92 BIRDS OF RUSSIAN LAPLAND 



two extreme points in view would enclose quite double the area of 

 sea to that they represent, if this be the Torna. To the south below 

 us was the broad valley through which the river wandered in curves 

 and doubles so eccentric that perhaps only the Wye under Haddon 

 Hall, among our English rivers, can give a faint idea of it. Plate 3 5 

 consists of four photos taken a mile higher up the valley ; where it 

 will be seen that the river, after flowing past A, doubles back to B 

 before it reaches C, the neck of land dividing A from C being less 

 than one hundred yards, while that from A to B is quite half a mile. 

 With a series of loops like this to contend with, working the lower 

 ground became a diflficult task, as one could never be sure on which 

 side the river a piece of land lay ; and that was a river we never 

 attempted to wade, for though the water was rarely more than two 

 feet deep, the mud below it seemed to be fathomless 1 The fact is, 

 this part of Kanin Nos is, like the island of Kolguev, one huge 

 deposit of glacial mud several hundred feet thick ; and was probably 

 formed at the same time. Colonel Feilden's description of the 

 geology of Kolguev, " Beyond Petsora Eastward," p. 229, would 

 equally apply to this river valley, with scarcely an alteration. The 

 lower part of the valley shows unmistakable signs of the compara- 

 tively recent upheaval of the land some fifty feet, before which the 

 sea formed an estuary running about two miles inland, and under 

 whose waters the mud was re-arranged in one broad plain. This 

 level corresponds closely with a well-marked sea-beach which can be 

 traced round much of the coast of Arctic Norway, especially in the 

 Porsanger fjord, where I remember seeing it once in spring brought 

 into sharp relief by the snow, and looking like a line ruled along the 

 coast for miles. In Novaya Zemlya also a similar beach can be 

 traced in places. It would therefore appear the land remained at 

 that level over the greater part of Northern Europe for a considerable 

 period, and then rose more rapidly. 



Since the land assumed its present level the erosive power of the 

 river (and therefore its volume of water) seems to have been about 



