EARLY EISIXG IX THE MARSH. 31 



crisp and keen tlinn it was at daTvn. Only 

 sportsmen and earl}- farm labourers get the 

 best of the day, and we here in Troitsky, even 

 at 5.30 A.M., were 'last down ' in the villasre. 

 Red-petticoated women with bare feet were 

 already drawing water at the well, or tending 

 the creatures of their home farm, driving the 

 hissing geese to the lake side, or giving chan- 

 ticleer and his family their morning feed of 

 maize. Grave storks, red-legged and billed, 

 who had come back from their breakfast on 

 the steppe some half an hour ago, looked a 

 reproachful good morning at us from their 

 woodstack on the housetop, and our guides 

 for the day were both down by the waterside 

 hard at work mending their nets an hour before 

 their lazy employers appeared on the scene. 



The evil reports which we had heard in 

 Odessa were unfortunately not without foun- 

 dation. All the best of the snipe-ground was 

 under water, so that we had to launch a crazy 



