CYGNUS MUSICUS, AO5 
not to see a human being beside ourselves at this time of year. This 
season for the first time two adventurous settlers have come to the 
lower part of the river [Patsjoki], and I tremble for the result to the 
Swans. In the large piece of water above this place on the 11th of 
June among the many Swans we saw, were several that it seemed to 
me must have nests in the immediate neighbourhood. They circled 
round with disturbed cries and hurried flight, and often came back 
and settled near some particular spot. Still this was the fourth day 
that I had been disappointed in all my hopes founded on such signs 
of finding a new nest. The islands are of all sizes and of every 
character, some covered with woods of Scotch fir, some high and 
rocky and others low and swampy. A good number of them are 
small with shrubby birch trees, and under foot all that exuberance of 
moss and sweet-smelling plants, which gives such beauty to an islet 
inalake. My boat was just issuing from a narrow channel between 
two such islets, when there came into sight a small flat piece of 
ground. It scarcely rose above the level of the water which 
surrounded it and was covered with long-leaved grass of last year, 
now bleached nearly white and pressed down by the winter’s snow. 
Conspicuous in the midst was a little even mound, somewhat flat at 
the top, which at once fulfilled my idea of the Swan’s nest seen by 
the Arctic voyagers [cf. supra]. It was much darker than the 
surrounding grass, and till I used my glass I could not be sure it was 
not a stone; but then I saw clearly the small bits of which it was 
made. My only remaining doubt was that it might be a Diver’s nest, 
which in such a low situation is occasionally similarly constructed. 
One of the men exclaimed that the other boat had been there, for he 
saw the track, but I observed that there were traces of this in three 
directions to the water’s edge, and I was now pretty sure that the 
nest was new, and that the birds had made the track. As the boat 
slowly slided up the shallow margin I sprang out in the height of 
expectation. Three, four, five bounds, still nothing to be seen in the 
nest! disappointment already prepared for, as each step, rapid though 
they were, had plenty of time to bring its own thoughts. I was close 
upon it when the lang side of an egg began to appear, and I stood 
with my feet at the base in breathless admiration when all the six 
eggs lay in full view. They were arranged in two rows, lying as 
close as possible to one another, so as to form a lozenge-shaped and 
not a square figure. The hollow was deep and the eggs not at all 
buried in the substance of the nest, as I have seen them in nests of 
the Mute Swan. They were hard sat upon. 
