KOLGUEV AND THE NAVIGATORS xxvii 



a loser. We coastmen know well how to sail : every child understands 

 how to manage an oar, and every woman — beings inferior to men in 

 every respect — would know how to direct a rudder.' And, further on 

 in the same account : — 



'It is true that 130 years ago Barmine, a merchant in Archangel, 

 a Raskolnik, 1 settled in Kolguev at his own expense forty men and 

 forty women who desired to found a hermitage, and all but four died 

 during the first year of their settlement ; but they were all old people, 

 and belonged to a very strict sect which allowed during some months 

 to take food only once a week.' This version differs from Saweljew's. 



In view of my own experience at the goose-catching, this good priest's 

 account is well worth quoting. He does not himself appear to have 

 witnessed it, but quotes an informant from Mezen. 



' It takes us two or three days to arrive to Kolguev ; and there birds 

 are come a great multitude and variety — and what a noise they make ! 

 The goose gaggles, the eider-duck lets hear its voice, and the drake 

 does not remain behind, and the seagull. 



' We begin to shoot it, and during May and June shoot a great deal 

 of it. The dead bird lies in heaps and sometimes begins to stink — 

 but we do not mind it. In the beginning of July the barren geese 

 begins to lose their feather. On the 8th of July a laziness overcomes 

 them. The lazy goose cannot fly, — he has few feathers upon him, and 

 all his down is gone as if some one has plucked him. Such goose sits 

 like an insulted one ; he is silent and sad as if hiding himself and 

 ashamed of his nakedness. Now as soon as these geese occupy the 

 small lake, leaving the big one to go there for food, we put our guns 

 aside and took to snares. We spread the snares on every passage from 

 the small lake into the large one for birds to enter in. At the gate we 

 arrange out of the swamp the entrance ; sloping towards the lake and 

 very steep in the centre that the goose might not go back after having 

 once gotten into the snare. Having finished this arrangement (which 

 scarcely takes us an hour), we let dogs loose and we ourselves begin to 

 make a noise and to bark in unison with the dogs, showing thus to the 

 geese that they must move from the small lake into the large one. 



1 The Raskolniks or ' Old Believers ' seceded from the Greek Church in the days 

 of St. Philip of Solovetsk. They now live chiefly in the villages of the Petchora. 



