i62 STANAVIALACHTA REVISITED 



that our wisest course was to go in search of the peasant 

 who owned the skin of the swan belonging to the two 

 small eggs we had bought some days ago. When we 

 last heard of him he was fishing at one of the islands in 

 the delta which we had visited, not far from Stanavialachta, 

 and we determined to make a second expedition to this 

 locality. Fortunately for us, an opportunity occurred on 

 the following day to run over to this place in the steamer 

 belonging to the company. Outside the bar in the 

 lagoon the cutter was cruising about with pilots to bring 

 any ship which arrived up the river to Alexievka. The 

 steamer had to visit this cutter to take the men a fresh 

 stock of provisions, and we were delighted to make 

 arrangements with Captain Engel to take us with him, to 

 drop us at Stanavialachta, and pick us up on his return. 



We left Alexievka on the 6th of July and landed at 

 our old quarters, but learnt to our disappointment that 

 the peasant we were in quest of had found the fishing so 

 bad that he had given it up in disgust and returned to his 

 native village of Mekitza, some miles north of Alexievka. 

 We were determined to settle the question if possible ; 

 we ascertained that he had not sold the swan's skin, but 

 had taken it with him, so we decided to send one of our 

 men to Mekitza as soon as we returned to Alexievka. 

 In the meantime we started for the tundra to revisit our 

 previous shooting-grounds. We stopped a few minutes 

 on the shore to watch a family of Samoyedes fishing 

 with a seine-net. They seemed to be catching nothing 

 but a small fish resembling a herring, and even these did 

 not appear to be at all plentiful. Leaving the shore, our 

 curiosity led us first to visit the eyries of the two pairs of 

 peregrine falcons, at each of which we had shot one of 

 the birds. We found that the male of the first had 

 paired with the female of the second ; a fresh lining of 



