40 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 
same character. They were pretty uniform in height, 
and of sand, or sandy clay. The beach was the same, 
with ridges of larger stones of the size of cobbles, and 
bigger, which, with the exception of a few quartz, seemed 
to be of a slaty nature. 
Those cliffs, under the action of frost and waves, were 
everywhere falling in; splitting perpendicularly in great 
rifts, which in many places might be traced away on the 
flat above, twenty yards or more from the cliff’s edge. 
On all this south-western part of the island we could 
not find a single hill; the ground was either dead flat or 
else inclined a few feet to a sandy or peaty rise, or 
dropped to a moss or shallow lakelet. 
But far away, on our left hand, we could see, immensely 
magnified by the mirage, the faint risings of those hills 
or mountains of which Bolvana Mountain forms one of 
the most southern spurs. 
From the Kriva’s mouth the whole way down the 
coast until the land drops to the mudflats, runs a line of 
hard dry yellow sand, which tails off to the east into bog, 
moss, and grass. 
About five miles down the coast and a mile and a half 
inland we came upon a fair-sized lake, whose shallow 
sides were full of last year’s dead vegetation. We 
thought we might as well name it, as it was the first of 
any size we had seen, so we called it Saxon Lake. 
Saxon Lake was a wonderful centre of bird-life. 
Little stints were chasing one another round and round 
