A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 57 



shallow that the Oryol could not approach within a 

 mile of the bank ; and as there were two or three 

 families to send ashore, they had to be taken over in 

 small boats, a slow and tedious work. At the head of 

 a broad, shallow creek, there were three or four small 

 balagans. They had not been occupied since the 

 previous season, and were half full of snow ; but the 

 people did not seem to mind their damp and chilly 

 quarters at all, and went off in the best of spirits to 

 their summer's work. 



A number of ruffs had evidently hit upon the 

 neighbourhood of these balagans as a suitable place for 

 the foolish sham combats in which they indulge during 

 the spring. Every few minutes, about a dozen of these 

 doughty, bedizened warriors would flop on to the grass, 

 and posture about, and " square up " to each other, 

 with truculent thrusts of their harmless pink bills. In 

 this attitude, with their gaudy plumage and curling 

 ruffs, they reminded me irresistibly of the " Mignon " 

 gallants of the reigns of the Valois. Now and then a 

 passing man would step almost in between the com- 

 batants. Then the whole party would flounce off and 

 alight to settle their absurd rivalries on some other 

 hillock. The reeves were seldom seen, for they would 

 soon begin to breed in the long herbage, even if they 

 had not already begun to do so. 



When Seebohm visited Breokoftsky in the middle 

 of July 1877 he complained of the heat and the 

 swarms of mosquitoes. When I saw the place in 1914, 

 it was very different, for there were still three feet of 

 snow in many of the swamps, and although the sun 



