264 EXTRACTS FROM 
after it had been brought to bay for alittle while, an Ichneu- 
mon broke from the cover in front of the Grand Duke, who 
rolled the comical creature over, but it dragged itself back 
into the thickets, where a sharp fight took place between it 
and the dogs, who were following up the trail. One big 
long-legged dachshund and the Ichneumon had got such a 
grip of each other that they could be lifted up together, and 
it was hard work to separate the combatants. In doing this 
one of the gentlemen was bitten in the hand by the dog, and 
another by the Ichneumon. 
During the beat a good many cormorants and herons had 
flown past me along the shore, but I had not fired at them on 
account of the larger game. 
It was now afternoon, so we decided to start on our long 
passage straight across the lake to the opposite shore. We 
rowed over in several boats, and as the air began to get 
cooler, the splendid views of the lake and the desert afforded 
us greater pleasure than they had hitherto given us. Our 
boatmen, too, were in high spirits, and, casting off every scrap 
of their clothing, raced the boats against each other, with 
incessant shouts and wild inarticulate yells—a sport which 
suited us very well, as it brought us along much faster. 
After two hours of rowing we passed a small strip of 
willow-bushes and came to a great sandbank, on which stood 
our new camp, all in order and comfortably arranged, its 
position having been judiciously chosen, for this perfectly dry 
sandbank separated the lake from a tolerably large marsh. 
As dinner was not yet ready, some of us at once went to 
the marsh, which lay between our camping-ground and the 
outermost fields of the cultivated land. It wasa tract of brown, 
bad-smelling, boggy soil, covered with reeds, water-plants, 
and willow-bushes, and swarming with snipe and waders, toads 
and poisonous insects. We also flushed a few ducks and two 
kinds of plovers, and after hastily shooting a few birds, left 
