A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 283 



difficult to see any birds, especially as it was the 

 mute season, and their voices did not betray them. 

 Wheatears were common, and so many of them were 

 flitting along the shore that it was impossible that 

 they could have all been reared at the island. They 

 were probably on passage from the north, and their 

 gay white tail-coverts, flitting among the sandbanks, 

 gave a touch of liveliness to a scene that otherwise was 

 sombre and desolate enough. A few Lapland buntings 

 were lying in the grass, and I put up a solitary turn- 

 stone beside a pool. But on my return I found a 

 very interesting bird, and one which had been over- 

 looked on my previous visit to Breokoffsky in June. 

 This was the mountain accentor {Accentor niontanellus), 

 a little bird akin to the hedge-sparrow of our English 

 waysides. Several of the birds were flitting about the 

 bushes ; but, unlike the hedge-sparrow, they frequently 

 took wing and flew a short distance with a jerky pipit- 

 like flight, while they uttered a shrill triple call. 



Presently I rejoined my companions, and we walked 

 back along the shore to the balagans. We were all 

 rather silent, for it was sad to think that the summer's 

 trip with all its work and its little adventures was over, 

 and that our small party was to break up. Miss 

 Czaplicka and Mr. Hall were about to embark on a very 

 serious undertaking, for to brave the severities of a 

 Siberian winter in a native choom in the taiga is to 

 take a big risk. Miss Curtis and I were going home 

 by a route, which even the most modern appliances 

 and safeguards cannot make anything but uncertain, 

 to a state of things about which we all had the gravest 



