cannot travel
overland. England is at war with Germany."
We stood aghast.
" Yes," he went on, " and Russia and France and
Servia and Montenegro are helping England, and
Austria is allied with Germany."
It sounded like Armageddon ! " But what are they
all fighting about ? " we managed to inquire.
" Because a Servian student murdered the heir of
Austria." That was all he could tell us. Even this news was
out of date, for the steamer had left Krasnoyarsk three
weeks previously, and had received no fresh tidings
since passing Turukhansk. We could only stare at each
other helplessly and exclaim : " War in Europe ! " It
seemed wonderful that in such a state of things the sun
should continue to shine.
In the midst of our bemusement, the gendarme
officer came up and asked leave to photograph us in
company with the natives, because " it would make such
an interesting group." As a matter of fact, we reflected
afterwards that he did not so much want our portraits

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 261
for the sake of their intrinsic interest, as for the more
practical purpose of identiflcation ; for the Russian
Government has always a lurking fear that the opening
up of the Kara Sea route will afibrd a means of escape
to some of the Yenesei exiles. However, we were too
much bewildered to refuse. I believe that, if at that
moment he had asked to electrocute us, we should have
submitted obediently enough. As it was, I remember
being pushed into position between two very disreput
able and awestruck Samoyedes, and if my expression
was anything like those of my companions, I must have
looked quite as miserable as the most despairing of
political exiles.
Later on we had a long consultation with Mr.
Christensen. He had heard that the two English ships
had left Denmark safely just before the outbreak of
the war, and unless any accident had befallen them on
the way, they were due to reach the Yenesei at any
moment. They were escorting three small tug-boats,
which had been bought by the Russian Government
from a Hamburg firm for trade on the Yenesei. Mr.
Christensen himself had chartered the Yenesiesk and
the Oh, two small river steamers, and had brought
down eight lighters loaded with the cargo destined for
Europe. He had left these lighters at the appointed
rendezvous at Nosonovsky Ostrov — one of the Breok
offsky islands — and had come down to Golchika in
the Yenesiesk to look out for the English ships. Our
mails were following in the Oryol, which was only a
day's run behind. He had arranged that we were
all to go together in the Oryol as far as Nosonovsky, a

262 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
distance of about two hundred versts to the south.
Here Miss Curtis and I were to disembark and live on
one of the lighters until the English expedition arrived.
Since we might have to leave at any moment, we
spent the rest of the day in a whirl of packing and
preparation, but on the following morning, instead of
the Oryol, the Turukhansk and, later on, the Lena
appeared. They stopped only for a few hours at
Golchika, for they were both going on to the Sopochnaya
to take up a cargo of fish. The Yenesiesk lay where
she was, for she had not enough coal to take her to the
river's mouth.
On the third morning, however, there was still no
Oryol, for a boisterous easterly wind held her storm
bound about fifty versts up the river. Perhaps the
week that followed was the most trying that we spent
in Siberia. The gale raged without intermission for six
days. Each evening we expected the wind to drop, but
morning after morning it roared over the tundra and
lashed the river into foam. Most of our goods were
packed up, and as at any hour we might have to start
in a hurry, we did not like to open the boxes. Each
meal we hoped would be the last that we should eat in
the hut. We partook of it, figuratively speaking, as
the Israelites ate before the Exodus, with our loins
girded and our staves in our hands. We began to run
very short of food also ; and as five people cannot live
for an indefinite time on condensed milk and sardines,
we were reduced to buying salt beef from the Prokop
chuks. Besides this, we were very anxious lest the con
tinued storm should blow the ice into the river's mouth,

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 263
and so prevent the arrival of the English steamers.
Thus we all felt unsettled, even Vassilli, who had
begun to hanker for the fleshpots of Egypt, and said
daily that he was anxious to return to his " morning
cup of chocolate and his daughter at Krasnoyarsk."
But during this week of waiting, we were able to
greet some old friends who had returned in the Lena.
Chief of these were Anastasia Ivanowna, and, more
welcome still, Michael Petrovitch. One evening, kind
Madame Antonoff, who guessed perhaps that our larder
was getting low, asked us to dinner to enjoy the good
things that her husband had brought from town. It
was characteristic of those people always to share a
delicacy with their neighbours. Dinner was at six
o'clock, and on arrival we found the little room so full
of guests that a kind of overflow meeting had to be held
in the bedroom. First there was Michael Petrovitch
himself, as stout and jolly as ever. With him he had
brought a pale shy student from the Petersburg uni
versity. This luckless young man had got into trouble
owing to his political opinions, and had been exiled to
the Yenesei for three years. This winter, the last of his
banishment, he had obtained leave to stay at Golchika,
in order to study the language and customs of the
Samoyedes. There was also a young cousin of Madame
Antonoff, who, with his wife and child, had just
travelled all the way from Little Russia. In time he
was to take Hachenkoffs place at the Och Marino
fishery. The third guest was an elderly priest, who had
come from Dudinka in order to hold the annual services
at Golchika. The dinner was a very grand one of three

264 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
courses, with a dessert of nuts and chocolate creams.
We had stchee and macaroni pudding, and lastly a blanc
mange made of fruit juice. The feast was notable,
because nobody was expected to speak. Unless he
really had something to say, he could keep silence,
and was under no obligation to manufacture such
small talk as passes current at European dinner
parties. We were very grateful for this custom, for
Madame Antonoff was too busy for conversation, the
exiled student was painfully shy, and none of us dared
to open a discussion with the pope, whose cassock and
spectacles were both rather awe-inspiring. However,
towards the end of the meal, the latter leaned forward
and inquired whether we came from London. We
answered that we did, whereupon he wanted to know
how large London was. Was it, for instance, larger than
Ostend ? He had heard so, but could scarcely believe
it, and was it really built on both banks of the Thames ?
We told him that London was rather larger than
Ostend, and drew an elaborate diagram on the table
cloth to show its exact relation to the Thames. The
pope seemed agreeably surprised, and remarked : "I
have always understood that the English nation was
very cold and stiff, but these women surpass even the
French in vivacity ! "
On the following day, which was Sunday, the pope
held a service in the church. Gerasim Androvitch
made it his business to collect a congregation. Early
in the morning he went over to the remaining chooms,
and by dint of bribes and threats, he gathered together
about a dozen natives of all ages, and drove them off

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 265
to church. Sylkin tried to cry off by pleading a sore
back, but Gerasim would have no malingering, and
about midday we saw a string of depressed figures
wending their way across the island. Anything more
ridiculous than this enforced attendance of the natives
can scarcely be imagined. They know nothing what
ever of the doctrine, and neither they nor the Siberiaks
understood a word of the service, which, of course, was
conducted in the old Slavonic tongue. Something of
the spirit in which the worship was held may be
realised from the following custom. At the close of
the ceremony, a collection was made for the benefit of
the pope. Those who gave half a rouble had an altar
candle credited to them, but those who gave a whole
rouble had the honour of hearing their names shouted
aloud by the congregation. We were told that the
pope sometimes received as much as fifty roubles at a
single service.
While the people were at church, the gendarme
went out to search for vodka. Almost the only evidence
of the war at Golchika were the effects of the Russian
Government's magnificent crusade against alcohol.
Only those who have visited the country can have
the slightest idea of what the suppression of the drink
traffic means to the Yenesei. Surely a nation which
can thus make war upon her own besetting sin has
already achieved a victory mightier than any that her
armaments can win ! Only two days previously this
officer had seized 2000 roubles' worth of vodka at one
haul. The law was carried out without any distinction
of persons. Our friend, Michael Petrovitch, had bought

266 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
a few bottles of cognac for his own use, but these were
confiscated with the rest. The officer also searched
Prokopchuk's house, but needless to say he found
nothing, for the wily Gerasim Androvitch had already
placed his stock of vodka in a safe hiding-place in the
tundra. During those last days our relations with Prokopchuk
were rather strained. We had agreed to pay him for
the repairs, etc., of the hut, but the bill when presented
was made out for twenty roubles more than the sum
agreed upon. Vassilli was sent to point out the "mis
take," and as the result of his negotiations, Gerasim
deleted the objectionable items without demur. He
had not expected us to pay them, and would have
despised us if we had. It was just his way of doing
business. He invited himself to supper in the evening,
and his dignified geniality was such that it was im
possible to turn the cold shoulder to him, fraud though
we knew him to be.
Joseph Gerasimvitch was a more serious problem.
At first he had been too shy to visit us uninvited ; but
since the expedition to Kazachye, he frequently called
in the evening as he returned along the river-bank from
his work at Kutcherenkoff's fish station. For the first
day or two he sat silent in the corner, then gradually
he spoke out his mind.
Like most big and simple-minded people, the Giant
was extraordinarily patient and slow to wrath ; but
equally, when it was kindled, his anger was fierce and
deep. Now it flamed up red-hot against his father's
treatment of his mother. Mrs. Gerasim Prokopchuk

A SUMMER OK THE YENESEI 267
and her husband had never been on the best of terms,
and the constant interference of her sister, Anastasia,
had not made for peace. The climax had come two
years before, when, during the winter, the poor woman
had developed scurvy. Her condition killed what little
remained of her husband's affection, and several times
he ill-treated her brutally before her son. In the
summer she had gone to the south for medical treat
ment, and was now living at Achinsk with the younger
children. Meanwhile, Anastasia Ivanowna had usurped
her place at Golchika, and although, to do her justice,
she meant to do her best for her nephew and niece,
yet, as we had ample opportunity of observing, she
treated them simply as unpaid servants. During the
previous winter, while her father and her aunt had gone
together on a trading expedition into the tundra,
Marusia had lived alone in the dreary little house with
only the man, Michael, and his witless wife for
companions. Only those who have lived at such a
place as Golchika can have the faintest idea of the
severity of those arctic winters, when for two months
the frozen land sees no daylight, and the pourga howls
over the tundra. And how greatly must the terrors of
the solitude increase when there are no books and little
society to occupy the mind ! After such an experience
the wonder was, not that the girl looked listless and
depressed, but that she kept her reason at all. However,
this autumn, her father had consented that she should
go to Achinsk to see her mother and learn dressmaking.
She was to leave in the Oryol, and the Giant was
trying to make up his mind to accompany her. It

268 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
was a wrench, for most of his twenty-four years of life
had been spent at Golchika, and of the world which lay
beyond the Yenesei he knew as little as any English
schoolboy of half his age. He talked the matter out
in his slow, persevering way, and it was almost midnight
before he left the hut. Vassilli came in half an hour
later with the news that Gerasim Androvitch had come
out to meet his son, and abused him roundly for some
fancied neglect. " I would not speak to a dog as he
spoke to Joseph Gerasimvitch," said Vassilli virtuously,
" but Joseph did not answer a single word."
We found the situation rather a delicate one, for
while we sympathised heartily with the Giant in the wish
to escape from his miserable home and participation in
the very doubtful transactions of his father, yet we did
not like to appear to influence his decision. However,
on the following evening, when Joseph went past the
door with the slow, dignified step that was peculiar to
him, he did not stop, but merely bowed good-night
with a stately inclination of his curly head and passed
on. It was just as well that he did so, for shortly
afterwards our door opened without a preliminary
knock, and the two old Prokopchuks entered. They
asked for cigarettes, and made a few uneasy remarks
as they smoked them, while we wondered what this
visitation might portend. However, they took their
leave without saying anything, and it was not until
afterwards that we realised that the worthy couple had
paid us a surprise visit in order to find out whether
Joseph was spending the evening at our house.
The gale blew itself out on 2nd September, and at

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 269
midday news was brought that the Oryol would be in
at daybreak. In the evening, Joseph told us that he
had made up his mind to leave Golchika on the next
day. We feared that when his father heard of the
intention, he might, in his anger, refuse to allow
Marusia to leave home. We tried to persuade Joseph
to let her start safely with us in the Oryol while he
himself followed a few days later in the Lena ; but the
Giant refused to do this. He replied that Nura Antonoff
was going to Yenesiesk in the latter steamer and, as he
said simply :
" It would spoil her name for ever among these
people if she and I left Golchika together."
We had always noticed Joseph's love and reverence
for Nura ; and it touched us the more that at present
the girl was a flighty little minx, and not nearly good
enough for the honest Giant.
Meanwhile the Yenesiesk was still lying off the
island, and in the evening we saw Mr. Christensen.
He was anxious about the arrival of the English steamers,
which were now more than a week overdue. The Lena
had brought up a bundle of newspapers, in one of
which was a little paragraph stating that three German
torpedo boats had captured some English merchantmen
off Trondhjem. Mr. Christensen was afraid that these
German warships might have interfered with the
expedition. He therefore advised us to give up the
idea of returning by the Kara Sea, and to go straight
to Krasnoyarsk in the Oryol.
We awoke early on the following morning, and ran
straight to the window. There at last was the Oryol,

270 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
and a few minutes later, Joseph Prokopchuk knocked at
the door with a huge packet of letters — the flrst that
we had received since we left England at the end of
May. I felt just like a child with a stocking full of
toys on Christmas morning, as I sat up in bed and tore
open letter after letter. Of course they had all been
written before the war had broken out, and our joy in
reading them was somewhat tempered by our anxiety
to know what was going on now in Europe.
Before we had time to open them all, there was a
clank of oars outside, and the Prokopchuks appeared,
ready to row us and our luggage to the steamer. Hence
we left in such haste that we had no time to say a
sentimental farewell to the little hut which had been
our home for two months. The Giant was wearing his
fur cap, and had put on his best shirt under his old
white sakooy. We could not help looking at him, but
he only stared at his boots as he tugged at his oar in
his patient, ox-like way. The only fear was that Vassilli
should give away the plot. Our henchman dearly loved
to hug a secret, and he cast such meaning glances, and
smiled such knowing smiles, that if Gerasim Androvitch
had not been the worse for liquor, he must have sus
pected that something was afoot, even if he had not
already guessed it from the woebegone expression of
little Michael, the servant, who, like everybody else in
Golchika, loved Joseph Gerasimvitch.
Ten minutes later, and we were on the Oryol again,
feeling as if it were only yesterday that we had left it.
There was Captain Ello, and his wife, as benevolent as
ever. Nicolai, the waiter, with his hat as usual on the

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 271
back of his head, beamed at us in the saloon ; but the
cook and most of the sailors had been taken for the
war. Russia needed every man, and from Yenesiesk
alone a thousand men had been sent to the front.
Everyone from Golchika was on board, whether
southward bound or not. There was the chubby Micha,
who had eyes for nobody but Marusia Prokopchuk, the
Jew, Cherniavinsky, from the fish station, and my
acquaintances from the Kuria balagan. They were all
going to Yenesiesk, as also was the pope. Old Sylkin
and his boys had come to see the steamer, and also
Anastasia and Nill. Here, too, we took leave of
Michael Petrovitch and his wife. Their unfailing kind
ness and fun are among the pleasantest of my Siberian
recollections. It was sad to say good-bye to all these
good friends, and know that we might never meet them
again. However, in almost every case we left them
prosperous. Anastasia was so relieved that her Nill
would not be taken for a soldier that there would be
no more domestic tiffs for a long time. The Antonoffs
had rebuilt their house and were looking forward to a
busy and cheerful winter. Nura was to go to a situa
tion in Yenesiesk, but little Tania, much against her
will, was to remain behind and finish her schooling.
However, with the matchmaking instincts of our sex,
we thought that Tania would not find her studies with
the exiled student as irksome as she expected !
The only family whose affairs did not run smoothly
were the Prokopchuks. The Giant was fully resolved
to brave his father's anger and go out into the world,
but unfortunately Anastasia Ivanowna had guessed his

272 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
plans, and had hidden all his clothes. Consequently he
had left home with nothing but what he was wearing,
and had not a kopeck in his pocket. He had not even
brought his sheepskin, lest, as he proudly said, "they
should say that he was a thief who took what was not
his own." When he told Gerasim Androvitch of his intention,
the old man wept tears of mingled grief and vodka,
but the Giant remained firm. Afterwards they called
Joseph into the cabin and tried to stupefy him with
alcohol, but he was shrewd enough to see their purpose,
and refused to drink. We could not but feel a little vexed
with Marusia. Instead of helping her brother, she did
nothing but weep because she must leave her father.
Gerasim Androvitch possessed a strange magnetism for
affection. He had been a neglectful, and sometimes an
unkind, father to the girl, and yet she grieved bitterly
at parting from him. She would have preferred to stay
with him, rather than with her indulgent mother.
But that was his way. No matter who it was, nor how
badly he had treated them, nobody ever bore a grudge
against the charming old sinner — nobody, that is,
except his big, silent son, who leaned against the rail
and watched the dusk creep over the tundra.
It was all very tragic, and yet for the life of me I
could not help feeling as if we were looking on, not at
a bit of real life, but at some rather trite melodrama.
Here were the old stock characters — the jealous step
mother, the weak father, and the handsome disinherited
son. The sunset helped out the illusion. It was as
red as fire, and against the flaming sky the hooded

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 273
figures of the natives, and the bearded heads of the
Siberiaks, were limned clear and black, like dark
silhouettes cut out and pasted against the glowing orb
of a lamp. In fact, the effect was so theatrical that the
onlooker almost expected to see the limelight operator
in the "wings"; and unconsciously I found myself
approving the attitude of the Giant, who stood moodily
beside the gangway with his arms folded under his
sakooy. Anastasia Ivanowna stepped into the boat
without a farewell, but as she pushed past him, she
dropped her shawl. Joseph picked it up and gave it
to her courteously.
Old Prokopchuk was weeping maudlin tears, and as
he went down to the boat he said to his son :
" Are you going ? "
" Yes," said the Giant laconically.
" Will you not even come as far as the shore
with us ? "
" No," said the Giant. He knew that they would
not hesitate to drag him by force from the boat, and
detain him until after the steamer had sailed. Then
the canoe pushed off, and we watched it disappear into
the dusk. I almost expected to hear the bell ring for
" curtain." The comic element was as usual supplied by Vassilli,
who had a fine idea of drama. He listened eagerly to
the duologue between father and son, and then cried
out delightedly :
" Madame, did you hear them ? The old one asked
him whether he would go back, and he said that he
would not do so ! "
i8

274 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
" Vassilli, nye govorit," ^ hissed Miss Curtis fiercely ;
and Vassilli, who had a wholesome awe of our
" Artist Mees," as he called her, subsided into the
crowd. But just then something occurred which took our
attention away from the Prokopchuks. Captain Ello
called us up on to the bridge to look at a faint smudge,
which might have been smoke, on the northern horizon.
The English steamers ! Our hopes immediately rose
high. Presently a second wreath appeared beside the
first, and we were jubilant. But when a third came
into view, we became suspicious, and soon, to our
disgust, the whole northern horizon was dotted with
smoke puffs. What we had seen was nothing more
than the birth of a flock of little cumulus clouds from
the surface of the Yenesei. One by one they floated
away into the sunset, and as they rose, our spirits
sank. We went below, and invited Marusia and her
brother to supper in the saloon. It was not a cheerful
meal. The young Prokopchuks were silent and de
pressed. We were uncertain about our future plans,
and were besides full of anxiety as to what was
happening at home. Suddenly the captain called
us again : " Ship in sight ! " Upstairs we rushed,
binoculars in hand. Yes, there was not a shadow of
doubt this time. On the horizon, just where we had
seen the first " smoke wreaths," were two vessels. In
the glamour of the sunset, they seemed to be uplifted
above the water, and float in the air like the wraiths of
1 Do not talk!

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 275
ships. They might have been two of the fleet of the
Flying Dutchman. Fascinated, we watched their slow
advance, and as night drew on, saw the twinkling
lights kindle at their mastheads. Then came the
pronouncement that shattered our hopes for the second
time that evening. Those, said the wise men of the
Oryol, were not the English ships at all. They were
nothing but the Lena and the Turukhansk return
ing from the Sopochnaya. The captain said so ;
the pilot said so ; everyone said so except Joseph
Gerasimvitch, who maintained that the lights were
too bright to belong to either of the river steamers.
My companion and I were depressed beyond words.
Before us lay a tedious, uncomfortable, and eminently
difficult journey over two continents seething with war.
Behind us was the estuary of one of the noblest rivers
in the world, guarded as by mighty gates by the twin
promontories of Och Marino and the Sopochnaya.
Beyond, lay the tremendous skyline of the Arctic
Ocean, and the seas that no man has sailed :
" Gazing hence we see the water that grows iron round the Pole,
From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea."
The OryoVs siren hooted her melancholy farewell to
Golchika, already hidden in the gloom, and we slowly
moved southwards, I cannot tell with what feelings
of disappointment I turned my back upon the North,
Seebohm had once, Popham had twice, failed to make
the passage of the Kara Sea, I had hoped that I,
more fortunate than they, might have followed the
course of the great river down to the ocean. The
immense horizon, splendid with sunset, lay behind us

276 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
like a land of enchantment, filled with all the mystery
and magic of the north. Sadly we turned away from
it and went below. Disappointed hope is a bad
bedfellow. At seven o'clock next morning came a call : " Come
up quickly ; the ships are in sight." The Oryol was
rolling along in a choppy sea, and there, not ten versts
away, were the vessels at last. There was no room for
uncertainty this time. Here were two big steamers
with three little tug-boats between them, all keep
ing station as they steamed steadily southwards. The
English expedition had reached the Yenesei. We joined
hands and danced round the bridge, singing, "Hurrah
for the Kara Sea ! "
All day we puffed up the river, but towards evening
the wind rose again and obliged us to lie to. There was
a balagan on shore, and about midnight a boatload of
people came off to the Oryol. Presently the pope came in
to tell us that he was about to celebrate a native wedding.
Should we like to see it ? Of course we went, and were
given the seat of honour beside the captain's wife at one
end of the saloon. The bridegroom was an Ostiak, and
the bride was a half-breed — the daughter of a Yurak by
a white woman. Their relations, in various degrees of
inebriety, crowded into the room. The pope, in the
gaudy robes of his order, put a little table in the middle
of the room, and arranged thereon all the ikons that he
could collect. As the woman, who did not look more
than seventeen years of age, had already borne two
children, prayers of purification were read over her

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 277
before the marriage service proper began. The couple
were supported on either side by two more half-breeds,
and all four bowed and crossed themselves continuously.
If they stopped for a moment, the pope broke off to
say, sotto voce, " Cross yourselves — cross yourselves,"
We were, of course, not able to understand the prayers, but
presently the pope took two small ikons from the table,
and after blessing them, instructed the bridesmaids or
best men (I confess that their sexes puzzled me) to hold
the holy images in position on the foreheads of the
wedded pair. We found it difficult to keep our gravity
as we watched the attendants' efforts to support the
ikons at the proper angle during the ensuing genuflec
tions. The ceremony concluded by a procession three
times round the table. The pope walked in front
chanting prayers, and the bride and bridegroom
followed him, while their supporters struggled after, still
holding the ikons upon their heads. As the ship was
rolling considerably, and the congregation were, many
of them, the worse for drink, the whole thing looked
much more like a football scrum than part of a religious
service. The proceedings concluded by both bride and
bridegroom kneeling down to touch the ground three
times with their forehead before the principal ikon.
The bride accomplished the feat successfully, but the
bridegroom was not so supple, and the pope paused to
admonish him contemptuously :
" What sort of a Samoyede are you that you cannot
bow before the ikon ? " ^
1 On some parts of the Yenesei the name Samoyede is used as a term
of derision or reproach.

278 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
I never saw a more lamentable parody of Christian
ceremonial than at this so-called wedding. The people
seemed to have no idea of the meaning of what they
did, and in any case they would have been too drunk to
understand the rite. The pope, however, was quite
pleased, and said to us complacently :
"Now you have seen a real Russian marriage."
All the next day we crawled up the coast against
the wind, stopping here and there to take cargo on
board. We were anxious about the future of Joseph
Gerasimvitch, who seemed to have no idea of what he
was going to do after he arrived at Krasnoyarsk.
Meanwhile, as the third-class passengers were expected
to provide their own food, he had nothing to eat but
what his fellow-travellers were charitable enough to
allow him. Perhaps it was the strain of knight-errant
Polish blood in him which sent him out to open the
world-oyster with nothing in his hand nor in his pocket
but his Sunday cap and his clasp-knife. It was easy
enough to imagine Joseph setting fox-traps or hewing
wood at Golchika ; but how would he fare when he
reached the towns, and brains as well as muscle were
needed ? He did not lack shrewdness of a certain kind,
but he was so simple, and so diffident, that it was
doubtful whether he would be able to push his way
among other men. When urged to tell such and such a
possible employer that he was a skilful workman, all he
would say was, " But how can I say such a thing of
myself, when there are scores who are better than I ? "
Poor Giant ! As I write these lines I remember
his slow good-nature, his handsome face, and his

A VuRAK GRA^T.;.

A Samoyede Doll,

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 279
honesty, and wonder whether the world treated him
kindly. That when he reached Krasnoyarsk he would
be claimed for military service can scarcely be doubted.
Russia, who needed all her men for the titanic struggle
in the West, was not likely to overlook one so fine as
Joseph Prokopchuk.
Early on the morning of 5th September we reached
Nosonovsky Ostrov.

CHAPTER XIV.
Nosonovsky Ostrov — The English expedition — Our party is broken up —
The Ragna and the Skule — A cosmopolitan crew — A heavy cargo —
Homeward bound — The last sight of Golchika — Dickson Island — In
the ice — A narrow escape — Wireless news — A Government scandal —
Novaya Zemlya.
Nosonovsky Ostrov is the most easterly island of
that great fiat archipelago called Breokoffsky, which
represents the first delta of the Yenesei. Here the
river widens out into a vast basin forty miles in
width. You cannot even see from one side of the
delta to the other. The eastern arm alone is fifteen
versts from shore to shore. Nosonovsky has no
permanent dwellings upon it, but it is a not un
important fishing station in the summer, when several
Siberian families, and a number of Yuraks, camp on
its shores. But in the month of September, 1914,
Nosonovsky was the scene of such bustle and activity
as its flat marshes had not witnessed since the old
Yenesei floods laid them down, thousands of years
before. It was the first place on the river which
afforded good anchorage and shelter to shipping, and
consequently it had been chosen by the Siberian
Company for the rendezvous where their English ex
pedition was to meet the cargoes which had been
brought down from Krasnoyarsk for shipment to

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 281
Europe. The two large ships, Ragna and Skule, were
lying about half a mile off shore. Around them were
moored eight lighters loaded with goods, and five
small steamers, including the Ob and the Yenesiesk.
Dinghies were hastening from one vessel to another ;
whistles were blown ; chains rattled ; donkey engines
roared ; and coal-sacks and bales rattled and bumped
from hold to hold. After two months spent in the
peace of Golchika, all this noise and activity seemed
as wonderful and as bewildering to us as it must
have done to the natives, who paddled their clumsy
boats round the island, and stared at the Angliski
parrahod, as they called the little Anglo-Norwegian
squadron. As soon as the Oryol had cast anchor we went
on board the Ragna, which was, so to speak, the flag
ship of the fleet. Here we were introduced to Mr.
Jonas Lied, the managing director of the Siberian
Company, and asked whether he would consent to
take Miss Curtis and me back to Europe through the
Kara Sea. At first there were some difficulties in the
way, for the Ragna, which was chartered to carry
only one passenger, was already booked to take three
— Mr. Lied himself, and two scientists who had spent
the summer on the Yenesei. The Skule had more
passenger berths, but these were already occupied by
the German crews of the new steam tugs, who, owing
to the war, were obliged to return to Europe by sea,
instead of by the overland route through Russia. But
with the greatest good nature, everybody agreed to
crowd a little closer in the already crowded saloon,

282 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
The captain even gave up his own cabin to our humble
but intrusive selves, and for the rest of the voyage
he slept in the charthouse on the bridge. Miss Curtis
and I felt that we could not be sufficiently grateful
for a kindness which thus spared us the danger,
difficulty, and tedium of the journey across Europe,
although, as it turned out, our voyage through the
Arctic Ocean was not lacking in incident either.
Having arranged the matter with Mr. Lied, we
heard that the Oryol was spending a few hours longer
at Breokoffsky in order to pick up some fish cargoes.
We therefore all four went ashore together. There
were two or three balagans, whose occupants were
all preparing to leave in the steamers Lena and
Turukhansk, which were expected to pass in a day
or two ; and there were also seven or eight Yurak
and Samoyede chooms beside the beach. Miss Czaplicka
and Miss Curtis went to call upon the natives in
their extremely dirty dwellings, while I walked along
the shore with my binoculars ; for it was the time of
the autumn migration, and the bird life of the Yenesei
delta was likely to repay observation.
Nosonovsky Ostrov is a low-lying island, about
six versts in breadth. Most of the land is swampy
and overgrown with yellow willow bushes. These
willows, although none of them are more than five
feet high, seemed like a regular forest after the stunted
knee-deep scrub at Golchika. During floods, the island
is sometimes entirely swamped, and even now most
of the low-lying ground was so wet as to be almost
impassable. The covert was so thick that it was

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 283
difficult to see any birds, especially as it was the
mute season, and their voices did not betray them.
Wheatears were common, and so many of them were
flitting along the shore that it was impossible that
they could have all been reared at the island. They
were probably on passage from the north, and their
gay white tail-coverts, flitting among the sandbanks,
gave a touch of liveliness to a scene that otherwise was
sombre and desolate enough. A few Lapland buntings
were lying in the grass, and I put up a solitary turn-
stone beside a pool. But on my return I found a
very interesting bird, and one which had been over
looked on my previous visit to Breokoffsky in June.
This was the mountain accentor {Accentor montanellus),
a little bird akin to the hedge-sparrow of our English
waysides. Several of the birds were flitting about the
bushes ; but, unlike the hedge-sparrow, they frequently
took wing and flew a short distance with a jerky pipit
like flight, while they uttered a shrill triple call.
Presently I rejoined my companions, and we walked
back along the shore to the balagans. We were all
rather silent, for it was sad to think that the summer's
trip with all its work and its little adventures was over,
and that our small party was to break up. Miss
Czaplicka and Mr. Hall were about to embark on a very
serious undertaking, for to brave the severities of a
Siberian winter in a native choom in the taiga is to
take a big risk. Miss Curtis and I were going home
by a route, which even the most modern appliances
and safeguards cannot make anything but uncertain,
to a state of things about which we all had the gravest

284 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
forebodings. Vassilli trudged along behind us. I think
that he, too, was sorry that the summer was over.
When we reached the balagans, there was still no
sign of the boat from the Oryol, and a thin rain began
to drift over the island. By way of filling up the time,
we went into one of the huts. With ready Siberian
hospitality, the family brought us tea, bread, and
excellent fresh caviare. It was a tiny little room, and
an unlimited number of people seemed to live in it, but
they all appeared unusually healthy. The women here
were dressed like men, and very sensible and neat they
looked in their loose Russian shirts and long boots and
breeches. They were just making ready to return to
Yenesiesk for the winter, after an unusually successful
fishing season. One seine net alone had brought them
in seven hundred pouds of omul. We had scarcely
finished when the boat was seen at the beach, and we
had to take leave of our companions. Good luck to
them both, and their plucky adventure into the twilight
and frost of an arctic winter !
We watched them go on board the Oryol and saw
the steamer slowly depart on her fifteen-hundred-mile
journey to the south. Then, feeling very much of a
pair of waifs and strays, we went back to our new
quarters on the Ragna.
The Ragna was a steamship of 2250 tons. Both
she and the Skule, her consort, flew the Norwegian flag.
Both had been fitted up with ice-bows for this expedi
tion, and were also provided with wireless telegraphy.
At supper we learned how it was that the ships had
arrived at the meeting-place a week later than was

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 285
expected. They left Cuxhaven at the end of July, just
four-and-twenty hours before the port was closed by
the authorities. Thence they went to Aalborg, where
they took on board a cargo of cement and machinery.
They had under their convoy three tug-boats which
had been bought by the Russian Government from a
Hamburg firm for service on the Yenesei. These were
manned by German crews and flew the German flag.
This was the explanation of the rumour that German
torpedo-boat destroyers had captured two merchantmen
on the Norwegian coast. The " destroyers " were the
three tugs, which followed the larger vessels to the
Yenesei. However, at Tromsoe, when the expedition
put into that port, the German consul claimed all three
crews. They were required at once for military service
— all, that is, except seven of the officers and engineers,
who were over the age limit. New crews had to be
found at a day's notice, and then the vessels had pro
ceeded safely to the Kara Sea. They reached the
mouth of the Yenesei on 1st September. Here, in the
harbour of Dickson Island, they found the explorer.
Captain Swerdrup, in his ship, the Eclipse. He had
come out to look for two Russian expeditions which
had been lost in the Kara Sea, and was now fast
aground himself. The English expedition spent two
days in salving his ship, and he then proceeded along
the coast to the north-east. Now that the expedition
had reached Russian waters, there was some technical
difficulty with the remaining Germans on the tug-boats.
As soon as they entered the river, the ships became the
property of the Russian Government, and the Russian

286 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
flag was hoisted. As Russia and Germany were at war,
it was impossible for a German officer to command a
Russian ship ; therefore these had to resign their com
mands and be transferred as passengers to the Skule.
Here they remained until they left the Yenesei, for the
moment that they set foot on shore, they rendered
themselves liable to arrest as prisoners of war.
It would not have been possible to find a more
curious gathering than that on the ships at Nosonovsky.
In the first place, at least half a dozen nationalities
were represented — English, Russian, Jewish, Norwegian,
Swedish, and German, to say nothing of the Yuraks
and Samoyedes who frequently came on board to sell
fish. Then on the Ragna we had two live bears, two
wolves, a sackful of mammoth bones, a murderer, and
the carcase of a polar bear. The young bears and
wolves had been brought from Krasnoyarsk by Mr.
Christensen for shipment to Norway, but they suffered
so much in confinement that in the end they had to be
shot before we left the river. The murderer lived on
one of the lighters which was moored alongside the
Ragna. He came from one of the balagans on shore,
where he had stabbed a neighbour in a drunken brawl.
He was a tall, dreamy-looking man, who looked much
more gentle and inoffensive than the gendarmes who
guarded him. Miss Curtis and I were sorry for him
because he looked so quiet and melancholy, and
occasionally gave him cigarettes. He was to be tried
for his crime in Yenesiesk, but the Russian law is
merciful to the drunkard, and he expected to escape
with a light sentence. The polar bear had been shot

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 287
on Dickson Island by Mr. Lied. We had a steak for
supper one night. It tasted like good beef, but I am
told that the hams only are fit to eat, for the flesh of
the rest of the body is interlarded with blubber.
During the fortnight that we lay at Nosonovsky,
the party in the saloon, besides our two selves, con
sisted of Mr. Lied, the captain, the ice-pilot, a Russian
gentleman — a geologist from Petersburg — and a Swedish
pastor, Herr Enander, who was a botanist and a special
student of the family Salix. He must have found
plenty of opportunity to study willows at Breokoffsky,
for the islands produced nothing else. Besides these,
Mr. Christensen, who superintended the discharging of
the cargo, used to come in to meals, and sometimes
Captain Gundersen of the Skule paid a visit. Captain
Johansen, the ice-pilot, was a fine old man who had
sailed in the arctic regions since boyhood. In 1878 he
had accompanied Nordenskiold on the famous voyage of
the Vega through the North-East Passage, and was the
first captain to take a steamer up the river Lena. His
brother was that Captain Johansen who discovered and
named Lonely Island, to the north of the Taimyr
Peninsula ; and he himself at one time had owned
the sloop Gjoa, until he sold her to the explorer
Amundsen, who made his famous voyage through the
North-West Passage in her.
Miss Curtis and I were the only two people on
board who were idle, and we used to feel quite ashamed
of our inability to haul baulks of timber about the deck
or handle bales of tow, when we watched the furious
activity of everybody else. For trade with the Yenesei

288 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
cannot be carried on in the same leisurely way that is
permissible in the south. The mouth of the river is
open only during a few weeks of the year, and by the
end of September the polar ice again drifts southwards,
and closes the estuary as if by frozen gates. Therefore
every man on board worked against time, for each day's
delay lessened the chance of accomplishing the return
journey safely.
With so much work going on. Miss Curtis and I
were not able to go ashore much, for whenever the
weather was fine enough for a boat to land, every man
was needed to help with the cargo. I was sorry for
this, for I had hoped to make some observations on the
autumn migration at Nosonovsky. As it was, my
notes were too scanty and disjointed to be of much
value. The waders had all disappeared by the second
week in September. The last seen were a turnstone
and a ruff. One day a couple of little merlins hawked
round the ship. I did not observe this species north of
Pustoy. Wheatears were the last of the passerine
birds to go south, and, like the waders, they had all
disappeared by 12th September. The geese, ducks, and
divers were seen up to the day of our departure ; but
perhaps owing to the cold spring, they were said to
have lingered later than usual. Sometimes a flock of
swans went up the river. It was magnificent to see
the great birds, with their wings outspread white and
cruciform against the sky, barking solemnly to one
another as they flew southwards.
But the time spent on the ship was never irksome,
for there was so much to see. Eight lighters had come

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 289
down the river from Krasnoyarsk. They had originally
been brought through the Kara Sea from Europe
in 1905, and were of the type that is used for
trade on the Rhine. Two of them lay on either side
of the Ragna all day long ; and as fast as one was
emptied, it was towed away and another took its place.
It was a never-failing interest to see the hatches taken
off, and look right down into the hold of the ship
whence dusty cement casks coupled together were
drawn by rattling donkey engines, and swung over the
side into the lighter. The greater part of the cargo
consisted of cement for use on the Siberian railways.
But 15,000 casks of cement cannot be handled in a day,
especially as the stuff is spoiled by the damp ; and a
shower of rain means that hatches must be closed until
the skies are clear. The cargo that replaced the
cement was more varied, and consisted chiefly of timber,
hides, and tow. At the eleventh hour Mr. Christensen
had shipped twenty tons of butter, which, considering
the price of provisions during the first days of the war,
was expected to fetch a good price in Europe. The
timber was Siberian cedar, and the history of the great
logs that bumped and banged their way into the hold
of the Ragna is one of the romances of commerce.
They came from the heart of the forest, some hundred
and fifty versts south of Yenesiesk, where a Government
concession has been obtained to cut timber. The wood
that grows close to the waterside is apt to be rotten at
the core, and therefore these trees were felled two or
three mUes inland. Sixty horses, and more than a
hundred men, are employed at this lumbering station,
^9

290 A SUMMER ON THE Y^ENESEI
and the work begins in April ; but in the year of which
I write the snow was so soft that the horses fell through
the surface, and most of the wood had to be drawn by
human haulage. The logs were squared roughly on the
river-bank, and then loaded into the lighters for ship
ment to Nosonovsky. Between them, the Ragna and
the Skule carried five thousand of the logs ; and as they
were worth on an average £2 or £3 apiece, they were a
valuable freight to risk among the ice in the Kara Sea.
At first we found it strange to hear English spoken
again, and to have our meals prepared for us, instead of
having to cook the dinner and then wash up afterwards
as we had done all the summer in the hut. Indeed, life
in the ship seemed so luxurious and up-to-date, and the
shipping around made the place appear so populous and
civilised, that it was hard to realise that we were still
living beside one of the vastest wildernesses in the
world. In fact, the crew, most of whom had never
visited the country before, were sometimes slow to
understand that the Yenesei is not a place where risks
may be taken lightly. The two young wireless operators,
who had no duties to perform while the ships lay at
anchor, took the little motor-boat one morning, and
went over to shoot on the mainland, about fifteen miles
away. They did not return at night, and on the
following morning there was a good deal of anxiety
felt on their account, for the river was choppy, and
blizzards were sweeping over the tundra. Mr. Lied
took out a search-party in one of the tug boats and
looked for them all day, but without success. Towards
nightfall, however, they regained the ship. They had

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 291
tried to return on the previous evening, but the motor-
engine broke down and obliged them to take to their
oars. They rowed until midnight, and then, being
unable to make any headway against the stream, they
had put ashore again. For eight hours they lay in a
hollow in the tundra, with nothing to cover them from
the snow, and nothing to eat but a willow-grouse, which
they plucked and cooked as well as they could over a
fire of driftwood. Next morning, they set out again,
and by dint of rowing for eight or ten hours, they
reached the ship at last, completely worn out, but other
wise none the worse for what might have proved a very
dangerous predicament.
On 11th September, the Lena came up the river and
stopped for an hour at Nosonovsky. Her decks were
crowded with passengers, among whom, although we
could not distinguish her, was doubtless Nura
Antonoff. The Lena was the last of the southward-
bound steamers, and when she hooted thrice and steamed
away, those melancholy coasts seemed the sadder for
her going. She took off the remaining fisher-folk, and
a couple of days later the natives also packed up their
chooms and went — " daleko, into the tundra." It was
indeed time to flit, for the weather grew colder day by
day, and the mainland was already sugared over with
snow. The crew, who were unprepared for an arctic
climate, shivered in the bitter wind, and most of them
swore openly that they would never come to Siberia
again — for which decision, looking at the bleak shores
of the island, and bleaker waves on the river, it was
impossible to blame them.

292 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
However, all the cargo was on board at last, and we
left Nosonovsky Ostrov on 19th September. There was
a grand meeting in the Ragna in the forenoon, and the
success of the enterprise was drunk in champagne. We
took leave of Mr. Christensen here, and also of poor
Jest, whom he was taking back with him to Krasnoyarsk.
The Ragna weighed her anchor at six o'clock in the
evening, and by that time not only the hold, but the
decks also, were stacked with timber. The Skule
followed half a mile astern. The little Yenesiesk
piloted the two ships from their anchorage, for on
either side of the channel lay dangerous shoals and
banks. Then when she had led the way past the
islands, she blew a long farewell blast and turned out
of our course. We saluted her as we passed, and two
minutes later were steaming northwards alone.
As soon as darkness fell, we lay to until dawn, for
the estuary of the Yenesei is full of uncharted sands,
and with the season so far advanced, it would never
have done to run aground in the river and risk being
caught in the ice outside. At 10 a.m. on the following
morning, we passed Golchika. With the help of glasses
we could make out all the buildings distinctly. We
distinguished the light-coloured raw wood on Antonoffs
new house, and beyond, the weather-beaten walls of
Prokopchuk's homestead. There was our little hut
beside the Golchika, and Sylkin's tiny balagan on the
mainland behind the island. We could even persuade
ourselves that we saw the Antonoffs, with Nill and
Anastasia, watching us from the river-bank, as indeed
they were certain to be doing, for news flies apace at

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 293
Golchika, and such an event as the passing of the
English steamers would certainly set the whole place in
a flutter. It was curious thus to see from a distance a
place that we knew so well. In some sort, it gave one
the same sensation that the dead may be imagined to
feel if they are able to revisit scenes they knew in life.
On the other side of the river, we saw the balagans of
Swerifskye, all deserted now, and grey with snow. An
hour later, and we came abreast of Och Marino, where
the inhabitants came out to point at the ships as they
steamed past. There was Vassilli Vassillievitch, and
beside him the green apron of the girl, in front of the
dark sakooys of the natives. My last impression of
Siberia was of that terrible little house, surrounded on
three sides by grey water and on the fourth by the
snowy tundra. Its windows stared at us like blank, un
seeing eyes as we rushed past it into life — into danger,
into misery, into battle of all we knew — but still into
life. We left it astern as if it had been a house of
the dead. Was Vassilli Vassillievitch still drinking —
drinking — smoking — smoking himself to death ? Was
the baby, with its dreadful eyes, still wailing day and
night ? And the girl — we did not like to think of her,
and wondered rather what the winter would bring to
the rest of our Siberian acquaintance. It was melancholy
to think that we might never see so many of them,
quaint or kindly as the case might be, again. We had
turned the page of the Yenesei, and were now going to
write a new one across the Arctic Ocean.
All that day we steamed northwards beside the low,
bleak shore. Even Och Marino is not the uttermost

294 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
spot to which man will adventure, for one or two
families spend the winter below the Sopochnaya in order
to trap white foxes. To the west we saw no land at all,
for the noble estuary was more than fifty miles wide at
this point.
At seven o'clock on the following morning we
reached Dickson Island. Between Golchika and Dickson
the temperature of the water had fallen 10°, and it was
easy to guess the reason why, for Vega Harbour was
now packed with ice. This was disappointing, for if the
ships had been able to enter, Mr. Lied proposed to go
ashore there to see whether there were any traces of the
two Russian expeditions of which Captain Swerdrup was
in search. Dickson is a low, flat island of the same
formation as the neighbouring tundra, from which it
looks as if it had been wrenched not so very long ago.
On a knoll at the western arm of the harbour, a post
has been set up to mark a coal d^pot, which was placed
there in 1901 for Baron Toll's expedition. Nothing
lives on the island except wild reindeer, bears, and foxes,
and for ten months of the year the harbour is choked
with ice. Its low, rocky shores — our last sight of Asia —
soon sank below the horizon behind us.
Now we began to pass floating cakes of old ice, worn
by much knocking about in the water, and with them
were many logs of driftwood, which for months had
rolled to and fro in the estuary. By and by, we came
to what is called a slam, i.e. a mass of floating snow.
The water here was dull green and thick like soup. The
waves, stirred by the ship's passage, heaved sullenly, as
if oil had been poured on to the sea, and little shining

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 295
flinders of ice rippled from our bow. The sky became
more overcast, and the slams were more frequent. We
seemed to force our way through an ocean of thick honey.
Gradually the dull surface changed, and became dimpled
over with spots like innumerable raindrops. At first
these pock-marks were no bigger than a man's hand, but
gradually they became as large as plates, and then the
plates drew together into cakes as wide as carpets. Miss
Curtis and I sat on the deck timber and watched
larger and ever larger " pancakes " glide past. By the
evening some of them were as big as lawn-tennis courts,
and the engine-room bell rang sharply for " half-speed
ahead." We had supper as usual, and then went on deck
again, for the sight fascinated us. The grey fog, which
had lain above the northern horizon all day, now closed
down completely. Again the engine-room bell tinkled
— this time for " slow." We could hear the lip-lap of
the water against the ship's sides as the floes drifted
softly by. Everybody was on deck watching the ice,
but no one spoke. We seemed to be entering into
some solemn places where we had no right to venture.
Grim entelechies, beyond man's invocation, wrestled
together behind the mist. It was as if some unseen
powers strode southward, and the floes were only the
print of their feet upon the water. The sea was very
calm, but a thin wind was singing little evil songs to
itself round the mast, and a heavy rain distilled from
the fog and fell into the w^ater with an incessant hush-
hush like the heaving of enormous sighs. Then, quite
suddenly, the mist parted ever so slightly, and right

296 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
under our bows, stretching away into the dimness as far
as the eye could see, was a packed ice-field. It is a
curious game — to play chess with the Arctic on the
board of the Kara Sea, chequered by alternate patches
of ice and open water, and here for the first time our in
visible opponent, throned at the Pole, said : Checkmate.
The Ragna shivered as the ice ground along her
bow, and then the threefold bellow of her siren split
the silence. Scarcely had the sound echoed away into
the night, than the Skule took up and answered the
blast with a shriller roar. We saw her dark hull and
haloed lights looming through the mist a cable's length
away. The two ships lay side by side for a little while.
They seemed like two forwandered and frightened
animals, calling to one another in the dusk. And all
the while the ice stole past on its journey to the south.
Then a lead opened up ahead, and the Ragna crept along
it with the edge of the floes tickling her sides. The
Skule followed — you would almost have said that they
went a-tiptoe. Then the ice closed again, " Stop ! "
roared the Ragna' s siren, and — " Stop !" screamed the
Skule in reply.
So we advanced hour after hour, and when morning
came we lay in the middle of a sea of ice, which
stretched unbroken from horizon to horizon. The only
way to force a passage was by ramming the floes. Both
ships were prepared for such an emergency, and had an
ice-bow of stout oak planks, but in the Ragna' s case,
the dimensions, which had been well enough when the
vessel carried a heavy cargo of cement, were not low
enough below the waterline when she was loaded with

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 297
timber. Consequently she met the shock of the ice, not
on a wooden buffer, but with her naked plates. The
Skule, whose bow was better protected, had not sufficient
engine power to drive her through the newly formed ice,
which was already five inches thick. In two hours,
we advanced about a quarter of a mile. Every now
and then there was a shout from Captain Johansen, our
ice-pilot, who was up aloft in the crow's nest. His
signal was answered by the rumble of the steering gear
or else by the siren's bellow to the Skule — the long
blast and a short for full speed astern, or the five long
blasts which were the sign that wireless communication
was needed. The weather was still and foggy, and there
was no open water to be seen. We had left all the gulls
behind us at Dickson. A pomatorhine skua — a bird of
the year— was the only living thing besides ourselves
that moved over the desolate waste.
Towards evening the ice became more open, but the
ominous white " blink " along the horizon showed that
the field was a vast one. Several times we steamed
down a channel which looked as if it might lead to
safety ; but each time it proved to be a cul-de-sac, and
we were obliged to put about and try for another open
ing. It was like wandering in a maze. The Skule was
following us along the path that we carved through the
ice, when the two sides of the floe gradually closed up
before her. She was seen to stop altogether, and then
came a wireless message : " Stand by, in case we have
to take to the boats." The state of affairs was serious,
for if the ice tightened its grip, the ship would have
been crushed like an egg-shell in a mailed fist. Fortun-

298 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
ately, however, the Skule, like the Ragna, had a deck
cargo of heavy timber. The donkey engines were
started, and by dint of swinging the logs overboard in
the cranes, the ice around was smashed sufficiently to
relieve the pressure, and the ship ultimately struggled
out. Her pilot was so much upset by this experience
that he sent a despairing marconigram : " For God's
sake steer south, or we shall all he frozen in." When
this appeal was communicated to Captain Johansen in
the crow's nest, he chuckled mightily. Before leaving
Tromsoe, our good ice-pilot had consulted a wise woman
who based her predictions upon the forms taken by the
" grounds " in a cup of coffee. She had assured him that
all would be well on the voyage, and as Captain
Johansen had great faith in her prophecies, he did not
doubt but that we should come through safely. It
would have been awkward, to say the least of it, if an
accident had occurred at this point. There were neither
the equipment nor the stores necessary for a winter in
the Arctic Ocean, to say nothing of the fact that an iron
ship could not withstand the grinding of the floes.
Besides, we were at least five hundred miles from any
human habitation, and two hundred miles from com
munication with any wireless station. Therefore the
Skule had a lucky escape.
For the rest of the evening, we forced our way through
tightly packed " pancake " ice. The effect was most
curious, for there was no open water to be seen, and
the ship seemed to be steaming over a boundless white
shingle beach, strewn with stones and pebbles and
boulders of all shapes and sizes.

S.S. Skule in the ice.

Pancake" ice in the Kara Sea.

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 299
September 23rd, although clear, was the coldest
day we had yet known. In spite of the stove, the
portholes in the saloon were covered with frost ferns,
and an unfortunate pigling, one of a couple who lived
in a hutch on the after-deck, was frozen to death during
the night. All the forenoon we passed through fields
of " pancakes " of every size, from a mere spot of ice
no bigger than a handkerchief, to sturdy blocks which
were as large as a croquet ground and stood two feet
out of the water. Some were curiously crimped at the
edges ; others bore, as it were, blossoms of white rime,
and as the Ragna pressed on her course and set the
whole mass rocking in her wake, she might have been
passing through a lake full of water-lilies. Here and
there were larger blocks of old ice, which had been
carved into all sorts of fantastic shapes in the course
of their summer's wandering through the Kara Sea,
Some were spiked almost like a porcupine ; others stood
like monumental slabs upon two pillars, green as
malachite. Here was a floating grotto, surrounded by
frost sculpture and filled with yellow water ; there was
a block besmirched with mud-stains from the beaches
of Novaya Zemlya. And very slowly, the whole ice
field was drifting southwards. For two hours we
coasted along its outermost edge and saw a frosty
scum spread into the surrounding water, just as grease
rises on the surface of a cooling pipkin and congeals
into opaque flakes. Gradually the mass was eating like
a canker into the open water, and before the long
winter night set in, the whole sea from horizon to
horizon would be bound down into utter silence and

300 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
stillness. Sometimes the ice was new and rotten, and
the bow of the Ragna crumpled and tore the floes as
easily as a knife cuts through a sheet of cardboard,
opening up a lane of open water. Others, however,
were stronger, and the ship grazed their flanks with
a bumping jar that made her shiver from stem to
stern. Between the ice, the water was black and oily
— such a surface as you may sometimes see in a wood
where the pool is much overhung by trees. It seemed
strange that such dark, forbidding water could lie under
such a clear sky.
As we were thus watching the war of the ice with
the bow of the Ragna, we heard half a dozen strange
but very happy voices, and over the floes came a flock
of ivory gulls out of the north. Their wings, built
to battle with the gales that blow over the polar seas,
met this little wind with a contained strength that
gave their flight a curious butterfly buoyancy. Their
voices, which reminded me of the talk of the common
terns on our English dunes, were gay and careless as
the wind they conquered. Rising and falling in sport
they crossed our bow, and disappeared over the floes
to the southward.
At noon we drew clear of the ice, and were soon steam
ing full speed ahead. All the following day, the weather
was fair, and as we approached Waigatz Island, bird life
increased. On 24th September four fulmars hawked
round the ship, half a dozen scoters rushed across our
bows, and a few immature kittiwakes appeared. The
next day, 25th September, was a red-letter day, for in
the evening our wireless operator succeeded in calling

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 301
up the Marconi station on Waigatz, whence we hoped
to hear news of the war. But in this we were dis
appointed. The telegraphist on the island knew
nothing of the European turmoil except that the name
of Petersburg had been changed. We were obliged to
take what comfort we could from the fact that the
town had been renamed Petrograd, and not Wilhelm-
stadt, or something equally ominous; and resign ourselves
to wait for news until we reached Norway.
This poor telegraphist and his fellows had been sent
to Waigatz during the previous summer. They had been
under-supplied with provisions, and were also suffering
from scurvy. The Russian Government, who take
great interest in the modern attempts to open up
Captain Wiggins' old route, undertook to establish
three wireless stations in the Kara Sea — at Waigatz, at
the Yugor Strait, and at Mor6 Sal4, in order that
incoming ships should have news of the condition of
the ice in the straits, and shape their course accordingly.
However, it caused such a scandal that the unfortunate
operators should have been sent out so badly equipped,
that questions were asked in the Duma, and the matter
was put right.
Late in the evening we sighted the coast of Novaya
Zemlya, and lay-to for the night to wait for the Skule,
whose engines were less powerful than ours, and was
constantly falling behind. It was strange to stand on
the bridge at dusk, and look over to the dim purple
smear under the mist on our starboard bow which
represented Novaya Zemlya. It is a place that every
schoolboy has heard of, but which, by the tricks of

302 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
common speech, has as little reality to most people as
Timbuctoo or Jericho.
I remember that on the same evening, the laughing
suggestion was made that as Mr. Lied was a Russian
subject, and Miss Curtis and I were Englishwomen,
that we should therefore go to the Austrian territory
of Franz-Josef Land, which lay about five hundred miles
to the north, and take possession of it in the name of
the Allies ! Miss Curtis and L were in love with the
North : I believe that if the Pole itself had been
proposed, we should have been all the better pleased.

CHAPTER XV.
The Kara Gates — Sir Hugh Willoughby — The magic of the Arctic — Captain
Wiggins — The Kara Sea route — Ingoe — A storm^Bird passengers
— Midnight off North Cape — Hammerfest — Rumours of war —
Tromsoe — Sidelight on German mobilisation — From Bergen to
Newcastle — War-fever — London again.
Early next morning we entered the Kara Strait.
Narrow as the passage appears on the map, it is in
reality some fifty miles wide, and as we skirted along
the coast of Novaya Zemlya, we could see nothing of
Waigatz Island, which lay to the southward. The older
expeditions generally entered the Kara Sea through the
Yugor Strait, which lies to the south of Waigatz. It
was supposed that the more northerly passage was
perpetually choked with ice, and it was from this idea
that it took its name of the Iron Gates. However, of
late years ships have used the Kara, in preference to
the Yugor, Strait.
To the north lay the cliffs of Novaya Zemlya, ribbed
with newly fallen snow. From the broad tundras
behind them, a perpetual stream of bird life poured
southwards. During migration times, Waigatz prob
ably plays the part of an immense bridge, spanning
the channel between Novaya Zemlya and the mainland.
Even as we steamed through the strait, I saw some
evidence of this. All day long, divers crossed our
303

304 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
bows in small parties. Some flew high and some low,
but they were all heading for Waigatz. In the course
of an hour, more than a hundred must have passed the
ship. Mr. H. L. Popham tells me that some years ago
he watched a similar stream of divers from Novaya
Zemlya. The fulmars, of which species we had seen
only four birds in the Kara Sea, now increased in
numbers, and a pair of glaucous gulls, in the mottled
brown plumage of immaturity, followed us. Briinnich's
guillemots became common, and several small flocks of
scoters passed, all flying to the south-west. The strait
also seems to be a fairly deflnite dividing line between
the two tides of birds, which, during the migration times,
sweep, one down the east, and the other down the west,
coasts of Novaya Zemlya. For instance, I did not see
a single diver to the west of the Kara Strait, nor a single
kittiwake to the east of it. We know very little of the
way of migration in these regions ; but it seems most
probable that when the bird stream reaches the mainland,
it divides, and allows one battalion to proceed south
wards along the valley of the Ob, and the other by that
of the Petchora.
Watching these bold travellers returning from their
summer in the north, set us speaking of other adven
turers of our own race. It is well enough to venture
into the Arctic Ocean in steam-driven ships, with wireless
telegraphy and all the rest of it ; but how much more
honourable were those explorers who dared the ice that
we ourselves had barely escaped in sailing vessels which
were altogether dependent on wind and tide. I have
sometimes wondered wherein the magic of the Arctic lies

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 305
— a magic exceeding that of the rest of the five seas.
It has a terrible charm all its own. If, as legends say,
the spirits of the dead linger round the places that they
loved when in the flesh, then not only would the polar
waters be thronged with phantoms of ancient shipping
and ghosts of bygone navigators, but its shores would
also be filled with the wraiths of all the dreamers who
have watched the aurora flicker in the north, ever
since the days of brave Sir Hugh Willoughby. He, the
first Englishman who sought the North-East Passage,
landed on this very coast of Novaya Zemlya three
hundred years ago, on a voyage that he fondly hoped
would take him to the land of Cathay. Instead, the
ice carried his ship southwards to the Kola Peninsula,
where he and his crew perished miserably in the snow.
It is as far a cry from poor Sir Hugh Willoughby
in his bluff-bowed galleon, to the Ragna with her 1000-
horse-power engines and wireless antennae, as it would
be from the golden sands of his mythical Cathay, to
the sober Siberian timber upon our decks, but the same
restless, irrational Spirit of the North hailed both ships
when they entered the Kara Gates. Our chief engineer,
a stolid, stout Norwegian, who spent his time in a
mysterious roaring oily place in the bowels of the ship,
where you might only trespass by especial favour, was
the most notable victim. He went to those in authority
and begged that if a similar expedition went to the
Yenesei in 1915 he might be permitted to join it.
He had taken a liking for these parts, he confessed
with a half-shamefaced grin, as he blew upon his cold
fingers.

306 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
It would take too long to tell of half the captains
who sailed into these waters and lost their ships, if not
their own lives, there ; but there is, above the rest, one
name which is imperishably connected with the conquest
of the Kara Sea, and that is the name of Captain
Joseph Wiggins. It is usual to call this great English
seaman a pioneer. A pioneer he certainly was, in as
far as he opened up this north-eastern trade route to
British shipping ; but he may also claim the not less
honourable title of a link with the past. For he was
of the order of Hawkins, Drake, and Frobisher, and the
mariners of the Elizabethan age, part explorer and part
merchantman, whose voyages have shed a little of the
purple of romance over the fustian-grey of commerce.
Wiggins began his work in the 'seventies, and for thirty
years he tried to establish regular trade with the Ob
and the Yenesei. During the 'nineties his example was
followed by others, both Russian and English, the most
notable among the latter being Mr. Leyborne Popham.
But after the action of the Russian Government, who
no longer allow goods to enter the river duty free, the
sea route to Siberia fell into disfavour for a time,
nominally on aecount of the uncertainty of clearing the
ice in the Kara Sea. Against this it has been pointed
out that in none of his voyages was Wiggins obliged to
return because of ice.
The present promoters of the scheme maintain that
there are four entrances to the Kara Sea, and that
under no weather conditions can all four be blocked at
once, for if the ice is packed in one part of the Novaya
Zemlya bight, the rest is sure to be open. Hence the

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 307
wireless stations round the Kara and Yugor Straits,
The routes by the Matochkin Strait, and the north of
Novaya Zemlya, are too uncertain for ordinary use. In
1913 the S.S. Correct, chartered by the Siberian Com
pany, made a successful trip to Breokoffsky — an
account of which has already been published by Doctor
Nansen.^ In the future the company expect larger
developments, and are taking more precautions. A
depot of stores is to be placed on Bieliy Ostrov, and
the ships will carry a winter equipment of clothing, a
hut, etc., in case, by any accident, the crew are obliged
to abandon the vessel and take to the ice. It has even
been suggested that a useful adjunct would be a pilot
in a waterplane, who could fly over the floes and find
out the open leads. Whether modern science can do
what pluck and seamanship failed to accomplish in the
last century, and overcome the natural difficulties of
navigation in these waters, remains to be seen. At
least the energy and enterprise of Mr. Lied, and the
other promoters of the present attempt, deserve all
success in their undertaking.
I think that everybody breathed more easily when
Novaya Zemlya lay astern. The Kara Sea, especially
in its eastern waters, is charted only approximately,
and shipping insurance premiums rise mightily if the
destination of a vessel is known to he east of the
Petchora. On 27th September we had hoped to hold
wireless communication with the station at Ingoe on
the Finmark coast ; but, alas, the operators there could
give us little or no reliable news of the war, and we
1 Through Siberia, by Fridtjof Nansen.

308 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
were obliged to curb our impatience until we reached
Hammerfest. Next morning I was awakened at 4 a.m. by a heavy
roll of the ship, which swept every loose object in the
cabin, including my own person, into a heap on the
floor. At breakfast out came the fiddles for the first
time on the voyage, and the meal was eaten under
difficulties. It was a fine clear morning, and the Ragna
was wallowing westwards through a mammoth swell.
Overhead a couple of hundred kittiwakes followed the
ship, and about a score of pomatorhine skuas — -passengers
from Novaya Zemlya — followed the kittiwakes. Now
and then, when they spied some piece of jetsam in the
water, two or three birds swooped down to squabble
over it, but, for the most part, they hung above us in
a cloud. When the ship forged ahead, as at a given
signal the whole host moved forward in order to keep
station over the mast. I cannot tell how it was, unless
perhaps it may have been the influence of so many
watching eyes all fixed upon us, but after a while there
seemed to be something ominous in this immense flock
of birds with their straining but motionless wings
silhouetted against the sky, and beautiful as they were,
I felt that I almost hated them and their watchful
escort. At noon the wind freshened, until by sunset a regular
gale was blowing. The Ragna took little water over
the side. She was, however, making a good deal of
water in her forehold, for her plates had been badly
strained while ramming the ice. By and by, the deck
cargo began to work loose. The mate and two seamen

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 309
went down and tautened the chains that secured it, but
it was soon knocking about as badly as ever. The Skule
had dropped so far astern that she was out of sight, and
as efforts to get into communication with her by wireless
proved ineffectual, some concern was felt for her safety,
for she carried even more deck cargo than did the Ragna.
However, before nightfall, our telegraphist called up the
station at Ingoe, which reported that the Skule had
telegraphed that she was weathering the storm all right,
but that her operator was not able to communicate with
us because he had collapsed with sea-sickness ! The
people at Ingoe added a rider to the effect that the
storm now raging round the coast was the worst within
the memory of man.
The gale was at its height at eight o'clock when Miss
Curtis and I went on to the bridge. The ship was
rolling to an angle of 30° to 35°, and the waves towered
so high above the decks that it seemed as if they must
infallibly swamp her. But how can a plain pen write
of those grand seas that hurled themselves unbroken
upon us out of the dimness, and then thundered away
to leeward ? In the ice all had been still except for the
grinding of the floes, but here there was storm music
enough. The creaking of timber, the rumble of the
stearing-gear, the howl of the wind round the mast, and
through it all the whirr and hum of the dynamos in
the charthouse — all blent into a roaring groan which
might have been the voice of the ship herself as she
wallowed into the trough of the sea and then rushed
up the giant shoulder of the next wave. Now and then,
in the twilight, I saw a dozen moth-like fulmars, who,

310 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
through all the uproar, skimmed eternally round and
round the ship, never hastening and never rising more
than a few inches above the combers, chasing us cease
lessly through the gale like spirits of the storm. Just
before midnight the wind increased, and for a minute
or two the Ragna rolled so heavily that to a mere
landlubber like myself it seemed wonderful that she
should ever right herself again. Then Miss Curtis cried
out suddenly that the timber was going overboard, and,
sure enough, half a dozen great logs flew over the side
as if they had been no heavier than matches. That
clinched the matter, and the captain altered our course
lest any more of the cargo should be lost.
The gale moderated at daybreak, and the sea,
although still very choppy, was much calmer. My
friend and I found life quite stale and unprofltable now
that there was neither ice nor wind to give our interest
a fillip ; and we had nothing more exciting to do than
to pay a call upon the galley cat, who had a litter of
kittens during the storm. But it was also very amusing
to watch the sea-birds round the ship. The fulmars
pleased me most. They had followed us faithfully
through the storm, and their thick bodies and rapid flight,
with the odd marbled markings on their upper wings,
made them look something like giant hawk-moths.
It was very pretty to see them alight on the water,
poised daintily upon their outspread wings in the
attitude of the angels out of one of Gustavo Dor6's
pictures ; and the worst seas had no terrors for them,
for they could swim unconcernedly up wave-slopes as
steep as the roof of a church, A few Briinnich's

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 311
guillemots were still to be seen. They popped up
suddenly in front of us and flung themselves along the
surface, splashing ludicrously in their efforts to take
wing and escape the bows of the ship. The storm had
blown away all the pomatorhine skuas, but it brought
other bird guests to the Ragna. At noon a purple
sandpiper — a passenger from Spitzbergen or Franz-
Josef Land — came on board, and during the day we
saw both a snow-bunting and a mealy redpoll. Some
small wader also fluttered round for a while. I think
it may have been a dunlin. The sandpiper was tired,
and consequently very tame. I tried to photograph
it, but owing to an impending blizzard and the roll of
the ship, the result was not very successful.
Hammerfest was our first port of call. We had
expected to reach it on 29th September, but the
installation of the wireless apparatus in the charthouse
behind the wheel had affected the working of the
compass. We were something out in our reckoning,
and as the coast was hidden by driving snowstorms,
we were not able to take our bearings, and had to lie
to for the night.
For the first time we saw the aurora borealis in
great splendour. To the south the snow-clouds were
piled along the cliffs of North Cape. Half-way to the
zenith the wind tore them apart, and between their
ragged edges, the stars shone, polished with frost. But
in front of the stars, and lighting the whole firmament
and the sea with their soft shifting radiance, the spears
and shafts of the aurora spanned the sky. The broken
edges of the storm-clouds caught the glow, until it

312 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
seemed as if the light of heaven was shed faintly upon
the earth — and under the Pole Star hung a splendid
comet like a sword. The whole spectacle of aurora,
comet, and starlight was so amazing and so rare that
it suggested the fantastic idea that here the earth was
symbolised in the skies. To the north, under Corona
Borealis, lay the arctic lands where no man may walk,
vast and pure in the first grasp of winter. To the
south, behind the cloud-pack, was a continent seething
with evil passions and filled with the din of war. . . .
Much as we longed for home, I think that we were both
sorry that the voyage was over. To-morrow we should
reach Europe again, and what news should we hear ?
At noon we sighted land, and presently entered
Hammerfest fiord. Its rocky islands and capes were
dimmed with snow. Sometimes the clouds drooped
until their driving skirts hung like a curtain in front
of the cliffs ; and at other times they parted to show
fierce headlands that butted into the surf Once or
twice a gleam of sunshine burst upon tiers of snow-
mountains. It was very beautiful, and the scenery
seemed perhaps even more than usually overwhelming
and grand after the infinite blankness of the tundra.
Hammerfest itself lay in the midst of these sea-
mountains. Steep cliffs rose up behind it, and the
grey houses harmonised so closely with the grey rock
around that the town was almost invisible at first sight,
and even afterwards, one was constantly realising odd
little outcrops of buildings that had been overlooked
before. Part of Hammerfest was burnt down about

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 313
fifteen years ago, and much of it has been rebuilt. Now
it has 3000 inhabitants, and churches of both Catholic
and Reformed Churches. It was the first city in Norway
to use electric lighting. Even in the dusk, we could see
the thin waterfalls — the so-called "white coals" of
Norway — from which the power is derived. Thirty
years ago you could probably have bought the strength
of all the streams in the country for ten shillings.
To-day you could not buy it for ten thousand times
that sum. The Norwegians — business-like race — are
thoroughly aware of the value of their waterfalls in the
future, when electric dynamos will supersede steam-
boilers as the world's motive power.
We went ashore in the dusk, glad of the opportunity
to stretch our legs. The chief thing that struck us was
the absence of public-houses. There were only two in
the place, both of which were closed owing to the war.
Hammerfest does not publish a paper of its own, but
the news is telegraphed from the south, and then issued
in printed bulletins. We were very jealous of the rest
of the crew, who could read these bulletins in their
entirety, whereas we had to put up with such scraps of
information as we could tease out of our acquaintance.
Accordingly we remembered a treat which we had
planned weeks before at Golchika, when a diet of fish,
bread, and tea was beginning to pall, and which we had
gloated over in anticipation during the voyage. We
walked shamelessly into a pastrycook's shop, and I do
not think that I have ever taken such an unholy delight
in tarts since my schooldays, when we held night orgies
in the bathroom with biscuits and chocolate.

314 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
Meals on the Ragna, excellent though they were,
sometimes recalled the feast of the stalled ox ; and
during the crises of the ice and of the storm, when
everybody was busy and anxious, we felt doubly bound,
as supercargoes, to be on our best behaviour. Besides,
the change from our free-and-easy feasts at Golchika
to the order and civility of meals in the ship's saloon
was a little difficult at first. It took quite three days
to reaccustom oneself to use an especial knife for the
butter. These meals used to remind me of the table-
talk in the " Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister" :
" Not a plenteous cork crop : scarcely
May we hope oak galls, I doubt :
What's the Latin name for parsley ?
What's the Greek name for swine's snout ? "
Our "swine's snoutishness " took the form of tarts, in
which we indulged to the extent of five apiece. We
looked guiltily down the street as we left the shop, and
hoped that if seen we should pass unidentified, lest we
should bring discredit on the ship. But all the while
we knew that this was a vain hope, for in a place like
Hammerfest, everyone knows everything about every
body else, and the shopkeeper had already remarked
" Engelske" and " Yenesei " to three deeply interested
customers in succession.
After this satisfactory kick over of the traces, we
returned on board. The Ragna waited until midnight
for the Skule, who had been obliged to lie to after the
storm in order to restow her deck cargo, most of which
was hanging over her side. I employed the time by
trying to take a photograph of the town by night, and,

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 315
in order to do so, lashed the camera to a stanchion for an
hour. However, the swing of the ship to the ebbing
tide was not taken into consideration, and on develop
ment the famous arc lights of Hammerfest were
presented in a cloud of streaks and bars like a photo
graph of fireworks.
It was at Hammerfest that we first heard the famous
rumour of the scheme for shipping Russian troops from
Archangel to the coast of France via Great Britain.
Of course we had seen nothing of any such movement,
for our course lay to the north of the coastwise
shipping. Moreover, the idea sounds so fantastic that
we were surprised to find out later what excitement it
created in England. The harbour of Archangel, kept
open artificially, could play an important part in reliev
ing the congestion in Russian export trade caused by
the closing of the Baltic and Black Sea ports ; but it is
another matter to convey transports across the mine-
spangled North Sea, especially at a time when Russia
herself needed every man upon her western frontiers.
Nevertheless, when once started, the hare ran a long
way, and I know of one dear old lady who believes in it
to this day, for did she not once give a tract to a soldier
at a railway station and hear him reply : " Thankyou-
vitch." Which proves conclusively that he must have
been a Russian !
We took a pilot on board at Hammerfest, and
reached Tromsoe at midday on 1st October. Blizzards
drove across the fiord at intervals, and the mountains
were already ribbed and wealed with snow. Four or
five German ships were moored in the harbour. They

316 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
had lain there ever since the beginning of the war,
when their crews were called away for military service.
Although they flew the German flag, they carried
cargoes consigned to English firms in Hull and Sunder
land. As soon as possible, we went ashore, and, oddly
enough, in all our travels we never came nearer a ducking
than on this occasion, for the mate, being in a hurry to
go ashore, forgot to plug up the boat. Before we had
gone a hundred yards, our feet were awash, and after
having successfully weathered the Yenesei shoals, and
the ice and storms of the Arctic Ocean, we had to bale
for dear life, and row too, in order to escape foundering
ignominiously in Tromsoe Harbour.
At Tromsoe, the Ragna changed her destination,
for owing to the dangerous state of the North Sea, her
owners would not take the risk of bringing her over to
Aberdeen, as at first they intended. Therefore Miss
Curtis and I had to cross over to England by another
route, and we arranged to leave two days later for
Bergen. Afterwards we walked about the town, until,
at the hotel, we found a great prize — a copy of the
Times only ten days old ! No newspaper was ever
devoured more thoroughly than that one. From it we
learned of a threatened attack upon Antwerp, of the
sack of Louvain, and of the bombardment of Rheims.
But it all seemed so vague and so far away — we, fresh
from places where the change of the weather and the
catch of fish were the events of importance, could not
realise it at all.
Early in the morning of 3rd October we were

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 317
obliged to leave the Ragna, and during the day she and
the Skule left for Bergen, where they were to go into
dock for the winter. The mail-boat to the south did not
leave until midnight, so we had more than sufficient
time to see the sights of Tromsoe, which, to tell the
truth, as it was snowing heavily and the streets were
filled with slush, were quickly exhausted. The principal
" lion " was a Customs official who had been to the South
Pole with Roald Amundsen ; but when we had seen
this hero, and also a party of Lapps who were wander
ing about the town in their picturesque national dress,
there was nothing to be done but go back to the hotel
and read the Times all over again.
A little incident at Tromsoe may give some idea of
the extent to which Germany was mobilising her forces
at this time. It will be remembered that there were on
board the Skule seven German officers, who had com
manded the little steamers as far as the Yenesei. Six
of these could unquestionably claim exemption from
military service on account of their age, but the seventh
was more doubtful, for he did not look much past forty
years. However, when the German consul had claimed
the rest of the crews in Tromsoe six weeks before, he
asserted so strenuously that he was above the age limit,
that he was allowed to proceed on his voyage. Poor
man, no amount of equivocation can escape the lynx
eye of German officialdom. Now, on his return to port,
he was met with the news that the Hamburg authorities
had telegraphed a command that he was to return and
report himself at once in Germany, where he would run
a good chance of being shot as a deserter.

318 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
We left Tromsoe at midnight in the mail steamer
Finmarken. Mr. Lied accompanied us as far as
Trondhjem, whence he went by rail to Petrograd. The
southward voyage took four days, and most of the time
we passed through some of the most beautiful scenery
in Europe, but we were both too anxious to pay it all
the attention that it deserved. At each stopping-place
we rushed ashore to buy papers, but needless to say, as
these were all printed in Norwegian, their perusal did
not make us much wiser. The only item of news that
we could translate with any degree of certainty was a
frequent telegram to the effect that another English
ship had been blown up in the North Sea. There were
also wild rumours that Zeppelins were dropping bombs
upon London, and that India and Egypt had severally
declared their independence. At the first declaration
of war, the Norwegians feared that they would be
drawn into the conflict by Sweden, to whom they are
bound by treaty. Sweden, who is always fearful lest
Russia should cast a covetous eye on one of the
northern ports, was disposed to throw in her lot with
Germany. Now, however, the alarm was over, and the
Norwegians, like the thoroughly efficient and practical
race that they are, were preparing to act the part of the
little dog who, when the two hounds were quarrelling,
ran off with the bone. In other words, Norway hoped
to annex some of the European trade while the Powers
were all at loggerheads.
We reached Bergen early in the morning of 7th
October, and secured berths on a boat which left at
midday for England. At flrst we believed that our

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 319
destination would be either Peterhead or Aberdeen, as
it was rumoured that new mine-flelds had been laid
down in the North Sea, but in the end we went to
Newcastle. This second-rate little steamer had now
become of international importance. She carried all
the mails from England, not only to Scandinavia, but
also to Russia, China, Japan, and the Far East. In
fact, during the last three weeks, no less than 120 extra
clerks had been sent to the Bergen post-office, for the
local staff was quite overwhelmed by the flood of mails
and telegrams.
In spite of all sinister rumours, our journey across
the North Sea was the most uneventful section of the
journey. Secretly we had looked forward to adventures
of some kind, and we were quite disappointed that the
weather was halcyon, and no ship appeared on the
placid horizon. The only sign that anything unusual
was expected was that the boats were slung outwards
from the davits, so that they could be lowered at once
if any accident occurred. We spent most of the voyage
in reading the papers, for the captain, hearing what Rip
van Winkles he had among his passengers, kindly lent
us a parcel of newspapers that he carried as a gift to
any British warship that might hail us. Here we read
of the plight of Antwerp, of the torpedoing of the
Ahoukir, Hogue, and Cressy, of the retreat from Mons,
and of the battle of the Aisne ; and from a chance
allusion here, or a quotation there, we began gradually
to piece together the opening events of the war.
It was not until we reached home waters at Berwick
that we saw any shipping, but along the Northumbrian

320 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI
coast, trade seemed to be proceeding much as usual.
It was well guarded. Off the Tyne a cruiser kept
watch at the river's mouth, and a couple of submarines
foamed past us. Hard after them came a picket-boat :
Where did we hail from ? Where bound for ? Had we
seen anything of the enemy ? The enemy ! — off the
Tyne ! — such a thing had not been heard of in England
for a hundred years ; and as the pilot came on board,
a pair of lean dark destroyers stole seawards through
the mist. Passengers were sent below as we entered
the river, but from the porthole one might mark the
bustle and clangour of the shipwrights' work upon
hulls where already the familiar red of commerce was
overlaid by the sinister grey of Admiralty. Beside the
quay were more officials to examine passports and
detain German subjects. We reached the station at
last. Men in khaki in the streets ; men in khaki on
the platform ; men in khaki on the train. On the
walls flamed patriotic posters ; patriotic songs were on
everybody's lips. Signs everywhere that the British
lion was beginning to wake up at last, and was going
to make up for lost time in his own stupid, blundering,
heroical way. There was war-fever from end to end
of the country, and here were we, two practical,
educated Englishwomen, and we knew less about it
all than even the newsboy who sold us a paper. We
read everything, from the Times to the Daily Sketch.
"And what on earth is it all about?" we said at last.
At first sight it is a far cry from the murder of an
Austrian archduke to warships in the Tyne.
Luckily there was a fellow-traveller ready to

A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 321
enlighten us — there are always such. He discourse^
at some length. It was, of course, a bad business, but
there was no doubt that the Allies would be at Berlin
by Christmas. Of course we were opposing 300,000
men to a force of a million, but that would be all right,
because everyone knows that one Englishman is worth
four Germans, and besides, it did not take more than
three months' training to make a soldier, and Kitchener's
army would be ready by Christmas, and so forth, and
so forth — the optimistic platitudes of the average
railway-carriage Briton. Finally, however, he became
mistrustful of our simplicity and suspected a hoax.
" But where d'ye come from that you let on not to
know all this ? " he demanded sarcastically. " North
Pole, I suppose ! "
"Well, from somewhere that looked not unlike it,"
we admitted humbly, as the train rolled into King's
Cross Station.

INDEX

Abba. See Willow-grouse.
Accentor montanellus. See Mountain
accentor.
Alexis Petrovitch, 164, i6g.
Amundsen, Roald, 287, 317.
Anabara River, 49.
Anas c. crecca. See Teal.
— penelope. See Widgeon.
Anastasia Ivanowna, 94, 157, 173, 263.
Angara River, 10.
Anser alhifrons. See Goose, white-
fronted.
— fabalis. See Goose, bean.
— finmarchus . See Goose, lesser
white-fronted.
Anthus cervinus. See Pipit, red-
throated.
Antonoff, Michael Petrovitch, 61, 65,
168, 263, 271 ; his dog sledge,
72 ; at Och Marino, 75 et seq. ;
his family, gi et seq. ; and Prok
opchuk, 104; in pourga, 178.
— Madame, 66, 93, 229.
— Nura, 66, 241, 269, 291.
Archangel, 315.
Arctic Circle, 41 ; as breeding-ground,
121-123 ; migration in, 121-122 ;
flora of, 252 ; avifauna of, 147 ;
spell of, 305.
Arenaria i. interpres. See Turnstone.
Asia f. flammeus. See Owl, short-
eared.
Aurora borealis, 249, 311.
Barentz, Willem, i.
Bear, 286.
Bei-kem River, 18.
Beluga, 60.
Bergen, 316, 318.
Bieliy Ostrov, 307.
— Pesok, S3.
" Birdland " camera, 140.
Bluethroat (luscinia s. gaetkei], 12, 41,
58, 253 ; migration of, 162.
Brambling {fringilla montifringilla),
35-
Brenta ruficollis. See Goose, red-
breasted.

Breokoffsky Islands, 48, 56 et seq.
Bunting, Lapland (calcarius I. lap
ponicus), 50, 52, 58, 71, 81 ; on
the tundra, 146, 158 ; nests of,
189, 194 ; note of, 158 ; migration
of, 158, 161, 283.
— little (emberiza pusilla), 32, 41, 46.
— snow [plecirophenax nivalis), yj,
157, 161, 253, 311.
— yellow-breasted (emberiza aureola),
14, 21, 24.
Buteo I. lagopus. See Buzzard.
Buzzard, rough-legged (buteo I. lago
pus), 146, 155, 253.
Calcarius I. lapponicus. See Bunting,
Lapland.
Carduelis I. linaria. See Redpoll,
mealy.
— h. exilipes. See Redpoll, Coues'.
Cedar (pinus cembra), 16.
Charadrius apricarius. See Plover,
golden.
— d. fulvus. See Plover, Eastern
golden.
— h. hiaticula. See Plover, ringed.
— morinellus. See Dotterel.
Chelidon lagopoda. See Martin.
Cherniavinsky, 163.
Chiff-chaff, Siberian (phylloscopus c.
tristis), 33, 50, 51, 58.
Choom, 26, 80, 104, 218, 258, 282.
"Chorna chika." See Skua.
Christensen, Mr. Gunnar, 6, 260, 261,
269, 287, 292.
Clangula hyemalis. See Duck, long-
tailed.
Cockroaches, 68, 69.
Colonisation in Siberia, 44, 116-118.
Correct, s.s., voyage of, 307.
Cossacks, 4.
Cuckoo (cuculus canorus and t. op
tatus), 21, 35, 36, 37.
Curtis, Miss Dora, 3, 9, 166, 167, 246,
247, 248, 257, 274, 282, 286, 287,
29S> 302. 309> 310-
Cygnus bewickii. See Swan, Bewick' .
Cypselus pacificus. See Swift, Siberian.

324

INDEX

Czaplicka, Miss M. A., 3, 4, 9, loi,
166, 167, 210, 257, 283 ; as
organiser of the expedition, 3 ; as
a physician, 113 ; on Samoyede
names, 160; finds a mammoth,
246 ; her energy, 254.
Dafila acuta. See Duck, pintail.
Dgiotu. See Goose.
Dickson Island, 191, 219, 287, 294.
Disease among natives, 113-114.
Diver, black -throated (gavia arctica),
22, 58, 150, 190; call of, 151;
nest of, 199.
— red-throated (gavia stellata), 45, 52,
58, 85, 190 ; nest of, 191 ; young
of, 1 5 1 - 1 54 ; migration from
Novaya Zemlya, 304.
— white-billed (gavia adamsii), 151.
Dogs, towing boat, 25 ; in sledges, 72
et seq. ; eating stints, 140 ; at
choom, 222-223.
Dolgans, geographical distribution of,
104 ; beadwork, 227 ; choom, 206
et seq. ; shepherd, 190, 206 et seq.
Dotterel (charadrius morinellus), 146,
147. 231.
Dresser, Mr. H. E., 27 note, 33.
Dryobates in. major. See Woodpecker,
Duck, long-tailed (clangula hyemalis),
SO, S2, 58, 81, 89, 148-149. 177,
189, 253.
— pintail (dafila acuta), 38, 160, 191.
— tufted (nyroca fuligula), 41.
Dudinka, 49-Si, 191.
Dunlin (erolia a. alfina), 14S, 189,
311-
Eclipse, S.S., 285.
Eggs of long-tailed duck, 117; of
white-fronted goose, 196 ; of grey
plover, 201 ; of little stint, 137 ;
of curlew-sandpiper, 127 ; of black-
throated thrush, 27 ; of dusky
ousel, 47 ; of pale thrush, 35 ; of
peregrine falcon, 192 ; of grey
phalarope, 131, 189.
Eider, King (somateria spectabilis), 149,
160.
Ello, Captain Otto, 17, 61, 62, 270.
Emberiza aureola. See Bunting,
yellow-breasted.
— pusilla. See Bunting, little.
Eremophila alpestris. See Shore-lark.
Erolia a. alpina. See Dunlin.
— ferruginea. See Sandpiper, curlew.
— m. maritima. See Sandpiper,
purple.
— m. minuta. See Stint, little.
— temminckii. See Stint, Temminck's.

Falco p. peregrinus. See Falcon,
peregrine.
— r. regulus. See Merlin.
Falcon, peregrine (falco p. peregrinus),
155. 192.
Fieldfare (turdus pilaris), 33, 4:.
Fish, S3-SS' 181, 191, 196, 284.
Fox, IS7 ; traps, 155 ; skins, 156.
Franz-Josef Land, 302.
Fringilla montifringilla. See Bramb
ling-.
Fulmar (fulmarus f. glacialis), 300,
309-
" Ga-ga." See Eider.
"Ga-garra." See Diver.
Gallinago g. gallinago. See Snipe,
common.
— media. See Snipe, great.
— stenura. See Snipe, pintailed.
Germany, news of war, 260 ; German
crews, 281, 316 ; mobilisation,
317-
" Gillissy," i.
Godwit, bar-tailed (limosa I. lapponica),
119, 120, 14s, ISS, 160.
Golchika, arrival at, 60 ; description of,
60, 70, 71, 90; birds of, 119-121 ;
character of country, 145 ; last
view, 292.
Goose, bean (anser fabalis), 154.
— lesser white-fronted (anser fin
marchus), 34.
— red-breasted (brenta ruficollis), SS>
I S4 ; migration of geese, 154;
native name for, 160; hunting,
225-226.
— white-fronted (anser alhifrons), 1S4,
196, 198.
Grave, Yurak, 82.
Grosbeak, pine (pinicola en. enucleator),
34-
Guillemot, Briinnich's (uria I. lomvia),
304, 310.
Gull, common (larus canus), 21, 42.
— glaucous (larus glaucus), 304.
— ivory (pagophila ehurnea), 300.
— Siberian (/a?-»j/. antelius), 81, 148,
181, 190, 233, 237.
Hachenkoff, Vassilli Vassillievitch, 7S
et seq., 229, 231 et seq.
Hamatopus ostralegus. See Oyster-
catcher.
Hall, Mr. H. U., 3, 7, 11, 13,64, 87,
166, 246, 257, 283.
Hammerfest, 312-314.
Harnessing reindeer, 208.
Hazel-hen (tetrastes bonasia), 24.
Hyphoraia subnebulosa, 253 note.

INDEX

325

Ibis, IT, 47, 119, 130, 15s, 152, 162,
notes.
Ice, on banks of river, 52 ; at Och
Marino, 80 ; formation of, 294 ; in
Kara Sea, 294-300 ; rammed by
ship, 29s ; bar to navigation in
Kara Sea, 306-307.
Igarka, 42.
Ikon, 66, io8, 276, 277.
Ilia, Saint, 179.
Immigration into Siberia, 117.
Ingoe, 307, 309.
Jest, 7, 56, 73.
Johansen, Captain, and Amundsen, 287 ;
belief in prophecy, 298 ; his
brother's voyage to Solitude, 287.
Kamin Pass, 21.
Kara Sea, i ; possibilities of navigation
in, 304 ; wireless stations at, 301 ;
expeditions to, 304-307.
Kara Strait, 303, 304.
Katya, the Samoyede, 240.
Kazachye, trip to, 240 et seq. ; family
at, 243.
Khatanga River, 49.
Khua-kem River, 18.
Kitmanoff, 17.
Kittiwake (rissa t. tridactyla), 300,
304, 308.
Krasnoyarsk, 6 et seq.
Krestova, SI.
Krestovskiy Islands, 120.
Kropotkin, 144 note.
Kureika, 9, 36 ; graphite at, 41 ; birds
at, 36 et seq, ; lost in forest, 38
et seq.
Kuria, family at, l?,2 et seq., 271.
Kutcherenkoff, IS, 99, 169, 170-171.
Lagopus albut. See Willow-grouse.
— rupestris. See Ptarmigan.
Larus f. antelius. See Gull, Siberian.
— canus. See Gull, common.
— glaucus. See Gull, glaucous.
Lena River, 209.
Lena, steamer, 171-172, 262, 291.
Lied, Mr. Jonas, 281, 287, 290, 294,
307-
Limosa I. lappomca. See Godwit.
Lukovoi Protok, SS-
Luscinia s. gaetkei. See Bluethroat.
Machetes pugnax. See Ruff, Reeve.
Magpie (pica leucoptera), 13.
Mails, 25, 270.
Malchik (dog), 223.
Mammoth, 156, 246.
Mangaseya, 31.

Markova, 27, 28.
Martin (chelidon lagopoda), 54.
Medical missions, 114.
Merlin (falco r. regulus), 288.
Mezenchyne, 243, 245.
Micha, 163, 271.
Migration, down river, 121 ; at Breok
offsky, 288 ; at Golchika, 160-162 ;
from Novaya Zemlya, 303.
Mirage, 234.
Monastir, 30, 31-32.
Monastirskiy, 21.
More Sal^, 301.
Moscow, 5, 6.
Mosquitoes, 13, 21, I77) 222.
Motacilla a. alba. See Wagtail, white.
— c. citreola. See Wagtail, yellow-
headed.
Mountain accentor (accentor monta
nellus), S9, 283.
Muksun, 53.
Nansen, Dr. Fridtjof, cited 44, 51, 53
note, 307.
Nasimorokoya, 20.
Nerobi, the Samoyede, 156, 229.
Nerotova, Madame, 49, 1 14.
Nicolai, the Samoyede, 229.
Nicolai, the steward, 18, 270.
Nill, 74, 93, 229, 232, 271.
Norway, 312 e^ seq.
Nosonovsky Ostrov, 261, 279, 280,
282, 292.
Nyavoie. See Duck, pintail.
Nyctea nyctea. See Owl, snowy.
Nyelma, S3, 1 76.
Nyroca fuligula. See Duck, tufted,
Nyrpe. See Seal.
Ob, 191, 238, 293.
Ob, steamer, 261, 281.
Och Marino, 7S et seq., 23S et seq.,
293-
CEnanthece. cenanthe. See Wheatear.
Oidemia n. nigra. See Scoter.
Omul, 53, 176.
— (motor-boat), SI.
Oryol, steamer, IS; 16, 67, 257,
269.
Ostiaks, ethnological position of, 26 ;
chooms, 25, 26 ; in forest, 37.
Ouss (dog), 223, 22S-226.
Owl, snowy (nyctea nyctea), 155, 162.
— short-eared (asio f. fiammeus), 21.
Oyster-catcher (hcematopus ostralegus),
27.
Pagophila ehurnea. See Gull, ivory.
Peacock, Mr., 9, 64-65.
Petchora River, 219, 304.

326

INDEX

Phalarope, grey (phalaropus fulicarius),
8i, iig, 120, 123; nest of, 131,
i8g, igo; note of, 131 ; habits of,
131-133; courtship, 130; pro
tective resemblance, 132 ; migra
tion, 133, 161 ; photographing, at
nest, 131.
— red-necked (phalaropus lohatus), 50,
52, 58, 71. 133. 199, 224; nest of,
194; feeding habits, 133; migra
tion, 133, 161.
Phylloscopus h. borealis. See Warbler,
Eversmann's.
— c. tristis. See Chiff-chaff, Siberian.
— s. superciliosus. See Warbler,
yellow-browed.
Pica leucoptera. See Magpie.
Pinicola en. enucleator. See Grosbeak,
pine.
Pipit, red-throated (anthus cervinus),
50. 58, 159. 161.
Pirog, 54.
Platina, 45, 48.
Plecirophenax nivalis. See Bunting,
snow.
Plover, Eastern golden (charadritis d.
failvus), 81, 119, 120; nest of,
142 ; flocking, 143 ; migration,
14s, 161 ; native name, 161 ; photo
graphing nest, 221-222.
— golden (charadrius apricarius), 143.
— grey (squatarola squatarola), 119,
120, 161, 197, iggetseq., 237.
— ringed (charadrius h. hiaticula),
36, 52, 146, 161.
Popham, Mr. H. L., 2, 171; and
black-throated ousel, 27 ; on
nesting habits of wood sandpiper,
34, 42 ; and cuckoos, 37 ; and
dusky ousel, 47 ; and redpolls,
52 ; and red-breasted goose, 55,
154; on birds of Golchika, iig;
on curlew sandpiper, 124, 127,
I2g; on divers, 150; on blue
throats, 162 ; at Golchika, 188 ;
on migration at Novaya Zemlya,
304-
Popham, Mr. Leyborne, 306.
Potapooskoye, 170.
Pourga, 1 78.
Prokopchuk, Gerasim Androvitch, (i\ et
seq. ; house of, g6 et seq. ; methods
of business,io5, no, 266 ; on birds,
154, 162 ; and fox, 157 ; reindeer,
206 ; at church, 264, 268.
— Joseph Gerasimvitch, 63, 66, 175.
2ig, 241 et seq., 266 et seq.
— Marusia, 94, 174, 241 ct seq., 267.
— Nicolai, 243, 247.
— Simeon, 240, 243, 247, 254.

Protyvik, 15, 70, 91, 100.
Y\.z.Tca\%&xi.(lagopus rupestris), iig, 120,
225.
Pustoy, 162, 288.
Pyasina River, 44, igi.
Rabchik. See Hazel-hen.
Ragna, s.s., 281, 284, 289, 308 et seq.,
316.
Redpoll, mealy (carduelis I. linaria),
41, 43. 51. 58, 158. 311-
— Coues' (carduelis h. exilipes), 52.
Redwing (turdus musicus), 21, 27, 33.
Reeve (machetes pugnax), 145, 189.
See also Ruff.
Reindeer, 205, 208, 212, 219, 258.
Religion, of Siberiaks, 115 ; of natives,
108.
Riparia riparia. See Sand-martin.
Rissa t. tridactyla. See Kittiwake.
Road, Krasnoyarsk to Yenesiesk, 14.
Ruff (machetes pugnax), 50, 57, 161,
253, 288.
Samoyedes, 103, 106 et seq., 113, 180;
names for birds, 160 ; anecdote of,
230 ; name of, 237 ; wedding, 277.
Sanders, Mr. Armytage, 140.
Sand-martin (riparia riparia), g, 10.
Sandpiper, common (tringa hypoleuca),
24, 36.
— curlew (erolia ferruginea), 123 et
seq. ; nest and eggs of, 127 ; breed
ing habits of, 127 et seq. ; flocking
of, 128 ; call of, I2g ; migration of,
130, 161 ; young of, 224-225.
— purple (erolia m. jnaritima), 311.
— terek (terekia cinered), 41.
— wood (tringa glareola), 33, 34, 38,
42.
Schwanenburg, 170-171.
Scoter, common (oidemia n. nigra),
300.
Scurvy, 177-
Seal, 8g.
Seebohm, 2, 19, 70, 171, 219 ; at the
Kureika, 38 ; on dusky ousel,
47 ; visits Breokoffsky, 57, sg ; on
birds of Golchika, 119, 151 ; on
note of grey plover, 201 ; on native
tribes, 237.
Seld, S3.
Shammanism, 108, log.
Shore-lark (eremophila alpestris), 145,
158, 161.
Siberian Company, 7, 257, 280, 307.
Skua, arctic (stercorarius parasiticus),
igi-192, 155.
— \on^-i&i\eA(stercorarius longicaudus),
155. 194, 199. 247.

INDEX

327

Skua, pomatorhine (stercorarius poma-
rinus), 54, 119, 297, 308.
Skule, S.S., 280, 284, 292, 297, 301, 309,
316-317-
Sledge dog, 68, 72 et seq.
Sledge, reindeer, 206-207.
Sloika, 206.
Smallpox, 105.
Snipe, common (gallinago g. gallinago),
54, 59-
— great (gallinago media), 52.
— pintailed (gallinago stenura), 27, 33,
54-
Somateria spectabilis. See Eider.
Sopochnaya, 75, 294.
Sotnikoff family, 206 et seq.
— Vassilli, 259.
Squatarola squatarola. See Plover,
grey.
Starling (sturnus vulgaris), 21.
Stercorarius. See Skua.
Sterna paradiscea. See Tern, arctic.
Stint, little (erolia m. minuta), 71, 81,
134, i8g ; photographing, 135 ;
habits of, 134-136 ; migration of,
136, 161 ; nest of, 193, 194, 253.
— Temminck's (erolia temminckii), 51,
58, 71 ; nest of, 137 ; courtship of,
137 ; photographing, 137-139 1
habits of, 140; migration of, 161.
Sturgeon, 53.
Sturnus vulgaris. See Starling.
Svyato-Troitskiy, Monastir, 31.
Swan, Bewick's (cygnus bewickii), Sg,
81, 150.
Swerdrup, Captain, 285.
Swerifskye, 228 et seq.
Swertzoff, 123.
Swift, Siberian [cypselus pacificus), 161.
Sylkin, the Samoyede, 102, io8, in,
178, 188 et seq., 22g, 271.
Syphilis, 113.

Taiga, 45, 46.
Tannykka. See Gull.
Tartary, Sea of, I.
Tatars, 54.
Teal [anas c. crecca), 41.
Telegraph, in forest, 28 ; at Golchika,
106.
Terekia cinerea. See Sandpiper, terek.
Tern, arctic (stemaparadiscea), 43, 50,
148, 161, 194- ^, ^^ , ^
Tetrastes bonasia. See Hazel-hen.
Thrush, black-throated [turdus atrigu
laris), 26, 27.
— dusky (turdtis fuscatus), 47, 52, 58.
— pale [turdus ohscurus), 35.
— Siberian [turdus sihiricus), 27, 33.

Tilyokko. See Plover, Eastern golden.
Timber, Siberian, 289-290.
Tringa hypoleuca. See Sandpiper,
common.
— glareola. See Sandpiper, wood.
Tromsoe, 285, 315 et seq.
Trotzska, 10.
Tufek. See Godwit.
TuUoni. See Eider.
Tundra, 186, 205.
Tungus, 48, 219.
Tunguska Rivers, 18, 21.
Turdus atrigularis. See Thrush,
black-throated.
— fuscatus. See Thrush, dusky.
— musicus. See Redwing.
— ohscurus. See Thrush, pale.
— pilaris. See Fieldfare.
— sihiricus. See Thrush, Siberian.
Turnstone (arenaria i. interpres), 161,
igg ; migration of, 234, 283,
288.
Turukhansk, 31, 32, ^T,et seq., 172.
Turukhansk, steamer, 162, 262.

Uria I. lomvia. See Guillemot, Briin
nich's.

VassilH, 7, 8, 10, 24, 35, 3g, 74, 86,
188 et seq., 242, 250, 268, 274.
VassiUi, Saint, 31.
Vega Harbour, 294.
Verkne Imbatskaya, 25.
Vino, 195.
Vorogovo, 20, 21, 102.
Vostratine, Stephan Vassillievitch, 11.
— Vassilli Vassillievitch, 11-15.

Wagtail, white [motacilla a. alba), 10,
71. 157. 161.
— yellow-headed [motacilla c. citreola),
33. 5°. 52-
Waigatz, 300, 303, 304.
Warbler, Eversmann's [phylloscopus b.
borealis), 33, 50. 54-
— yellow-browed (phylloscopus s. super
ciliosus), 21, 33.
Warsaw, 3.
Wheatear [cenanthe ce. cenanthe), 146,
158, 161, 253, 283.
Widgeon [anas penelope), 21, 41.
Wiggins, Captain, 103, in, 171, 301,
306.
Willoughby, Sir Hugh, 305.
Willow-grouse (/fliftf^Mi' ffl/i5«i'), 147, 160,
162, 193, 194, 253.
Witherby, Mr. H. F., 37.

328

INDEX

Women merchants, 49.
Wood, drift, 42.
Woodpecker [dryobates m, major), 2,1,
24-
Yenesei, ancient names of, I, 18; size
of, 18; breaking up of ice, ig ;
fisheries, 53, 55 ; storm on, 85 et

seq. ; barrier to migration, 238 ;
birds on, 245 ; trade with, 287.
Yenesei, steamer, 1 63.
Yenesiesk, 10, II, 12, 14, 15.
Yenesiesk, steamer, 261, 281, 292.
Yugor Strait, 301, 303.
Yuraks, 31, 79, 82, 185, 229, 246;
distribution of, 103, 237, 238.

Printed by Morhison & Gibb Limited, Edinburgh

£y THE SAME AUTHOR
THE WOOD PEOPLE:
AND OTHERS
By maud D. HAVILAND
ILLUSTRATED BY HARRY ROUNTREE
Crown 8vo. Cloth. Ss. net
THOSE who would adventure into the wild places
of our islands and gain a more intimate acquaint
ance with the denizens, both indigenous and migratory,
cannot do so in a pleasanter way than under the
guidance of Miss Haviland. The sketches contained
in "The Wood People" describe in story form
episodes in the life-history of various birds and beasts,
and reveal on the part of the author not only an
exact knowledge of natural history, but also a sym
pathetic understanding of the feelings and motives of
animals. Miss Haviland seems to see the drama of
animal life, its pathos and tragedy, and has the art
of enchaining the reader's attention with stories of
hares, plovers, stoats, badgers, and jackdaws, told in
language that brings to the senses the smell of fresh
earth, the rustling of leaves, and the sound of wind
sweeping over a reed-fringed lake. At the same
time she leaves the animals as they are, and does
not try to endow them with " super " animal or semi-
human qualities. The illustrations by Mr. Harry
Rountree are in complete sympathy with the studies,
and add not a little to the attractiveness of the volume.
London: EDWARD ARNOLD
22

THE WOOD PEOPLE
By maud D. HAVILAND
SOME PRESS OPINIONS
" Maud D. Haviland's ' The Wood People : and Others ' should
appeal strongly to young lovers of nature. It is a book of stories in
which animals of various kinds play the chief parts. Written in an
entertaining manner, these stories will furnish capital reading for young
people, and should be a real help to mothers and others who require
something to read to children which may be calculated to do rather more
than simply amuse them." — Field.
" Miss Maud D. Haviland is acknowledged as one of our most
accomplished interpreters of the wild, and there is not a chapter in this
latest selection of her nature stories that has failed to enthral us. The
reader is simply compelled to be enmeshed in her wonderful imagination
and look on at the lower animals living and loving, working and playing,
as in some comidie animale." — Pall Mall Gazette.
"This reviewer has for some years seen most, if not all, of that
large class of writing the animal novel. He remembers no writer who
sets forth incidents in animal life more cleverly and pleasantly than Miss
Haviland. Her style is virile without any of those mannerisms of violence
with which some other writers of the school offend. There are no
attempts to explain the psychology of a rabbit being chased by a ferret or
a pike being attacked by an otter. Simply the true story is told of the
contest and the upshot. By dint of a high and elusive art working
within the strict bounds of actuality, the long series of stories collected
in this book shows not one that is not thoroughly interesting and worth
reading. With sex and parentage Miss Haviland deals beautifully, and
in general has an apt choice of words that seems to be instinctive." Daily News.
" To all lovers of wild nature ' The Wood People,' with its delicate
illustrations by Harry Rountree, strongly appeals. The book is a
charming collection of stories." — Nottingham Guardian.
" It is a perfectly charming piece of work."— Birmingham Post.
" The stories are all true in the spirit, if not in the letter ; but of
course the charm of the book lies in the telling, and nothing but a long
extract could show how it has charmed us." — Journal of Education.
" The author of this book has gone deep into the ways of nature,
and writes of her furred and feathered people with real knowledge and
insight." — Church Times.
" The sketches are well seen in the actualities of natural history, but
they make always a happy study of picturesque and dramatic interests." Scotsman.
" Miss Maud D. Haviland is among the few living writers who can
talk in familiar language with the little people of the wood." Daily Graphic.
London: EDWARD ARNOLD

ADVENTURES AMONG WILD
FLOWERS.
By JOHN TREVENA.
With Illustrations. One Volume. Large Crown B>vo. 7s. 6d. net.
Hitherto Mr. John Trevena has been known to the public as
a novelist only. Here he reveals that portion of his life which
has been devoted to the studying, the collecting, and the growing
of wild flowers, more especially those which are to be found upon
the peaks and pastures of the Alps. In this book he invites
readers to accompany him upon a series of expeditions, chiefly
among the mountains which divide Italy from Switzerland, some
times across an English down or pasture ; and during these
rambles he draws attention to the flowers which grow beside the
path ; mentioning the adventures he has enjoyed while collecting
them ; and telling a few stories concerning the people who dwell
in the tiny villages of the Alpine region. Realizing that nobody
wants to be troubled with dry botanical details, the author
merely gives a list of some of the plants which a pedestrian may
chance upon during an extensive wandering in the Alps, adding
his own comments upon them. He has much to say concerning
the people of various nationalities he has met with upon his
expeditions. He traces the great rock-myth of the Saxifrage back
to its inception, venturing in this matter to propose a new theory.
He describes the character of Alpine peasants, and gives advice
to travellers. This is a book which should delight all gardeners ;
and prove of deep interest to those who have not bestowed
more than a passing glance upon wild flowers.

POULTRY HUSBANDRY.
By EDWARD BROWN, F.L.S.,
Late Hon. Se& National Poultry Organisation Society ; President International
Association of Poultry Instructors and Investigators.
Author of " Races of Domestic Poultry," " Poultry Fattening," etc.
Fully Ilhistmted, Demy ?>vo. 8s. 6d. net.
In no department of Animal Husbandry have greater changes
taken place during the last two decades than the breeding of
fowls and the production of eggs and poultry. Conditions and

methods have completely altered. Systems formerly adopted
have been abandoned or revolutionized, in many cases giving
place to those which were previously unknown.
For the past year the author has been engaged upon an entirely
new work, in which has been brought into one focus from his
former works what is applicable to modern conditions, together
with the result of practical experience, and research work of later
years, dealing with the entire problem — productive, technical, and
commercial. In it will be found a vast amount of new material,
and special attention has been given to future developments,
whether on extensive or intensive lines.

THE COMPLETE SPORTSMAN
(Complleb front tbe ©ccasional papers of
IReginalb Drafte Biffin).
By HARRY GRAHAM,
Author of " The Perfect Gentleman," " Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless
Homes," etc.
Illustrated hy Lewis Baumer.
One Volume. Crown S,vo. 6s.
In this latest work from the versatile pen of Captain Harry
Graham, almost every branch of sport is lightly touched upon,
from big-game shooting to village cricket, from hunting to bridge ;
and the author's humorous hints to would-be sportsmen are
amusingly illustrated by numerous examples of the various excit
ing sporting adventures experienced by the immortal Mr. Reginald
Drake Bififin and his family.
Captain Graham may well be termed a kindly satirist, for he is
no cynic, and his genial and good-humoured chaff delights without
ever offending the most susceptible reader. His reputation as
a humorist will undoubtedly be enhanced by the publication of
" The Complete Sportsman," a book that should appeal, not only
to all lovers of sport, but also to that wide public which appreciates
witty and humorous writing.

Z1!%T\La.. " +¦ «nd 43 Maddox Street,

Scholarly, Reg. London.
Telephone :
No. 1883 Mayfair. February, 191 5

Teleoh Bond Street, London, W,

Mr. Edward Arnold's
SPRING
ANNOUNCEMENTS, 1915,

A SURGEON IN BELGIUM.
By H. S. SOUTTAR, F.R.C.S.,
Assistant Surgeon West London Hospital.
One Volume. Demy %vo.
The author of this interesting and vivid narrative was one of
the surgeons in charge of the British Field Hospital for
Belgium, which began its work in Antwerp last September with
150 beds, and a staff of eight doctors and twenty nurses. On
October gth, in view of the German occupation, the hospital had
to leave Antwerp. The retirement was effected in good order,
over 100 wounded patients being removed in seven motor-buses.
A fresh start was made at Furnes, where the hospital is still
(January, 1915) at work, acting as the official Field Hospital
of the Belgian Army. Furnes is only a few miles behind the
trenches in the firing line, and the work of the hospital differed
therefore considerably in character from that of the Base
hospitals ; in some cases important operations were carried out
within an hour of the patient being wounded. The position of
the hospital also made the work particularly exciting from a
military point of view, and its independence of the British
medical organisation brought up many novel problems of supply
and maintenance. During his stay in Belgium the author had
occasional opportunities of visiting several places already famous
in the history of the war, such as Termonde, Malines, Purvies,
and Ypres, and the scenes he witnessed are described with such
graphic fidelity that the deep impression they made upon him at
the time are conveyed to the reader without any loss of reality.

LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W.

2 Mr. Edward Arnold's Spring Announcements.
A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI.
By MAUD D. HAVILAND,
Author of " The Wood People," etc.
With Numerous Illustrations from Photographs by the Author.
One Volume Demy 9>vo. los. 6d. net.
This is the account of a summer spent in unconventional
surroundings among unconventional people. With three com
panions, the writer travelled two thousand miles down the
mighty Yenesei River, and spent two months in a little pioneer
settlement at the most northerly limit of civilization, among the
simple Russian fisher-folk and the Siberian aborigines. Herej
some weeks after its outbreak, news arrived of the war in
Europe. The voyage home by sea was an adventurous one.
The writer and one of her companions reached England in
October, " like a pair of Rip van Winkles," knowing nothing
but the barest facts about the war, which had then been raging
for two months.
Miss Haviland is known as a keen naturalist and successful
photographer of wild life, and the photographic illustrations are
not the least interesting feature of the volume. But although the
book is one which will appeal especially to nature lovers, it may
be read with equal enjoyment by those who know nothing of
natural history. It contains plenty of adventures, both comical
and tragical, recounted in lively style ; and introduces the reader
to a number of characters, both human and feathered, that have
not strayed into many previous books of travel.

THE WOOD PEOPLE: AND
OTHERS.
By MAUD D. HAVILAND.
Illustrated by Harry Rountree.
Crown %vo. Cloth. 5s. net.
" Miss Maud D. Haviland is acknowledged as one of our most accom
plished interpreters of the wild, and there is not a chapter in this latest
selection of her nature stories that has failed to enthral us. The reader is
simply compelled to be enmeshed in her wonderful imagination and look on
at the lower animals living and loving, working and playing, as in some
comedie animale." — Pall Mall Gazette.

Mr. Edward Arnold's Spring Announcements. 3
POULTRY HUSBANDRY.
By EDWARD BROWN, F.L.S.,
Late Hon. Sec. National Poultry Organisation Society ; President International
Association of Poultry Instructors and Investigators.
Author of *' Races of Domestic Poultry," " Poultry Fattening," etc.
Fully Illustrated. Demy 8w. 8s. 6d. net.
In no department of Animal Husbandry have greater changes
taken place during the last two decades than the breeding of
fowls and the production of eggs and poultry. Conditions and
methods have completely altered. Systems formerly adopted
have been abandoned or revolutionized, in many cases giving
place to those which were previously unknown.
For the past year the author has been engaged upon an entirely
new work, in which has been brought into one focus from his
former works what is applicable to modern conditions, together
with the result of practical experience, and research work of later
years, dealing with the entire problem — productive, technical, and
commercial. In it will be found a vast amount of new material,
and special attention has been given to future developments,
whether on extensive or intensive lines.
THE MAGNETIC COMPASS IN
AIRCRAFT.
By Captain F. CREAGH OSBORNE, R.N.,
Superintendent of Compasses, Admiralty.
Post d)VO. With Transparent Protractor. Cloth, as. 6d. net.
This little volume will be found indispensable by aviators,
whose work has often been seriously handicapped for want of the
information contained in it. The author's position as Director of
Compasses at the Admiralty is a sufficient guarantee that the
contents are eminently practical and lucid. A useful feature of
the work is the inclusion, in a pocket, of a transparent circular
protractor.
SCHOOL HYGIENE.
By Dr. W. B. DRUMMOND,
Author of " An Introduction to Child Study," etc.
Cloth. 3s. 6d.
" Education is the guidance of growth. Everything which
interferes with a child's growth interferes with the work of the
teacher, and is, therefore, his concern." These words represent
the point of view from which this book is written. Its special
aim is to show how much enlightened teachers may do to promote
their pupils' health both in and out of school. Common diseases
and disorders are described with the object of explaining what can
be done to avert the dangers which school life commonly entails.

4 Mr. Edward Arnold's Spring Announcements.
MEDICAL NURSING.
By A. S. WOODWARK, M.D., M.R.C.P.,
Lecturer on Medical Nursing and Physician to the Royal Waterloo
Hospital and Miller General Hospital for South-East London ; ¦
Medical Tutor to King's College Hospital.
335 P^-S^h '^'^ 68 Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net.
The author, in addition to giving clear instructions in modern
methods of nursing, has endeavoured to supply in a concise form
all the information needed by a nurse in regard to the illnesses
from which her patients may be suffering.
One feature in which this work differs from most books on nursing
is that the symptoms, and treatment of each disease are outlined
so that the nurse is enabled to follow the line of treatment ordered
by the physician, and can thus the more intelligently carry out the
clearly described details of nursing.
The whole field of Medical Nursing is dealt with. Massage,
which is now an important branch of medical treatment, has had
the attention which its growing importance deserves. Full instruc
tions are given for dealing with the common emergencies which
are likely to arise, instructions being given which will enable the
nurse to carry out treatment pending the arrival of the physician.
The subject of Invalid Cookery is fully discussed.
SURGICAL AFTER-TREATMENT.
By ALAN H. TODD, M.B., M.S., F.R.C.S.,
Surgical Registrar and Tutor, Guy's Hospital.
Crown 8vo. Illustrated. About 4s. 6d. net.
Whether or not an operation is successful depends, not only
upon the skill of the surgeon and the method of carrying out the
operation, but upon the care which is subsequently bestowed
upon the patient and the method of after-treatment employed.
It will be readily admitted that the end of the operation fre
quently marks the commencement of the surgeon's anxiety.
Careful after-treatment will often bring through safely the most
hopeless case, while neglect or lack of care will render void the
result of the most skilful surgeon's efforts.
The author has made full use of his opportunities, and here gives
the benefit of his successful experience at one of the large Metro
politan hospitals.
SEVENTY YEARS OF IRISH LIFE.
By W. R. Le FANU.
A New, Popular Edition. Paper Covers, is. net ; Cloth, as. net.
" It would be difficult to find any single volume containing such a multitude
of capital stories between its covers." — Daily Telegraph.
"¦This book is a feast of amusing anecdote. It will delight all readers —
English and Scotch no less than Irish, Nationalists no less than Unionists,
Roman Catholics no less than Orangemen. ' ' — Times.

Mr. Edward Arnold's Spring A nnouncements. 5
3V:E]V tMOVELS.
HIS ENGLISH WIFE
(SEINE ENGLISCHE FRAU).
By RUDOLPH STRATZ.
6s.
It is thought that this novel may possess special interest at the
present time as showing how our English character and way of
living appear when seen " Through German Eyes." The book is
carefully constructed to bring out the contrast, at as many points
as possible, between the decadence attributed by the author to
the English nation, and the patriotic idealism which he claims for
the Germans. His obvious sincerity and earnestness of purpose,
and the fact that his book had won a wide popularity among his
countrymen before the war broke out, are a sufficient guarantee
that we have here an unusually favourable opportunity of seeing
ourselves as others see us.
BILLIE'S MOTHER.
By MARY J. H. SERINE,
Author of "A Stepson of the Soil," "A Romance of the Simple," etc.
Crown 8vo. 6s.
Mrs. Skrine is noted for the fidelity of her studies of English
country life, and for the success with which she compasses that
particularly rare and difficult thing, the creation of a living peasant
in fiction. In her new novel she goes further afield and takes in
a wider horizon generally than in her previous books, thus offering
more satisfactory enjoyment to her readers.
This story is a study of an English peasant woman, who in
difficult, unfamiliar, and conflicting circumstances, is still swayed
and guided by her inherited and racial instincts and codes. It
tells of her mistakes and her wisdom, of her fears, hopes, and
outlook, and of the conflict of the two great strands of love in such
a woman— for the man and for the child. Her disastrous hus
band, his sins and sorrows ; her baby son Billie, his puzzlement
and point of view ; his refreshing sister Lickle ; a Scotch nurse ;
a family lawyer, John Rixby ; and last, but not least, the old
mother, Susan Rogers, and her contributions to the solution of
the main problem— all find their places in the plot and movement
of the narrative.
Its scene is laid in Australia, then in the New Forest country,
with an episode not unimportant in an old Scotch country house.
We will not further reveal the story, which, it is hoped, will carry
on the reader with a natural motion through its difficult and
poignant developments.

6 Mr. Edward Arnold's New Books.
V^EW NOVELS.
A BRILLIANT NOVEL BY THE AUTHOR OF "TANTE."
THE ENCOUNTER.
By ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK,
Author of "Tante," "Franklin Kane," "Amabel Channice," etc.
6s,
" ' The Encounter ' is a striking story. It is a novel that reveals an in
timate and careful study of the German mind from a woman's point of view,
and, being at the same time an extremely ably-written book, it should find
many interested readers at the present moment."— -Morning Post.
" The individuality, even the idiosyncrasy, of each character in this story
is drawn with such lucidity and precision that one gets something of the
impression of a group of statuary. The creative artistry of it all fills one
with profound admiration. This is a story of quite exceptional power and
interest, and no one who loves good literature should miss it." — Pall Mali

" It is impossible to leave a page unread — many pages are worth re-reading
again and again. The book is full of beauty and wisdom." — Westminster
Gazette. " This Is a book which it is impossible not to finish and admire." —
Country Life.
' ' A brilliant conception of the interplay of temperament such as has ever
been the theme of real novelists." — Athenmim.
" The portrait of a small German watering-place is delicious, and through
out the writing is as firm as it is supple. The story has the fine intention
and broadly designed setting which we expect from such an artist as Miss
Sedgwick. " — Manchester Guardian.
" A novel that is brilliant, a novel that grows all the greater in retrospect."
— Boston Evening Transcript.

LOCKETT'S LEA.
By SIBELL VANSITTART.
6s.
" A clever novel of hereditary tendencies." — Spectator.
"An amazingly interesting story of the life of a girl who is born to wicked
ness by reason of the sins of both her father and her mother. The book is
exceptionally clever."— G/ote.
"Well worth reading." — Observer.

Mr. Edward A mold's New Books. y
tKEW 3<C0VELS.
IN THE CITY OF UNDER.
By EVELYNE RYND,
Author of " Mrs. Green."
Second Impression. 6s.
" The story is a medley of mystery, allegory, fairy fiction, and wholesome
philosophy, so skilfully blended that the whole assumes an aspect of vivid
reality. The effect is one of complete novelty. We do not know anything
that quite equalls the story in this quality of originality. Its freshness and
absolute unconventionality gives it an irresistible charm." — Pall Mall Gazette.
" ' In the City of Under ' is a charming book." — Times.
"Miss Evelyne Rynd's new book, • In the City of Under,' is published by
Mr. Edward Arnold, who is, in my opinion, one of the very best judges of
fiction among the publishers. Miss Rynd won her position years ago with
that most excellent and living book, ' Mrs. Green.' 'In the City of Under '
thoroughly deserves and richly rewards careful reading." — British Weekly.
" A story quite delightfully out of the common." — Tatler.
ALIENS.
By WILLIAM McFEE.
65.
" Mr. McFee begins with a tremendous incident, and then the story harks
back and ultimately leads up to it again. In the meantime he gains and
maintains our interest both in the story and the manner of its telling. Perhaps
he has never read Mr. Conrad, but it would be surprising to be assured of
that. It is not only that the broken, indirect method, the seeing through
others' eyes, alternates with simple and direct narration very much as the
author of 'Chance' might have devised it, but the phrases are sometimes
almost familiar. ' Well, what do you think he asked me for ? Nothing less
than fifty pounds. He seemed to have a mania for fifty pounds.' This is
splendid, and Mr. Conrad might have written it." — Manchester Guardian.
" There is an indefinable charm in ' Aliens.' " — Evening Standard.
"This narrative is extraordinarily simple, direct, and gripping."— Lmy/ooi
Daily Post.
"There are some books which make you say, 'Here is literature — what
ever this man writes is worth reading.' Such a book is ' Aliens.' " — Christian
Globe.

8 Mr. Edward Arnold's New Books.
tHEW NOVELS.
THE WISE VIRGINS.
By LEONARD WOOLF,
Author of " The Village in the Jungle."
6s.
" The story is extraordinarily clever and amusing, and it certainly leaves
one rather agape. " — Pall Mall Gazette,
"The story is rich in closely-studied details of character and manners, and
here and there are emotional scenes of singular art." — The Times.
' ' Mr. Woolf is going to be another of the novelists who count. ' The
Wise Virgins ' is notable chiefly for the smartness of its dialogue. The talk
is not only witty ; it is really good." — Scotsman.
" It is only to those who can stand tragedy and like plain speaking that the
book can be recommended. To them it can be recommended very strongly . "
— Country Life.
THE HOLE OF THE PIT.
By ADRIAN ROSS (Arthur R. Ropes).
6s.
' ' Seldom since the death of Edgar Allan Poe has there been published a
book more uncanny, yet stamped with greater verisimilitude than ' The Hole
of the Pit.' Mr. A. R. Ropes has conceived a weird yet enthralling plot." —
Yorkshire Post.
" Mr. Ropes skilfully blends the weird and repulsive in incident and local
colour with the tender glow of first love." — Occult Review.
' ' The author is to be congratulated on the skill and taste with which he
insinuates horrors rather than describes them." — Birmingham Post.

THE RECOILING FORCE.
By A. M. CHAMPNEYS,
Author of " Bride Elect."
6s.
"This story has much better claim to attention than that of merely
possessing a clever label. It is a story of the liveliest interest, in which three
very different characters are skilfully Aislv/b."— Liverpool Daily Post.
"It is a good novel, and the characterization is excellent."— yoyftsAw Post.

Mr. Edward Arnold's New Books. 9
RECOLLECTIONS OF BAR AND
BENCH.
By the Right Hon. VISCOUNT ALVERSTONE,
G.C.M.G., K.B.
With Portraits, and numerous Sketches by the late
Sir Frank Lockwood.
Third Impression. Demy %vo. 12s. 6d. net.
' ' A book which is a mine of ripe experience and sound suggestion, In its
condensation, its contempt for the unreal and the unnecessary, its character
istic sanity and thorough breadth of view, above all its plainness and restraint
of speech, it reminds us of one great predecessor of the author's on the
English Bench, and his name was Francis Bacon." — Pall Mall Gazette.
"Lord Alverstone's recollections are the story of professional success
rarely — if, indeed, ever — equalled. They will be studied, and with profit, by
every young and ambitious barrister." — The Times.
"A book full of wisdom that is not altogether professional, and much
richer in humour than you would think at first sight. ' ' — Morning Post.
" As his work has brought him into touch with a great many repre
sentative details of our national life, its arts and sciences, manufactures,
hygiene, and politics, his pages are interesting to everyone." — Evening
Standard. " Lord Alverstone's achievements in politics, in athletics, and in music
fill other chapters in this well-arranged book of ' Recollections,' which every
man in the profession, young and old — and especially the young — will want
to read for himself." — Law fournal.
" This volume will make a wide appeal by reason of its general interest and
of the judicial wisdom and shrewd knowledge of human nature which mani
fest themselves in every chapter." — Guardian.
' ' Must prove of great interest to lawyers and laymen alike. " — Liverpool
Daily Post.
" Good and interesting books of reminiscences are especially welcome just
now when the depressing ' fog of war ' lies over us all. They help to take us
out of ourselves, and so there will be a warm and wide welcome for Lord
Alverstone's ' Recollections.' " — Daily Chronicle.

GERMANY AND THE NEXT WAR.
By General F. von BERNHARDT.
Popular Edition, 2s. net, paper ; 2S. 6d. net, cloth.
This is the great " Bernhardi " book — ^the author's latest work
in its complete form.

lo Mr. Edward A mold's New Books.
DAYS OF MY YEARS.
By Sir MELVILLE MACNAGHTEN, C.B.
With Portrait. One Volume. Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.
" A great debt is due to Mr. Arnold, for Sir Melville was at one time
adamant in his refusal to write his memoirs, and if he had persisted in his
decision many excellent things would have been lost to us." — Weekly Dispatch.
' ' Those who imagine that only French police officials can write good books
about their work will be surprised at the readableness of Sir Melville's
volume. " — Globe.
" A varied and most human book." — Observer.
' ' A fascinating volume, and written with a grace and a gay gentleness that
make, as it were, a fragrant border to the garden of guilt in which the
debonair ' detective's ' feats were accomplished."— Referee.
"Sir Melville's book is engrossing. " — Sketch.
" Sir Melville MacNaghten strikes us as a man who has enjoyed his life's
work extremely well, and his readers, if only they have the normal appetite
for crime, will enjoy his book." — Saturday Review.
" As full of human interest as it is easy and colloquial in its style." — Daily
Graphic.

THE COMPLETE SPORTSMAN.
By HARRY GRAHAM,
Author of "The Perfect Gentleman," "Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless
Homes," etc.
Illustrated by Lewis Baumer.
One Volume. Crown 8vo. 6s.
"For a good laugh let me recommend 'The Complete Sportsman.'
Captain Harry Graham has conferred a blessing upon hundreds of new
readers beside those many thousands who have already stood up to give him
a cheer with ' The Perfect Gentleman ' held tightly in their hands. The
sportsman who can get on without it will be dreary company." — Tatler.
" The better the sportsman, and the more he knows about game of all
kinds, the more will he enjoy this delicious caricature of sporting reminis
cences." — Queen.

Mr. Edward Arnold's New Books. ii
PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN
DIARY.
By Sir CHARLES VILLIERS STANFORD,
Mus.Doc, D.C.L., LL.D.
With Photogravure Portrait and other Illustrations, Demy 8vo.
I2S. 6d. net.
" This volume is quite the best thing of its kind that English musical auto
biography can show. Sir Charles has met many distinguished men, seen
them all with very clear eyes, and preserved many admirable vignettes for us.
It would be hard to find a book so full of good stories, many of them of the
best Irish kind." — Nation.
" A volume full of the most attractive anecdotes." — Evening Standard.
" One of the best books of reminiscences we have ever read." — Outlook.
" From almost every page we could pick out a plum " — Queen.
" We would open our notice of this delightful volume with a word of assur
ance to the general reader. It is certainly written by a distinguished musician,
but little knowledge of music or musicians is needed for its appreciation. The
same admirably catholic taste which enables him to appreciate Brahms and
Wagner, Bach and Offenbach, Gluck and Johann Strauss, is shown in his
outlook on humanity, and is one of the chief charms of the book." — Spectator.

FRIENDS AND MEMORIES.
By MAUDE VALERIE WHITE.
Om Volume. Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.
' ' A human document of the most enthralling interest. Though we all know
Miss White as the composer of many magnificent songs, it is rather as a
happy optimist, an intensely human personage, a genial critic, and a perfect
raconteuse that she shows herself in this witty, humorous, actual, vivid,
sparkling book." — Daily Telegraph.
" One of the most interesting and delightful memoirs I have read for a long
time. It is quite a wonderful example of the fascination of a sense of humour.
Miss White is never dull. She writes naturally and delightfully, and her
Great Folk are just as human and simple as she is herself." — Tatler.
" Never has it been my good fortune to read so many pages that are filled
with what I can only call the fragrance of life. Sorrows and troubles Miss
White has known in abundance, but she steadfastly refuses to dwell upon
anything but the joy of living and the kindness of her many friends. This
splendid way of regarding the world is one of the qualities that has made her
welcome and more than welcome wherever she goes ; it is also the quality
that gives an almost unique distinction to her volume of reminiscences." —
Punch.

12 Mr. Edward Arnold's New Books.
ADVENTURES AMONG WILD
FLOWERS.
By JOHN TREVENA.
With Illustrations. One Volume. Large Crown 8vo. js. 6d. net.
" A book of very great attractiveness. A very discursive book it is, with
much autobiographical revelation and opinions on all things in heaven and
earth. Running through this collection of essays we find, however, a pleasing
and refreshing survey of many flowers and plants which will be dear to all
lovers of gardens, of whom I am due. Yet most of all in Mr. Trevena's book
do I care for the many anecdotes." — The Sphere.
" This volume is another nail hammered into the coffin-lid of dry-as-dust
natural history. Mr. Trevena's book is as engrossing and knowledgable as
any of that growing series of nature books which, in order of merit, stand
only one shelf below that on which repose the masterpieces of Jefferies and
Mr. W. H. Hudson. "—Pall Mall Gazette.
YE SUNDIAL BOOK.
By T. GEOFFREY W. HENSLOW, M.A.
With i^oo Illustrations. Royal 8vo. Handsomely bound, \os. 6A.net.
' ' All lovers of sundials — and what garden of any size is complete without one ?
— will welcome this beautiful book with enthusiasm. Here we have between
300 and 400 delineations of sundials in their surroundings, each a little work
of art in itself." — Evening Standard.
"A very charming book on a delightful subject. As a guide to choice in
design of sundials this unique collection of illustrations is invaluable to
amateurs as well as to architects and garden designers." — Liverpool Daily Post.
THE PROMENADE TICKET:
A LAY RECORD OF CONCERTS.
By A. H. SIDGWICK,
Author of " Walking Essays."
Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.
" A witty and delightful book, full of genial criticism of music, music-lovers,
and would-be music-lovers." — Spectator.
" What the Upton Letters — owing, perhaps, to a certain grandiosity — just
failed to do for literature and the amenities, this book, in a more unbuttoned
way, easily compasses for music." — The Times.
" It is a criticism which will be read with relish by every music-lover, and
not least by the professional musician. ' The Promenade Ticket ' is
if' emphatically a book to be enjoyed." — Musical News.
{  ' 
LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W.

08837 2082