A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 157 



Prokopchuk and sold him a blue fox cub, a couple of 

 months old. He passed it on to us, and for a week it 

 lived in a kennel outside our hut. It was a beautiful 

 thing, blue-grey from the tips of its furry ears to its 

 little tag of a brush. Even its eyes, set wide apart in its 

 droll, innocent face, were tinted to match its coat. The 

 koursa, as the Samoyedes called him, never really 

 became tame, although he showed more anger than fear 

 when handled, but he was an exacting charge, and was 

 apt to rouse his guardians at all hours with his screams 

 for condensed milk. He constantly mistook Jest for one 

 of his relations (now, alas, a flaccid pelt hung up in 

 Prokopchuk's store), and pursued her with hideous 

 squalls of affection, much to that respectable animal's 

 disgust. If he was given a piece of fish, he hastened to 

 bury it, growling very imposingly as he did so. He 

 would then find it again a few minutes later, and con- 

 gratulate himself upon his achievement. And so on, 

 da capo until the delights of discovery had staled. 

 Poor little fellow ! It would have been impossible to 

 bring him all the way to England, and so when we left 

 Golchika, we gave him to Anastasia Ivanowna, who had 

 a notable gift for taming wild animals, and I trust that 

 he throve under her care. 



The fox cub has tempted me from the paths of 

 ornithology, but there are few birds left on my list to 

 chronicle, except the little finches and their like. A few 

 pairs of snow-buntings lived among the bleached drift- 

 wood by the waterside, and one or two white wagtails 

 bred in the roofs of the balagans. A pair of mealy 

 redpolls haunted the island for some time : I shot one 



