312 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 
I left very soon on some pretence, for I longed to 
escape from the pitiable into a purer air. So I walked 
north a long way till I found a little gully, where I stayed. 
One side was all snow, the other grassy and ablaze 
with flowers. 
Here I found a double red raspberry, and a beautiful 
tall veronica (V. longifolia). And there was a ringed- 
plover evidently with young. 
‘A dense fog came on,’ says my diary, ‘while I was in 
a perfect labyrinth of gullies. But I think I must be 
getting the homing instinct better developed, for I walked 
straight back, though I could not see the choom till 
within a few yards.’ 
Sunday, August 19th.—Our friends spent to-day in 
recovering from yesterday. 
We caught a wazanka with the di-zha for the 
Russian’s food. I got old Ustynia to milk it for me, 
and thought the milk exceedingly good. It was like 
cream. But the Samoyeds kept saying ‘no, no, not 
good. Very bad, yes, yes.’ It is strange that these 
people never use reindeer milk, for the Lapps, we are 
told, drink much of it. 
Mekolka comes in every day for a lesson in English. 
The English he writes phonetically in Russian characters, 
and remembers it quite well. At present we are hard at 
work on the numerals, and it is very funny to hear his 
attempts at pronunciation. The only one which really 
