Part 11

Essentially different from the life--after all very inoffensive--on an eider-holm is the picture presented by an island peopled by silver, herring, or great black-backed gulls. These also congregate on certain islands for the breeding season in hundreds and hundreds of pairs, one such island being sometimes inhabited by from three to five thousand pairs. The island presents quite as beautiful and noble a spectacle as the eider-holm. The large, dazzling white, and light or dark gray forms contrast wonderfully with the whole surroundings, and their movements possess much of the grace which characterizes all gulls. But these strong, powerful, rapacious gulls, though gregarious, are not peaceable neighbours. No member of such a colony trusts any other. Each pair lives by itself, marks out a definite brooding-ground, however small its diameter, allows no other pair within its boundaries, and both birds never leave the nest at the same time. If they have been disturbed by a powerful common enemy they hasten back as quickly as possible to the nest to protect it from others of their own species.

Less noisy, but certainly not less impressive, is the life on the real bird-bergs, the breeding-grounds of razor-bills, guillemots, and puffins, with at most here and there one or other of the gulls or of the cormorants. It will suffice if I attempt to describe one such berg in narrative form.

To the north of the large island belonging to the Lofoden group, and about three hundred yards from its shore, lie three bell-shaped rocky islands (the Nyken), rising rugged and steep for about three hundred feet above the surface of the sea, and closely surrounded by a circle of little reefs. One of these rocky cones is a bird-berg, and one can hardly imagine a finer of its kind.

We prepared to visit the island on a beautiful summer day when the sea was unusually smooth and calm, the sky clear and blue, the air warm and pleasant. Powerful Norsemen rowed our light boat in and out among innumerable skerries. Look where we would, we saw birds. Almost every rock which rose above the surface of the water was peopled with them. Some of the reefs were coated with white by the excrement of the cormorants which regularly spent a portion of each day there in rest. Arranged in rows, like soldiers drawn up, they sat in tens, twenties, or hundreds, in the most extraordinary positions, their necks stretched, their wings spread out so that every part of their bodies might have full benefit of the sunshine, waving their wings also as if to fan each other, and all the while casting watchful glances in every direction. On our approach, they threw themselves heavily with hollow cries into the sea, and then, swimming and diving, defied all our attempts to get near them. Other reefs were covered with gulls, hundreds and thousands of the same species; or with male eiders, which had probably come from some eider-holm or other, to amuse themselves after the fashion of their sex while their mates were busied with maternal cares. Around other rocky islands the dazzling eider-birds, perhaps newly-plucked males, had congregated and arranged themselves in a circle, suggestive of the great white water-lilies of our quiet freshwater lakes. In the sounds that were not too deep one could see the fishing mergansers and divers, one or other of which would every now and then give full vent to its shrill, far-reaching cry--a cry so long-drawn-out and so varied in tone that one might call it a song, were it not rather a wild melody such as can only be executed by a child of the North Sea who has listened to the howling and blustering of winter storms, and has echoed the roar of the surging waves. Proud as a prince upon his throne sat here and there a sea-eagle, the terror of all the feathered creatures of the sea; sometimes we saw a whole company of these robbers gorged with prey; the jerfalcon, who had his eyrie on one of the steep precipices, flew through his wide domain with the swiftness of an arrow; fluttering gulls and kittiwakes and fishing terns darted up and down; oyster-catchers greeted us with their trilling cries; razor-bills and guillemots appeared and disappeared all about us as they rose to the surface or dived underneath.

In such company we proceeded on our way. When we had traversed about ten nautical miles we came within range of the Nyke. In whatever direction we looked we saw some of the temporary dwellers on the berg, fishing and diving in the sea, or, startled by our boat, flying along so close to the surface of the water that their bright red webbed feet struck spray from the waves. We saw swarms of from thirty to fifty or a hundred birds streaming from or towards the berg, and we could not doubt that we were approaching a very populous breeding-colony. But we had been told of millions of brooding birds, and as yet we could see nothing of such numbers. At length, after we had rowed round a projecting ridge, the Nyke lay before us. In the sea, all around, were black points, at the foot of the hill white ones. The former were without order or regularity, the latter generally in rows, or sharply defined troops; the one set consisted of razor-bills swimming, with head, throat, and neck above the water, the others were the same birds sitting on the hill with their white breasts turned towards the sea. There were certainly many thousands, but not millions.

After we had landed at the opposite island and refreshed ourselves in the house of the proprietor of the Nyke, we crossed over to it, and choosing a place round which the seething waves did not surge too violently, we sprang out on the rock and climbed quickly up to the turf which covers the whole Nyke, with the exception of a few protruding peaks, ledges, and angles. There we found that the whole turf was so pierced with nest-hollows something like rabbit holes, that on the whole hill not a single place the size of a table could be found free from such openings. We made our way upwards in a spiral, clambering rather than walking to the top of the berg. The undermined turf trembled under our feet, and from every hole there peeped, crept, glided, or flew out birds rather larger than pigeons, slate-coloured on the upper part of the body, dazzlingly white on breast and belly, with fantastic bills and faces, short, narrow, pointed wings, and stumpy tails. Out of every hole they appeared and even out of the fissures and clefts in the rocks. Whichever way we turned we saw only birds, heard only the low droning noise of their combined weak cries. Every step onwards brought new flocks out of the bowels of the earth. From the berg down to the sea, from the sea up to the berg there flew swarms innumerable. The dozens became hundreds, the hundreds became thousands, and hundreds of thousands sprang incessantly from the brown-green turf. A cloud not less thick than that over the holm enveloped us, enveloped the island, so that it--magically indeed, but in a way perceptible by the senses--seemed transformed into a gigantic bee-hive, round which not less gigantic bees, humming and buzzing, hovered and fluttered.

The farther we went, the more magnificent became the spectacle. The whole hill was alive. Hundreds of thousands of eyes looked down upon us intruders. From every hole and corner, from every peak and ledge, out of every cleft, burrow, or opening, they hurried forth, right, left, above, beneath; the air, like the ground, teemed with birds. From the sides and from the summit of the berg thousands threw themselves like a continuous cataract into the sea in a throng so dense that they seemed to the eye to form an almost solid mass. Thousands came, thousands went, thousands fluttered in a wondrous mazy dance; hundreds of thousands flew, hundreds of thousands swam and dived, and yet other hundreds of thousands awaited the footsteps which should rouse them also. There was such a swarming, whirring, rustling, dancing, flying, and creeping all about us that we almost lost our senses; the eye refused duty, and his wonted skill failed even the marksman who attempted to gain a prize at random among the thousands. Bewildered, hardly conscious, we pushed on our way until at length we reached the summit. Our expectation here at last to regain quietness, composure, and power of observation, was not at once realized. Even here there was the same swarming and whirring as further down the slope, and the cloud of birds around us was so thick that we only saw the sea dimly and indefinitely as in twilight. But a pair of jerfalcons, who had their eyrie in a neighbouring precipice, and had seen the unusual bustle, suddenly changed the wonderful scene. The razor-bills, guillemots, and puffins were not afraid of us; but on the appearance of their well-known and irresistible enemies, the whole cloud threw themselves with one accord, as at the command of a magician, into the sea, and the outlook was clear and free. Innumerable black points, the heads of the birds swimming in the sea, stood out distinctly from the water, and broke up the blue-green colouring of the waves. Their number was so great that from the top of the berg, which was over three hundred feet high, we could not see where the swarm ended, could not discover where the sea was clear from birds. In order to make a calculation, I measured out a small square with my eye, and began to count the points in it. There were more than a hundred. Then I endeavoured mentally to place several similar squares together, and soon came to thousands of points. But I might have imagined many thousands of such squares together and yet not exhausted the space covered by birds. The millions of which I had been told were really there. This picture of apparent quiet only lasted for a few moments. The birds soon began to fly upwards again, and as before, hundreds of thousands rose simultaneously from the water to ascend the hill, as before a cloud formed round it, and our senses were again bewildered. Unable to see, and deafened by the indescribable noise about me, I threw myself on the ground, and the birds streamed by on all sides. New ones crept constantly out of their holes, while those we had previously startled now crept back again; they settled all about me, looking with comical amazement at the strange form among them, and approaching with mincing gait so close to me that I attempted to seize them. The beauty and charm of life showed themselves in every movement of these remarkable birds. With astonishment I saw that even the best pictures of them are stiff and cold, for I remarked in their quaint forms a mobility and liveliness with which I had not credited them. They did not remain still a single instant, their heads and necks at least were moved incessantly to all sides, and their contours often showed most graceful lines. It seemed as though the inoffensiveness with which I had given myself up to observing them, had been rewarded by unlimited confidence on their part. The thousands just about me were like domestic birds; the millions paid me no more attention than if I had been one of themselves.

I spent eighteen hours on this bird-berg in order to study the life of the auks. When the midnight sun stood large and blood-red in the sky and cast its rosy light on the sides of the hill there came the peace which midnight brings even in the far North. The sea was deserted; all the birds which had been fishing and diving in it had flown up to the berg. There they sat wherever there was room to sit in long rows of tens, of hundreds, of hundreds of thousands, forming dazzling white lines as all, without exception, sat facing the sea. Their ‘arr’ and ‘err’, which had deafened our ears notwithstanding the weakness of the individual voices, were silent now, and only the roar of the surf breaking on the rocks far below resounded as before. Not till the sun rose again did the old bewildering bustle begin anew, and as we at length descended the hill by the way we had climbed it, we were once more surrounded by a thick cloud of startled birds.

It is not because of their enormous numbers alone that the auks are so fascinating; there is much that is attractive in their life and habits. During the brooding time their social virtues reach an extraordinary height. Till the beginning of that season they live entirely on the open sea, defying the severest winter and the wildest storms. Even in the long night of winter very few of them forsake their northern home, but they range, in flocks of hundreds and thousands, from one fishing-ground to another, finding all the open spaces among the ice as unfailingly as they do other promising feeding-grounds in the open sea. But when the sun reappears they are animated by one feeling--love, by one longing--to reach as soon as possible the hill where their own cradle stood. Then somewhere about Easter-time they all set out, swimming more than flying, for the bird-berg. But among the auks there are more males than females, and not every male is fortunate enough to secure a wife. Among other birds such a disproportion gives rise to ceaseless strife, yet among these auks peace is not disturbed. The much-to-be-pitied beings whom, making use of a human analogy, we may call bachelors, migrate to the berg as well as the fortunate pairs, who coquette and caress by the way; they fly up with these to the heights and accompany them on their hunting expeditions to the surrounding sea. As soon as the weather permits, the pairs begin to get the old holes in order; they clear them out, deepen them, enlarge their chambers, and, if necessary, hollow out a new brooding-place. As soon as this has been done the female lays, on the bare ground at the further end of the hollowed-out brooding-chamber, a single very large, top-shaped, brightly-spotted egg, and begins to brood alternately with the male. The poor bachelors have a sad time of it now. They, too, would dearly like to take parental cares upon themselves if they could only find a mate who would share them. But all the females are appropriated, and wooing is in vain. So they resolve to give practical proof of their good-will, at least in so far that they force themselves on the fortunate pair as friends of the family. In the hours about midnight, when the female broods on the nest, they sit with the male as he keeps watch before it, and, when the male relieves his mate that she may fish in the sea, they mount guard in his stead. But when both parents visit the sea at once the bachelors hasten to reap some reward for their faithfulness. Without delay they thrust themselves into the interior of the cavity, and sit for the time upon the forsaken egg. The poor birds who are condemned to celibacy want at least to brood a little! This unselfish devotion has one result for which men might envy the auks--there are no orphans on these bird-bergs. Should the male of a pair come to grief, his widow immediately consoles herself with another mate, and in the rarer case of both parents losing their lives at once the good-natured supernumeraries are quite ready to finish hatching the egg and to rear the young one. The young ones differ materially from those of the ducks and gulls. They are ‘altrices’, not ‘præcoces’ as the ornithologists say; in plain language, they are not ready for active life as soon as they are hatched. In a dress of thick gray down the young auk slips from the egg in which it awakes to life, but it must spend many weeks in the hole before it is ready to attempt its first flight to the sea. This first flight is always a hazardous undertaking, as is proved by the countless dead bodies on the cliffs at the foot of the berg. The young bird, nervously using its unpractised legs, hardly less timidly its newly-developed wings, follows its parents as they lead the way down the hill towards some place from which the leap into the sea may be attempted with as little danger as possible. On a suitable ledge the parents often remain a long time with their young one before they can induce it to take a spring. Both father and mother persuade it coaxingly; the little one, usually obedient like all young birds, pays no heed to their commands. The father throws himself into the sea before the eyes of his hesitating offspring; the inexperienced young one remains where he was. More attempts, more coaxing, urgent pressure: at length he risks the great leap and plunges like a falling stone deep into the sea; then, unconsciously obeying his instincts, he works his way to the surface, looks all around over the unending sea, and--is a sea-bird who thenceforth shuns no danger.

Different again is the life and activity on the bergs chosen as brooding-places by the kittiwakes. Such a hill is the promontory Swärtholm, high up in the north between the Laxen and the Porsanger fjord, not far from the North Cape. I knew well how these gulls appear on their brooding-places. Faber, with his excellent knowledge of the birds of the far North, has depicted it, as usual, in a few vivid words:

“They hide the sun when they fly, they cover the skerries when they sit, they drown the thunder of the surf when they cry, they colour the rocks white when they brood.” I believed the excellent Faber after I had seen the eider-holms and auk-bergs, and yet I doubted, as every naturalist must, and therefore I ardently desired to visit Swärtholm for myself. An amiable Norseman with whom I became friendly, the pilot of the mail steamer by which I travelled, readily agreed to row me over to the breeding-place, and we approached the promontory late one evening. At a distance of six or eight nautical miles we were overtaken by flocks of from thirty to a hundred, sometimes even two hundred kittiwakes flying to their nesting-place. The nearer we approached to Swärtholm the more rapid was the succession of these swarms, and the larger did they become. At last the promontory became visible, a rocky wall about eight hundred yards long, pierced by innumerable holes, rising almost perpendicularly from the sea to a height of from four hundred and fifty to six hundred feet. It looked gray in the distance, but with a telescope one could discern innumerable points and lines. It looked as though a gigantic slate had been scratched all over with all sorts of marks by a playful giant child, as though the whole rock bore a wondrous decoration of chains, rings, and stars. From the dark depths of large and small cavities there gleamed a brilliant white; the shelving ledges stood out in more conspicuous brightness. The brooding gulls on their nests formed the white pattern, and we realized the truth of Faber’s words, “they cover the rocks when they sit”.

Our boat, as it grated on the rocky shore, startled a number of the gulls, and I saw a picture such as I had seen on many eider-holms and gull-islands. A shot from my friend’s gun thundered against the precipice. As a raging winter storm rushes through the air and breaks up the snow-laden clouds till they fall in flakes, so now it snowed living birds. One saw neither hill nor sky, nothing but an indescribable confusion. A thick cloud darkened the whole horizon, justifying the description “they hide the sun when they fly”. The north wind blew violently and the icy sea surged wildly against the foot of the cliffs, but more loudly still resounded the shrill cries of the birds, so that the truth of the last part also of Faber’s description was fully proved, “they drown the thunder of the surf when they cry”. At length the cloud sank down upon the sea, the hitherto dim outlines of Swärtholm became distinct again, and a new spectacle enchained our gaze. On the precipices there seemed to sit quite as many birds as before, and thousands were still flying up and down. A second shot scared new flocks, a second time it snowed birds down upon the sea, and still the hillsides were covered with hundreds of thousands. But on the sea, as far as the eye could reach, lay gulls like light foam-balls rocking up and down with the waves. How shall I describe the magnificent spectacle? Shall I say that the sea had woven millions and millions of bright pearls into her dark wave-robe? Or shall I compare the gulls to stars; and the ocean to the dome of heaven? I know not; but I know that I have seen nothing more gorgeous even on the sea. And as if the charm were not already great enough, the midnight sun, erewhile clouded over, suddenly shed its rosy light over promontory and sea and birds, lighting up every wave-crest as if a golden, wide-meshed net had been thrown over the water, and making the rose-tinted dazzling gulls appear more brilliant than before. We stood speechless at the sight! And we, with all our company, even the sailors of our boat, remained motionless for a long, long time, deeply moved by the wonderful picture before us, till at last one of us broke the silence, and, rather to recover himself through the sound of his own voice than to express his inner feeling, softly uttered the poet’s words:

Over the bergs the sun blood-red Shone through the night; Nor day nor dark was over head, But weird twilight.

THE TUNDRA AND ITS ANIMAL LIFE.

Around the North Pole lies a broad belt of inhospitable land, a desert which owes its special character rather to the water than to the sun. Towards the Pole this desert gradually loses itself in fields of ice, towards the south in dwarfed woods, becoming itself a field of snow and ice when the long winter sets in, while stunted trees attempt the struggle for existence only in the deepest valleys or on the sunniest slopes. This region is the Tundra.

It is a monotonous picture which I attempt to sketch when I seek to describe the tundra, a picture gray on gray, yet not devoid of all beauty; it is a desert with which we have to do, but a desert in which life, though for many months slumbering and apparently banished, stirs periodically in wondrous fulness.

Our language possesses no synonym for the word tundra, because our Fatherland possesses no such tract of country. For the tundra is neither heath nor moor, neither marsh nor fen, neither highlands nor sand-dunes, neither moss nor morass, though in many places it may resemble one or other of these. “Moss-steppes” someone has attempted to name it, but the expression is only satisfactory to those who have grasped the idea of steppe in its widest sense. In my opinion the tundra most resembles one of those moors which we find--and avoid--on the broad saddles of our lofty mountains; but it differs in many and important respects even from these boggy plateaus; indeed its character is in every respect unique. The region is sometimes divided into low and high tundra, though the differences between the land under three hundred feet above sea-level and that above this line are in the tundra more apparent than real.

The low tundra is bounded by flat, wavy outlines; its valleys are shallow troughs, and even the heights, which, from a distance, look like hills or even mountains, turn out to be only flat hillocks when one approaches their base. Flatness, uniformity, expressionlessness prevail, yet that there is a certain variety in the landscape, a diversity in some of its individual features, cannot be disputed. As one wanders through the tundra for days at a time, one’s attention is often arrested by dainty, even charming little pictures, but such pictures rarely stamp themselves on the memory, since on closer examination they prove, in all important details, in setting and surroundings, in contour and colour, like too many other scenes to make a distinct impression. Notwithstanding this monotony, the general aspect of the tundra has little unity, still less grandeur, and on this account one does not become enthusiastic about the region, does not reach to the heights of emotion which other landscapes awaken, perhaps does not even attain to full enjoyment of the real beauties which, it must be admitted, even this desert possesses.

The tundra receives its greatest beauty from the sky, its greatest charm from the water. The sky is seldom quite clear and bright, though even here the sun, shining uninterruptedly for months together, can beat down hot and oppressive on the flat hills and damp valleys. The blue sky is usually seen only in isolated places through light, white, loose-layered clouds; these are often massed together into cloud-banks which form on all sides of the apparently immeasurable horizon, continually changing, shifting, assuming new forms, appearing and vanishing again, so ravishing the eye with their changeful brilliance that one almost forgets the landscape underneath. When a thunder-storm threatens after a hot day the sky darkens here and there to the deepest gray-blue, the vapour-laden clouds sink beneath the lighter ones, and the sun shines through, clear and brilliant; then the dreary, monotonous landscape is magically beautified. For light and shade now diversify the hill-tops and valleys, and the wearisome monotony of their colour gains variety and life. And when, in the middle of a midsummer night, the sun stands large and blood-red in the heavens, when all the clouds are flushed with purple from beneath, when those hill-tops which hide the luminary bear a far-reaching flaming crown of rays, when a delicate rosy haze lies over the brown-green landscape, when, in a word, the indescribable magic of the midnight sun casts its spell over the soul: then this wilderness is transformed into enchanted fields, and a blissful awe fills the heart.

But variety and life are also given by the jewels of the tundra--its innumerable lakes. Distributed singly or in groups, lying beside or rising above each other, stretching out into water-basins miles in breadth, or shrinking into little pools, they occupy the centre of every hollow, beautify every valley, almost every glen, sparkle in the all-enlivening sunshine, and gray and colourless though they may be, assume, if seen from the top of a hill, the deep blue of mountain lakes. And when the sunlight flashes and twinkles on their mirroring waves, or when they, too, are touched by the rosy glow of midnight, they stand out from the surrounding gloom like living lights, on which the eye delights to linger.

Much grander, though still gloomy and monotonous, is the spectacle presented by the high tundra. Here the mountains--for such they are--have all the charms of height. They almost always rise precipitously, and the chains they form have much-broken lines, and in all suitable places the snowy sheets which cover them become glaciers. Tundra in the strict sense is only to be found where the water does not find rapid outlet; the whole remaining country seems so different from the low grounds that only the essentially similar vegetation proclaims it tundra. The boulders, which in the low grounds are turfed over with thick layers of dead plant remains, are here almost everywhere exposed; endless heaps of gigantic blocks cover the slopes and fill the valleys; boulders form the substratum of wide, almost flat surfaces on which the traveller treads hesitatingly, as he ponders over the difficult riddle regarding the forces which have distributed the blocks over these vast surfaces with almost unvarying regularity. But everywhere between them the water trickles and glides, ripples and swells, rushes and roars, rages and thunders down to the low ground. From the slopes it flows in trickling threads, converging runlets, and murmuring brooklets; from the crevices of the glaciers it breaks forth in milky torrents; it enters the water-basins in turbid rivulets; it escapes from the purifying lakes in crystalline streams, and whirling and foaming, hissing and raging, it hurries onwards down the valleys, forming alternate waterfalls and whirlpools, till it reaches the low tundra, a river, or the sea. But the sun, as often as it breaks through the clouds, floods this unique mountain region also with its magic colours, defines every hill and valley, illumines every snowfield, makes every glacier and ravine conspicuous and telling, gives effect to every peak, ridge and cliff, shows every lake as a clear and smiling mountain eye, spreads, morning and evening, the blue haze of distance like a delicate veil over the background of the picture, and, at midnight, floods the whole with its deepest rays, so that it is bathed in rosy light. Surely even the tundra is not without its charms.

In some places, though very rarely, the vegetation gives a certain form and beauty to the scenery. Pines and firs, if not altogether confined to the south, are only to be found in the most sheltered valleys. The few firs which are to be seen look as if they had been seized by a giant hand and twisted like a screw, and they do not thrive in the higher districts. The birches penetrate farther, but even they are stunted and bent like grizzled dwarfs. The larches alone here and there hold the field, and grow to be really trees, but they cannot be described as characteristic of the tundra. The most characteristic plant is certainly the dwarf-birch. Only under exceptionally favourable circumstances attaining to a yard in height, it predominates over by far the greater part of the tundra so absolutely that all other bushes and shrubs seem only to have sprung up between the birches. It spreads over all tracts where it can take root, from the shore of the sea or river to the tops of the mountains, a more or less thick covering so equal in height that great stretches look as if they had been shorn along the top; it recedes only where the ground is so soaked with water that it forms swamp or morass; it is stunted only where the heights are covered with infertile quartz or with stiff clay, which hardens readily in the sun; but it strives for mastery with the bog-moss on all the low grounds and with the reindeer-moss on every height. Areas of many square miles are so thickly clothed--one might almost say felted--that only the indestructible bog-moss ventures to assert its claim to the soil beside, or rather under the birches. In other less moist places we find dwarf-birches, sweet-willow, and marsh-andromeda mixed together. In the same way various berry-bearing bushes are often mixed, especially cowberries, crowberries, cranberries, and whortleberries.

If the ground lies below the level of the surrounding plains, and is therefore very moist, the bog-moss gains the day, and, gradually crowding out the dwarf-birch, forms great swelling cushions. As the root-parts rapidly die away into peat, these cushions become higher and more extensive until the water impedes any further advance, or else they break up into dome-like hillocks. If the basin be very flat, the accumulated water rarely forms a lake or pond, scarcely even a pool, but soaks through the soil to an indefinite depth, and so forms a morass whose thin but tough covering of interlacing sedge-roots can only be trodden in safety by the broad-hoofed reindeer; and even his steps, and the deeply-sinking runners of the sledge, make it yield and tremble like jelly.

When the depression becomes a short confined trough, without outlet, into which a streamlet flows, however slowly, the morass becomes a bog, or lower down, a swamp. In the first of these, reeds, in the second downy willows (sallows), a second characteristic plant of the tundra, attain to luxuriant growth. Though only in very favourable circumstances becoming as tall as a man, these plants form thickets which may be literally impenetrable. Their branches and roots interlace to an even greater extent than do those of the dwarf-firs on the mountains, forming an inextricable maze which can best be compared to a felt compacted out of all the different parts of the willow. It withstands the strongest arm, when one tries to clear a path through it, and it offers so much obstruction to the foot that the most persistent explorer soon gives up the attempt to pierce it, and turns aside, or retraces his steps. This he does the more readily as the substratum is in most cases morass or an almost continuous series of marshy, slimy pools whose fathomableness one is unwilling even to try.

As the traveller journeys through the tundra, he recognizes that the whole region presents to the eye the individual features already described, in regular alternation and monotonous repetition. Only where a large river of considerable volume flows through the low tundra is there any real change. Such a river deposits on its banks the masses of sand it has carried down; and the wind, which blows constantly and usually violently, piles these gradually up into dunes along the banks; thus a soil foreign to the tundra is formed. On these sand-hills the larch grows, even in the tundra of Siberia, to a stately tree, and becomes, in association with willows and dwarf alder bushes, an ornament to the landscape. In the neighbourhood of small lakes the trees may even be grouped together, and, with the shrubs already named, form a natural park which would not escape observation even in a much richer and more fertile district, and is here so very remarkable that it leaves a lasting impression.

When the larch has taken root in the sand-hills, there grow up under its sheltering branches other tall-stemmed plants such as sharp-leaved willows, mountain ash, black alder, and woodbine bushes, and there spring from the sand many flowers which one thought to have left far behind in the south. The surprised southerner is cheered by the red glory of the willow-herb; the charming wild rose clings close to the motherly earth, decorating it with its slender stems and its flowers; the bright forget-me-not looks up with home-like greeting; here hellebore and chives, valerian and thyme, carnations and blue-bells, bird-vetch and alpine vetch, ranunculus and immortelles, lady’s-smock, Jacob’s-ladder, cinquefoil, love-lies-bleeding, and others find a home in the desert. In such places more plants grow than one had expected, but the traveller is certainly modest in his expectations when he has seen the same poverty all around for days and weeks together, always dwarf-birches and sallows, marsh-andromeda and sedge, reindeer-moss and bog-moss; has refreshed himself with the stunted crowberries and cranberries half-hidden in the moss, half-creeping on the ground, and has been obliged to take the cloudberries which decorate the moss-cushion as flowers; when he has tramped over them and among them for days together always hoping for a change, and always being disappointed. Every familiar plant from the south reminds him of happier regions; he greets it as a dear friend whose value is only realized when he has begun to fear losing him.

It seems strange that the plants above-named and many others should spring only from the dry sand of the dunes, but the apparent riddle is solved when we know that it is only the sand thus piled up, that becomes sufficiently warmed in the months of uninterrupted sunshine for these plants to flourish. Nowhere else throughout the tundra is this the case. Moor and bog, morass and swamp, even the lakes with water several yards in depth only form a thin summer covering over the eternal winter which reigns in the tundra, with destructive as well as with preserving power. Wherever one tries to penetrate to any depth in the soil one comes--in most cases scarcely a yard from the surface--upon ice, or at least on frozen soil, and it is said that one must dig about a hundred yards before breaking through the ice-crust of the earth. It is this crust which prevents the higher plants from vigorous growth, and allows only such to live as are content with the dry layer of soil which thaws in summer. It is only by digging that one can know the tundra for what it is: an immeasurable and unchangeable ice-vault which has endured, and will continue to endure, for hundreds of thousands of years. That it has thus endured is proved indisputably by the remains of prehistoric animals embedded in it, and thus preserved for us. In 1807 Adams dug from the ice of the tundras the giant mammoth, with whose flesh the dogs of the Yakuts sated their hunger, although it must have died many thousands of years before, for the race became extinct in the incalculably distant past. The icy tundra had faithfully preserved the carcase of this primitive elephant all through these hundreds of thousands of years.

Many similar animals, and others of a more modern time, are embedded in the ice, though it is not to be supposed that the tundra was ever able to sustain a much richer fauna than it has now. Bison and musk-ox traversed it long after the time of the mammoth; giant-elk and moose belonged to it once. Now its animal life is as poor and monotonous as its vegetation--as itself. This holds true, however, only with regard to species, not to individuals, for the tundra is, at least in summer, the home of numerous animals.