272 SIBERIA IN EUROPE. CHAP. xxi. 



leeks or eschalots, of which we laid in a plentiful supply. 

 We recognised soaring overhead an eagle, we saw some 

 skuas, ringed plovers, Temminck's stints, redpoles, but nothing 

 of special interest. It was now about 8 o'clock, so we rowed 

 back to the entrance of the inland sea, intending to cross 

 over to our quarters on the south cape, when suddenly a 

 dense white mist, coming from the Arctic ice, fell upon us. 

 We hastened to run our boat ashore, stopping to shoot a 

 sanderling on a sandbank, and soon after an arctic tern. 



Our next nest of the little stint was taken on the 24th of 

 July. Harvie-Brown and I had been up all night, shooting 

 by the light of the midnight sun, hoping to avoid the mos- 

 quitoes, and were returning home to our wrecked ship in a 

 thick white morning mist. I stopped behind to refresh 

 myself with a bath, and afterwards turned towards the little 

 stint ground. Just as I reached it I was glad to see Piottuch 

 emerge from the white mist, with the intelligence that he 

 had found another nest of the little stint, containing four eggs, 

 about three versts off, and had shot the bird, leaving the nest 

 and eggs for us to take. We walked on together a short 

 distance, when I heard the now familiar cry of a little stint 

 behind me, a sharp wick, almost exactly the same as the cry 

 of the red-necked phalarope, or that of the sanderling. 

 Turning quickly round, I saw the bird flying past as if 

 coming up from its feeding-grounds. It wheeled round us at 

 some distance and alighted on the ground about eighty yards 

 ahead. We walked slowly up towards it, and stood for some 

 time watching it busily employed in preening its feathers. 

 By-and-by we sat down. It presently began to run towards 



