12 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 



thing that the riverside population could need for the 

 whole year — were heaped beside the steamers and 

 barges, for the northern season is short, and there 

 are only three months in which supplies can be taken 

 down the river. 



After we had settled our business, our first thought 

 was to have a bath — a luxury which we had not enjoyed 

 since we left England. Accordingly we walked along 

 the quay and out of the town to the bathhouse, which 

 stood by the bank of the river. It was very hot out 

 of doors, and hotter still in the bath-rooms. We 

 waited while the mystified attendants scrubbed down 

 the little cubicles, and then, ordering all the buckets 

 and all the hot water that could be prepared, we had 

 a kind of compromise between a Russian vapour bath 

 and a soap-and-water English one. 



After we had thus ridded ourselves of some of the 

 dust of travel, I went for a ramble outside the town. 

 It was a beautiful summer's evening, and although it 

 was scarcely a month since the snow had melted, the 

 leaves and grass were at their prime. It was my first 

 introduction to the birds and flowers of Siberia, and 

 I still like to remember a cock bluethroat who was 

 singing among some white clematis, as if a golden pea 

 leaped and vibrated in the pipe behind his gaudy bib. 

 The brilliance of these northern birds in their breeding 

 plumage is a revelation to those who hitherto have 

 seen them only on their winter visits to Britain. 

 Under the clematis were pink primulas, cranesbill, and 

 honeysuckle, and there were marsh marigolds which 

 might have been picked in the ditches of the Thames. 



