CHAP, viii ] A PBIMEVAL FOREST. 289 



69° 40' N.L., a little north of Dudino. Here the hills are 

 covered with a sort of wood consisting of half-withered, grey, 

 moss-grown larches (Larix sibirica), which seldom reach a 

 height of more than seven to ten metres, and which much less 

 deserve the name of trees than the luxuriant alder bushes 

 which grow nearly 2° farther north. But some few miles south 

 of this place, and still far north of the Arctic Circle, the pine 

 forest becomes tall. Here begins a veritable forest, the greatest 

 the earth has to show, extending with little interruption from 

 the Ural to the neighbourhood of the Sea of Ochotsk, and from 

 the fifty-eighth or fifty-ninth degree of latitude to far north 

 of the Arctic Circle, that is to say, about one thousand kilo- 

 metres from north to south, and perhaps four times as much 

 from east to west. It is a primeval forest of enormous extent, 

 nearly untouched by the axe of the cultivator, but at many 

 places devastated by extensive forest fires. 



On the high eastern bank of the Yenisej the forest begins 

 immediately at the river bank. It consists principally of pines : 

 the cembra pine (Finns Cembra, L.), valued for its seeds, enor- 

 mous larches, the nearly awl-formed Siberian pine {Pinus 

 sibirica, Ledeb.), the fir {Pinus obovata, TuRCZ.), and scattered 

 trees of the common pine {Pinvs syhestris^ L.). Most of these 

 already north of the Arctic Circle reach a colossal size, but in 

 such a case are often here, far from all forestry, grey and half- 

 dried up with age. Between the trees the ground is so covered 

 with fallen branches and stems, only some of which are fresh, 

 the others converted into a mass of wood-mould held together 

 only by the bark, that there one willingly avoids going forward 

 on an unbroken path. If that must be done, the progress made 

 is small, and there is constant danger of breaking one's bones 

 in the labyrinth of stems. Nearly everywhere the fallen stems 

 are covered, often concealed, by an exceedingly luxuriant bed of 

 mosses, while on the other hand tree-lichens, probably in con- 

 sequence of the dry inland climate of Siberia, occur sparingly. 

 The pines, therefore, want the shaggy covering common in 

 Sweden, and the bark of the birches which are seen here 

 and there among the pines is distinguished by an uncommon 

 blinding whiteness. 



The western bank of the Yenesej consists, like the innumer- 

 able islands of the river, for the most part of low lying and 

 marshy stretches of land, which at the season of the spring 

 floods are overflowed by the river and abundantly manured with 

 its mud. In this way there is formed here a fertile tract of 

 meadow covered partly with a grassy turf untouched by the 

 scythe, partly with a very peculiar bush vegetation, rising to a 

 height of eight metres, among which there are to be found a 

 number of families of plants well known by us in Sweden, as 



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