RE-CROSSING 153 
all, crowded in my little tent (seven feet by seven), 
where we made the evening go very merrily; for I gave 
them a little whisky apiece, and lent them a tobacco 
pipe, which went the round, though Onaska would not 
smoke at all, so Uano had a double share. 
_ Then I brought out a large coloured sheet of Scandi- 
navian birds, and also my bird-book, at which they dis- 
played the greatest interest. They told me which were 
Kolguev birds, and which were not, and gave me all the 
native names, which will come in later in this book. 
They were most intelligent about it, and had grand 
arguments over certain cases. I was quite surprised 
at their accuracy and skill, and almost everything I 
doubted at the time I afterwards found borne out by 
facts. 
They said that the snowy owl nested not on Kolguev, 
though it crossed over the sea in the summer ; that the 
ivory gull was common there in the winter, with many 
facts of that kind. Only they all insisted that the 
swallow was a bird of their island, but I feel sure they 
took it for a skua. They would give it a name, and 
then imitate exactly the call of the bird, to show that 
the name was only what it said itself. 
One instance struck me much. The Samoyed name 
for snowy owl is ‘hei-nib-chur.’ But ‘heinibchur’ is 
also their name for sneeze and snuff, and when I found 
out later that the Russians call this owl ‘Sowah,’ z.e. 
snuff, I saw that it had reference to the bird’s habits 
