CHAP. xxi. LITTLE STINT. 267 



and the shores had proved a blank, destitute of bird- 

 life. 



We then separated for a stroll on the tundra. I had not gone 

 far before I heard our interpreter Piottuch shouting in a state 

 of great excitement. Harvie-Brown was the first to come 

 up; and I joined them shortly afterwards. I found them 

 sitting on the ground, with a couple of little stints in down. 

 I sat down beside them, and we watched the parent bird as 

 she was fluttering and flying and running all round us, some- 

 times coming within a foot of one of us. After securing the 

 old bird we went on a short distance, and Piottuch again 

 made loud demonstrations of delight. This time it was nest 

 and eggs. The nest was like that of most sandpipers, a 

 mere depression in the ground, with such dead maroslika 

 (cloudberry) leaves and other dry material as was within 

 easy reach, scraped together to serve as lining. The position 

 was on a comparatively dry extent of tundra, sloping from 

 the top of the little turf cliffs that rise from the lagoon down 

 to the sandhills at the twin capes, between which the tide 

 runs in and out of a little inland sea. These sandhills are 

 flanked on the side next the sea with piles of drift-wood of 

 all sizes and shapes — lofty trees which have been mown 

 down by the ice when the great river broke up and in many 

 places overflowed its banks, squared balks of timber washed 

 away by the floods from the stores of the Petchora Timber- 

 trading Company, and spars of luckless ships that have been 

 wrecked on these inhospitable shores. They are sparingly 

 sprinkled over with esparto grass, and soon run into an 

 irregular strip of sand and gravel. This part of the coast, 



