222 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 
a circular cul de sac. The netting was about four feet 
in height, of some three-inch mesh, and round the cud 
de sac was double. The uprights which carried it were 
strengthened by spurs. 
A net trap of this kind the Samoyeds call ‘ Po-tm-ga.’ 
Long before we could see the boats, for the mist had 
thickened, we could hear shouting and the cries of the 
geese. But after a bit first one and then another boat 
came into view. On the men came, but very slowly; 
now pulling across a creek, now pushing the ‘arnoh’ 
over a bit of mud or hauling it over a sand-ridge, some- 
times leaving it altogether and running off to head the 
geese. So slowly they came zig-zagging along. 
By this time we could see geese by thousands through 
the mist. I could even distinguish the short trumpet- 
note of the brent among the general babel. It was 
indeed a babel. How to convey to you any idea of 
it I do not know. If you can imagine many hundred 
farm-yard geese, and many thousand cornets all sound- 
ing together and crowded on by a handful of screaming 
wild men—if you can imagine this, then you are not far 
off the mark. 
On they came. Now I could see big grey geese 
running, heads up and wings outstretched like any farm- 
yard geese, breaking away to the right and left. And 
now I saw that they had small young ones with them. 
Nearer they came and nearer, the middle a dense 
