THE HYPERBOREAN SNOWFLAKE 23! 



birds innumerable were fluttering about the rocks. We 

 passed a murre with its head tucked under its wing, sleep- 

 ing on the water and rocking with the waves like a beauti- 

 ful little boat. Night had come, although the sun still 

 lingered above the western horizon. The steamer was 

 vanishing in the direction of St. Matthew Island. Our 

 little party was left alone on the beach, the waves swash- 

 ing up on the pebbled shore and the dark cliffs about us 

 swarming with sea birds. There were puffins, pigeon 

 guillemots, and least auklets, besides the vast company of 

 murres, and the cackling of innumerable voices made an 

 incessant murmur above the sound of the sea. 



Upon climbing up the slopes from the shore we found 

 ourselves upon an Arctic tundra a great rolling plateau 

 of bog, with pools of water in every hollow, and flowers 

 growing in bewildering profusion. A bed of moss spread 

 across the island from cliff to cliff carpeting everything 

 with its soft tones of gray, brown, purple, and green 

 parts of it like velvet, soft and yielding to the tread, and 

 other parts spongy and soggy. The masses of flowers 

 wove richly glowing patterns into the carpet, in purple, 

 blue, yellow, and white the purple primrose and pedi- 

 cularis, the blue polemonium, the yellow poppy, a fine 

 golden cowslip, and the white-cupped dryas. 



It was fitting that this fairy garden in the midst of a 

 stormy sea should be inhabited by one of the most chastely 

 adorned of birds, the hyperborean snowflake. Verily a 

 snowflake this exquisite creature is, as it whirls through 

 the misty glow of night among the wastes of flowers. Its 

 plumage is as candid as a freshly opened lily. The spot- 

 less white shows more perfectly by contrast with the jetty 

 bill and the blackness of the wing tips. At the edge of 

 its snowy tail are two other black dots. It is a sparrow 

 transformed into a wraith of the snow. It is adorned with 

 the ermine of kings, and a king it seems amid the realm 



