A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 21 



soldiers. The commonest birds were the yellow-breasted 

 buntings, which swarmed everywhere. Although it 

 was the middle of June, a female that I shot contained 

 eggs not yet ready for extrusion. I fancy that they 

 must breed rather late, and Mr. Popham also informs 

 me that he did not procure any eggs. Cuckoos were 

 calling in the forests on the other side of the back- 

 water, and I shot a short-eared owl in a thicket. There 

 was a curious medley of east and west in the bird calls, 

 for while the redwings were making the woods ring, 

 and I heard the low, plaintive note of a yellow-browed 

 warbler among the willows, the dominant voices were 

 those of a pair of starlings, who were breeding in an 

 ivied tree-trunk hard by. The mosquitoes were as bad 

 here as at Yenesiesk, and fairly drove me back to the 

 ship at last. 



We left Vorogovo in the afternoon, and a few hours 

 later entered the Kamin Pass. This is the only reach of 

 the river between Krasnoyarsk and the sea which is 

 conventionally beautiful. Elsewhere, the stream is so 

 wide and the banks are so flat, that the interest of the 

 landscape lies in its immensity, and even this is so 

 panoramic that the eye cannot grasp it properly. But 

 just here, the Yenesei narrowed to half its usual width, 

 and wound between steep fir-clad hills and crags. A 

 dark, hump-backed island, called Monastirskiy, lay in 

 mid-channel, and the river was divided into bewildering 

 creeks and inlets. A little village was perched on a crag 

 at the edge of the forest, and the hills and woods were 

 limned so sharply in the placid water that substance 

 and reflection might have changed places, and the land- 



