356 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 
Sunday, September 16th.—‘ The morning broke clear 
with a strong wind, which increased in afternoon to a 
gale with snow. To-night the gale is vagémg. In the 
morning Alexander, Yakoff, Hyland, and I crossed in a 
boat to the sand-banks, and walked down to our old sleep- 
ing-place. A blue fox was hunting for molluscs along by 
the point. Hyland, who had his gun, tried to intercept 
it, but without success, for it swam straight across the 
mouth of the river and escaped. We saw many flocks 
of king eider and waders, chiefly sanderlings and dunlins, 
I collected sea-weeds and hydrozoa from the gulls’ nests, 
and picked up several nodules of stiff rounded ooze, which 
formed with stones and shells an elementary conglomerate, 
such as I have found in a complete state elsewhere on the 
island. The storm increasing, Alexis’ karbass dragged her 
anchors—we had to send four men over to help him— 
and bore down on us so rapidly that we only just escaped 
a collision. Alexander has been a great nuisance all 
day. He talks and grumbles persistently about my 
wretched little bolvan. ‘If you will burn it I will get 
you many from the Timanskii tundra,” he says. Buta 
“ Timanskii bolvan is not a Kolguev bolvan, and a bird 
in the hand I stick to,” say I. But there is growing dis- 
satisfaction about this; for the Russians and the Samo- 
yeds sit and talk about it eternally. Both are afraid of 
it, the Russians because, being Christians, they have 
bolvan in their ship, and the others because a “ Turk” 
has one of their gods.’ 
1 For when the Russians were catechising me about our religion in England they 
