A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 81 



to the house, but they were both deserted, for the 

 owners had all gone to HachenkofF's house. It was not 

 easy to walk over the swamp, for at every step one 

 slipped knee-deep in water, and it was necessary to pick 

 a way between the pools, along the narrow tracts of 

 firmer ground which ran across the morass like cause- 

 ways. Spring and summer come both together to the 

 arctic ; and although, as the ice bore witness, they had 

 only just arrived, it was the heyday of the year, and 

 the birds were making the most of it. Already, before 

 the snow had melted, the swamp was parcelled out into 

 various small-holdings ; and as I went, the owners 

 hovered round me a- tiptoe with that anxious expect- 

 ancy which precedes the laying-time. Little stints 

 flickered up from the sphagnum with a startled drrrt ; 

 grey phalaropes, with breasts like rubies, wheeled over 

 the ice ; Lapland buntings sought diligently for nesting 

 material among the snowdrifts ; and a flock of long- 

 tailed ducks, in single file like a string of beads, paddled 

 across a pool. Presently a troop of gulls began to 

 clamour overhead, and while I was stalking them, five 

 wild swans, in immature plumage — celibates for this 

 season — crashed up from a small lake, and flew down 

 the river with a mellow thunder of pinions. In the 

 drier part of the swamp, a pair of Eastern golden 

 plover were breeding. I lay down and watched them 

 for a time, but, as I already knew to my cost, the 

 plover is an exceedingly wary fowl, and it is gener- 

 ally futile to try to fool her (or him either) on the 

 open tundra. She knows well enough that the supine 

 neutral-tinted thing lying on the moss is neither a 



