24 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 



and we were obliged to keep to the river-bank. In an 

 English woodland, if one pauses for a minute, some bird 

 or other is certain to betray himself — a robin flits across 

 a clearing, titmice squabble overhead, or else a blackbird 

 rushes chuckling from his stronghold, but by the 

 Yenesei, small birds seemed oddly scarce. Vassilli shot 

 a hazel hen {Rabchik, the Russians call them), and 

 forthwith teased me until I had taught him the English 

 for " horoshie myaso," which means "good meat." A 

 cuckoo flitted before us into the forest, and a great 

 spotted woodpecker hammered a stump. Inside the 

 forest sounded the voices of tits and willow-wrens, and 

 down by the waterside a pair of common sandpipers 

 were nesting. This was the most northerly place at 

 which I heard the insistent monotonous little sonsj of 

 the yellow-breasted bunting. 



It was rather a disappointing walk on the whole, 

 and in the hope of finding better things I pushed on 

 rather farther than I intended. Consequently we were 

 still more than a mile from the ship when the hoot 

 of her departure blared into the forest. When we 

 arrived, excessively hot with running, it was to find 

 Captain Ello whistling to us from the bridge, and all 

 the gangways up ready to start, while we had to run 

 the gauntlet of the highly flavoured comments of the 

 passengers of the barge, who leaned over the rail to 

 watch us hurry past. Often on that trip down the 

 river I was reminded of Epictetus' parable of the man 

 who, while on a sea voyage, goes ashore to gather shells 

 and nuts, and thereby is in danger of losing the ship 

 altogether. I always made a point of finding out how 



