108 Messrs. H. Seebohni and J. A. Harvie Brown on 



banks are low swampy land, covered, like the islands of the 

 delta, with dwarf willow. These islands, as well as the swamps 

 near the shore, are three to four feet under water when the 

 river is swollen by the rapidly melted snow. The shores of 

 the delta, as well as of the lagoon, are strewn with drift- 

 wood, trees of all sizes from the inland forests, squared balks 

 from the stores of the Petchora trading-company, and spars 

 of luckless ships that have been wrecked upon the coast. 

 Some of these piles of drift-wood lie far inland, and are over- 

 grown with centuries of moss, suggesting the idea that a gra- 

 dual upheaval of the land is taking place, or that ages ago the 

 breaking up of the ice upon the Petchora was attended with 

 higher floods than are experienced now. The west bank of 

 the river is flat as far as the delta, and is in some places 

 flooded for many miles inland when the ice breaks up. We 

 had left the forests befoi'C the spring flowers were out ; but on 

 the tundra they almost rivalled the alpine flora in their abun- 

 dance and brilliancy, especially on the banks of the gi-eat 

 river. The tundra is full of lakes, large and small, generally 

 with steep banks of peat, sometimes with flat banks of rushy 

 grass, and rarely of sand. In some places the lakes seem 

 to have been almost dried up, or choked with coarse grasses, 

 rushes, and carices, and have become swamps, with frequently 

 a little open water in the middle. The tundra is gay with 

 many- coloured lichens, mosses, and liverworts, of which the 

 well-known reindeer-moss is the most abundant. As soon 

 as the long winter snow has disappeared, there is no lack of 

 food for fruit- and seed-eating birds. Last year's crowberries 

 and cranberries, preserved by the frost for nearly seven 

 months, were common enough everywhere ; and early in July 

 the white flowers of the cloudberry and the red flowers of the 

 arctic strawberry were very brilliant. The delicious cloud- 

 berry, the ^maroshka' of the Russians, and the 'moltebeere' of 

 the Norwegians, is undoubtedly the fruit of the tundra par 

 excellence, and deserves to be better known in this country. 

 There was no heath ; but the pale magenta flowers of Andro- 

 meda polifolia represented it very fairly. An aromatic Rho- 

 dodendron-like dwarf shrub {Ledum paluslre) was common. 



