2 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 



fore, in the following year, he tried to reach it by the 

 coast of Novaya Zemlya, but the ice was against him, 

 and he was forced to return unsuccessful. 



After Barentz' time, very many men tried to reach 

 the " Gillissy " from the north. A few succeeded, and 

 many more failed, and by degrees it came to be known 

 that the river flowed from no ready-made El Dorado, 

 but merely through a wilderness of vast and unde- 

 veloped resources. During the latter part of the last 

 century, several Englishmen penetrated as far east as 

 the Yenesei. As far as I know, the first of these to 

 write a popular account of his travels in Siberia was 

 the great ornithologist, Henry Seebohm. In 1877, 

 Seebohm travelled down the river, and afterwards 

 described his experiences in that most fascinating book. 

 The Birds of Siberia. ' From an ornithological point 

 of view his trip was a failure in some respects. Owing 

 to a series of accidents, he did not reach the river 

 mouth until late in the summer, and consequently 

 little was known of the bird life of the Lower Yenesei, 

 until, in the nineties, Mr. H. L. Popham made three 

 expeditions down the river. Among other rarities 

 Mr. Popham found the nests of the curlew-sandpiper, 

 red-breasted goose, bar-tailed godwit, and grey plover. 

 But since then, partly because of the distance and the 

 difficulty of reaching the estuary early in the summer, 

 no other English ornithologist has visited the country. 

 Nevertheless, for naturalists, the banks of the Yenesei 

 still hold something of the romance of an ornithological 

 land of Cathay. They are the certain summer haunt of 

 great rarities, and have even greater possibilities. You 



