356 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 



Sunday, September \6tk. — 'The morning- broke clear 

 with a strong wind, which increased in afternoon to a 

 gale with snow. To-night the gale is raging. In the 

 morning Alexander, Yakoff, Hyland, and I crossed in a 

 boat to the sand-banks, and walked down to our old sleep- 

 ing-place. A blue fox was hunting for molluscs along by 

 the point. Hyland, who had his gun, tried to intercept 

 it, but without success, for it swam straight across the 

 mouth of the river and escaped. We saw many flocks 

 of king eider and waders, chiefly sanderlings and dunlins. 

 I collected sea-weeds and hydrozoa from the gulls' nests, 

 and picked up several nodules of stiff rounded ooze, which 

 formed with stones and shells an elementary conglomerate, 

 such as I have found in a complete state elsewhere on the 

 island. The storm increasing- Alexis' karbass drag-o-ed her 

 anchors- — we had to send four men over to help him — 

 and bore down on us so rapidly that we only just escaped 

 a collision. Alexander has been a great nuisance all 

 day. He talks and grumbles persistently about my 

 wretched little bolvan. "If you will burn it I will get 

 you many from the Timanskii tundra," he says. But a 

 " Timanskii bolvan is not a Kolguev bolvan, and a bird 

 in the hand I stick to," say I. But there is growing dis- 

 satisfaction about this ; for the Russians and the Samo- 

 yeds sit and talk about it eternally. Both are afraid of 

 it, the Russians because, being Christians, they have 

 bolvan in their ship, and the others because a " Turk " 

 has one of their gods. 1 



1 For when the Russians were catechising me about our religion in England they 



