Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/52

40 their lines, drove the wedges of their V's in swift pursuit.

The shoal was deserted; yet, for some time, I could not tear myself away from watching the disappearing broken lines in the north, for I am always thrilled by the sight and contemplation of these magnificent, strong-winged birds making this heroic pilgrimage from the Indian marshes with their lazy, venomous cobras and their rapacious tigers, to the far-away peat bogs at the mouth of the Yenisei, the Ob and the Lena and along the shores of the Arctic Ocean. To this flight they are driven by an atavistic instinct, strong as life itself and ineradicable as death—an instinct that guides them to these coldest climes, where they will breed the strongest and most nearly perfect of young. In obedience to this ever-recurring command these geese, ducks and swans go thousands of miles every spring, and nothing can stop them. Hunger, cold, driving rain, snow and the death that men project up into the sky—nothing of all this can stay these winged migrants nor change the course of these victims of instinct and destiny. They fly along routes probably established through millions of years, known and marked for them as clearly as paths and highways are for men.

Exotic birds in these northern migrations always made a strange impression upon me. Frequently, when hunting in Manchuria and Siberia, I have identified Indian geese, beautiful Japanese ibises, flamingos in their blaze of colour and Egyptian storks, all heading for, or returning from, these Arctic regions, which are really foreign to them. I often pondered over the question of what might be impelling these feathered worshippers of sun and sand in their dangerous proselyting flight. Was it