A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 71 



door to the landing-place, where already, in preparation 

 for the fishing season, sheds and sorting houses had 

 been built beside the stacks of fish barrels ; and here 

 and there were one or two turf-roofed balagans which 

 would soon be tenanted for the summer. But in spite 

 of the grey lowering sky and the snow-covered swamps, 

 there was an indefinable air of bustle and stir about the 

 settlement on that cold June morning. Down by the 

 waterside men were hard at work, repairing boats and 

 mending fish nets. The air was full of the clapper and 

 rasp of hammer and saw, and from the Antonofi" 

 kitchen I heard Anastasia singing over her pots and 

 pans. 



And it was not only human beings who worked and 

 sang because summer was coming. Every snowdrift 

 and every muddy pool was full of birds, dibbling 

 daintily in the ooze. Such birds too ! There were 

 stints — the little stint (who is such a personality that 

 I wish that our ornithologists would give him a more 

 individual name) and the Temminck's stint, his cousin 

 — the querulous, red-necked phalaropes, intent upon 

 their fussy courtships, the delicate white wagtail, a 

 splendid snow-bunting or two, and Lapland buntings 

 with perky guinea-pig colouring — black and white and 

 tortoiseshell. All these and more, newly arrived from 

 the south, were feeding and fighting and courting and 

 playing by the waterside, scarcely troubling to flutter 

 out of the way of the lazy sledge dogs who roamed 

 round the house. And as I watched I saw more birds 

 flying down the river — ducks, geese, and waders. They 

 were the rearguard of that great and eager host of 



