THROUGH WILD EUROPE 265 



my mosquito-net. This excited much admiration 

 for the fineness of its texture, the fabric in universal 

 use for the purpose being a thick, close sort ot 

 cheese-cloth, which must be very suffocating in the 

 hot nights. 



One of the fishermen here was engaged to take 

 me in his lodka (boat) the next day to a Swan's 

 nest which he knew of. The Mute Swan (Cygnus 

 olor) is found here in a wild state, as well as the 

 Wild Goose (Anser cinereus) ; but both nest early 

 in the year, and by this time both species had 

 hatched their young. In fact, at the house we 

 were staying in they had a brood of young Wild 

 Geese nearly full grown. 



This fisherman was a big, bearded, rough-looking 

 Russian, like nine-tenths of the fishermen in this 

 district, and as I was to spend the whole day alone 

 with him it was first necessary, before starting, to 

 give him full instructions to last all day. Accord- 

 ingly I explained to M. Panaitescu in French what 

 I wanted to do and what he was to do ; he then 

 translated these instructions to one of our Russian 

 boatmen into Roumanian, who again translated into 

 Russian to the fisherman. 



After these necessary preliminaries, off we started. 

 For hours we progressed through narrow channels, 

 at times crossing wide lakes covered with huge 

 water-lilies and strange water-ferns without sighting 



