304 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 



bows in small parties. Some flew high and some low, 

 but they were all heading for Waigatz. In the course 

 of an hour, more than a hundred must have passed the 

 ship. Mr. H. L. Popham tells me that some years ago 

 he watched a similar stream of divers from Novaya 

 Zemlya. The fulmars, of which species we had seen 

 only four birds in the Kara Sea, now increased in 

 numbers, and a pair of glaucous gulls, in the mottled 

 brown plumage of immaturity, followed us. Briinnich's 

 guillemots became common, and several small flocks of 

 scoters passed, all flying to the south-west. The strait 

 also seems to be a fairly definite dividing line between 

 the two tides of birds, which, during the migration times, 

 sweep, one down the east, and the other down the west, 

 coasts of Novaya Zemlya. For instance, I did not see 

 a single diver to the west of the Kara Strait, nor a single 

 kittiwake to the east of it. We know very little of the 

 way of migration in these regions ; but it seems most 

 probable that when the bird stream reaches the mainland, 

 it divides, and allows one battalion to proceed south- 

 wards along the valley of the Ob, and the other by that 

 of the Petchora. 



Watching these bold travellers returning from their 

 summer in the north, set us speaking of other adven- 

 turers of our own race. It is well enough to venture 

 into the Arctic Ocean in steam-driven ships, with wireless 

 telegraphy and all the rest of it ; but how much more 

 honourable were those explorers who dared the ice that 

 we ourselves had barely escaped in sailing vessels which 

 were altogether de^^endent on wind and tide. I have 

 sometimes wondered wherein the magic of the Arctic lies 



