58 SIBERIA IN EUROPE. CHAP. vi. 



very old, but greyhaired old men and women are seen 

 among them. 



After we had been a week at Ust-Zylma without seeing 

 any sign of summer or summer birds, we began to find time 

 hang heavy on our hands. Picking up information about 

 the Samoyedes and the Old Believers was such unsatisfactory 

 work, from the contradictory nature of the reports, that we 

 soon got tired of it, and longed for something better to do 

 than shooting redpoles and snow-buntings. As we had not 

 met with any Siberian jays or bullfinches at Ust-Zylma, we 

 decided that the best way to while away the time was to go 

 back again to Umskia for a day or two, in the hope of find- 

 ing as many birds as we saw there before. We took the 

 small sledge and a couple of horses, and travelled all the 

 Fridav night. The journey was a very eventful one. The 

 sledge, it may be remembered, had turned over once with 

 Piottuch, but he had travelled at least a hundred miles in 

 safety afterwards, and we had almost forgotten the circum- 

 stance. We soon found out, however, that something was 

 radically wrong with the crazy machine. It must have 

 dropped its centre of gravity altogether on the via didbolica, 

 for between Ust-Zylma and Umskia (a distance of thirty-six 

 miles) we were upset and tumbled over into the snow no less 

 than fifteen times. This was altogether a new experience 

 for us, but we survived it without any damage, thanks to the 

 thickness of our malitzas and the depth of the snow. 



Arrived at Umskia we were disappointed to see so few 

 birds. The Siberian jays had disappeared altogether. The 

 snow-buntings were represented by a solitary individual 



