IN SCHAROK CAMP 191 



Reindeer skulls and bones and horns showed throuoh 

 the thin grass on every hand. 



Never — never need a man feel lonely when he is away 

 out in the wilds with only nature there, for so long as 

 he has flowers, birds, and streams about him he has 

 always friends at hand. But for downright, sickening, 

 malicious melancholy put me in such a place as this, 

 where man has had nothing but dreariness to o-ive for 

 all that he has taken away. 



We walked farther, a little up the coast. The tide 

 was out, and there lay open a wide expanse of ooze, cut 

 up here and there by a creek from which came the voices 

 of birds. The cliff was not higher than some thirty feet, 

 and all along the coast-line ran a broad, sloping escarp- 

 ment of slowly melting snow. Away out beyond the 

 mud-flats, as far north and south as the eye could reach, 

 was the white line of the ocean ice where it struck upon 

 the outer sand-banks. 



We came upon a neglected boat and a neglected 

 grave. But the grave had once been above the ordinary, 

 for it was covered by a wooden tomb. In this grave, 

 as I afterwards learned, Uano's father was buried. He 

 had not always been a Kolguev man, but had crossed 

 from the Timanskii tundra in the island's palmy days. 

 I saw that the willow-grouse had been dusting about 

 this tomb, and when I raised it, underneath was a snow- 

 bunting's nest. But it came on to rain pretty sharply, 

 and so we turned back. 



