588 ETHYIA MARILA: 
knowing that now I am utterly helpless, biting my lips as the stones 
seem to whisk by like cannon-balls, with which the slightest contact 
would send us all to eternity ; whilst the boat now turns on one side, 
now rears into the air, and now takes a plunge that quite lifts one’s 
heart out of its place; amidst the rush and the roar and the foam, 
scarcely feeling the icy water which is washing under our backs. 
After one of these passages, my ears ringing in the sudden stillness, 
and my eyes resting on the delightful calm, our boat was drawn to 
the shore to be baled out, when one of the men said there was a piece 
of water which he knew to be the breeding-place of several birds only 
a hundred fathoms or so from where we were. Shwuldering Lieut. 
Halkett’s cloak-boat, I was soon on the promised spot. <A pair of 
Scaup-Ducks that rose as we approached above the bank was a very 
hopeful sign. The place was scarcely bigger than an English Duck- 
pond. It had some beds of bulrushes and reeds, and there were 
several tempting sedgy islets, each of a few feet only in circumference 
—some high, some low; whilst the water was shallow and well 
warmed by the sun, though it was now past midnight. It seemed 
quite a paradise for water-birds. A Red-throated Diver just shewed 
its neck above water at the further side, several pairs of Red-necked 
Phalaropes were flitting about, and an Arctic Tern was sitting on a 
bare islet apparently on its eggs. My cloak was soon full of air, and 
as I floated lightly among the rising weeds the thought of the savage 
yet inspiring scene I had just passed through increased the pleasure 
of the present. I only wanted someone who could properly appreciate 
it to enjoy it with me. Paddling from islet to islet I first found a 
Phalarope’s nest on a tuft, well raised above the water, whilst the 
fairy-like birds were swimming in perfect confidence close to my side. 
Then | had to encounter a fierce attack from the pair of Terns. The 
Diver’s eggs were on a low rushy clump, and the bird came nearer 
to me in my extraordinary turn-out than ever a wild Diver did before 
—even when it rose on the wing it soon settled in another part of 
the pond. At last I found the Scaup’s in a little islet to itself, where 
there was long withered grass—the two eggs lying without any nest, 
and as yet without a particle of down. Another with only a single 
egg was found in an island to which a man waded. It was the 16th 
of June. In an experience of some years Matti had never known 
any other kind of Duck than Jso Sortti breed in that pond, so that I 
have confidence in the eggs, though I did not see the bird actually 
leave them. ‘They are very like Tufted Ducks’, but larger. 
[The foregoing was written at Muoniovara, 2 March 1855, to Mr. Hewitson 
