CHAPTER JI 
BACK TO SCHAROK 
August 1oth.—A day with the swans. 
I drove off about mid-day with Onaska and Mekolka. 
Onaska, by the way, was not only a good scholar, but 
could draw a little. The native-drawn pictures in this 
book are by his hand. 
He was an ugly but kind-hearted man, who seldom 
laughed, though some of his pictures betray a real sense 
of humour. He always seemed to feel the cold severely, 
and had a way of standing about with his hands tucked 
under his ‘ malitsa,’ which I was unkind enough to mimic 
one day, so that it remained a standing joke against 
him. 
We first followed a sleigh trail to the north-east. This 
trail, covered with grasses and clearly visible even in 
the sandy soil, was evidently very old, and seemed 
to point to a time when Kolguev was far more thinly 
populated than it is to-day. 
We passed many old beaches. Some of these, under 
denuding influences, had been broken down, so that 
only little conical hills were left. On the top of each 
of these a fox-trap was set. As in all I visited, the 
ay 
