390 DOWN RIVER TO DUDINKA 



a quarter inches. The measurement enabled me confi- 

 dently to assert that the birds I had seen were Bewick's 

 swans, the footprints left by the wild swan being at least 

 an inch longer. Several gulls passed us ; they had black 

 tips to their wings, and were probably glaucous gulls. I 

 hoped soon to have an opportunity of shooting one. 



We passed Plakina in the early morning of the 

 following day, and made good headway with the wind 

 north and north-west until noon. It then dropped almost 

 to a calm, and in the evening we had a breath of air 

 from the south, with a few occasional drops of rain. 

 This weather lasted all night. After leaving Igaka the 

 banks of the river are rather steep, and somewhat thinly 

 clothed with larch, with an undergrowth of coarse grass, 

 except where the innumerable water-channels cut into the 

 soil. The Ibis was only drawing about three feet of 

 water, so we had no difficulty with the shoals ; the water 

 also had fallen so much that most of the dangerous sand- 

 banks showed above it, and were easily avoided. We 

 passed very few villages, perhaps one in every three 

 versts ; some of these were very small, consisting of but 

 two or three houses. The population, we were told, 

 decreases every year, in consequence of the rapacity of 

 the Zessedatels, or local governors. Now and then we 

 passed one or two Ostiak chooms ; but this race also is 

 decreasing, and evidently from the same cause. We saw 

 very few birds. Large flocks of black ducks continued 

 to fly northward, and occasionally we saw a few gulls or 

 a pair of swans. In one part of the river we passed 

 what was apparently a sleeping-place for gulls ; the shore 

 was flatter than usual, and there were no trees. About two 

 hundred gulls were assembled, apparently roosting, some 

 down by the water's edge, and others on the grassy banks. 



On the nth we cast anchor at Dudinka at seven 



