114 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



Its navigation is impeded by shoals and banks. Being 

 nearly landlocked, it is little affected by the ocean, and is 

 fed only with fresh water. Open also to the polar winds 

 that freeze the many lakes of Finland, the Baltic becomes 

 in winter a solid highway between Russia arid. Sweden 

 for sledges, and traffickers with their merchandise poised 

 on their heads. Merchantmen are ice-bound before Cron- 

 stadt, and the morass upon which the Russian capital is 

 built feels the rigour of months of frost. Famished with 

 hunger, the wolves leave their lair, making night hideous, 

 and filling the droschky drivers' hearts with fear. 



Lapland and Finmark. The ungainly reindeer turns 

 up the Lapland snow for the moss or lichen which, 

 by Nature's provision, is longest and most profuse in 

 winter, when other food cannot be got and thrives upon 

 such scanty pasturage. The rich Laplander counts his 

 patriarchal wealth in reindeer, often owning a thousand, 

 just as at the other extreme of climate the Arab numbers 

 his wealth in camels. Both reindeer and camel combine, 

 in their service to man, the whole range of usefulness of 

 our domes Lie quadrupeds. Where the ox, sheep, and horse 

 would perish from the climate and want of sustenance, 

 those representative creatures give their flesh and milk 

 for food, their skin for clothing, while they are patient 

 beasts of burden, and satisfy numberless human wants. 



Winter, in the greater part of this zone, lasts for nine 

 months in the year, coming suddenly, without autumnal 

 preparation, and breaking forth into summer without 

 the intervention of spring, when, says the proverb, " a 

 man may hear the grass grow." 



Summer. As soon as the cheerless season has passed, 

 the snows melt on the Norwegian hills ; cataracts take 

 their headlong leaps, and flash their surcharged waters 

 into winding inlets, eager to join the ocean ; the swollen 

 streams burst with the force of a deluge, and devastate 

 the lowlands lying between. 



Forests. Only at this season are the rivers full enough 

 to carry to the sea the burden of timber, the great con- 

 stituent of Scandinavian wealth. In many places transit 

 cannot be accomplished, and the forests, in their lonely 

 solemnity, breathe forth the mournful wail peculiar to 

 the pine tribe, unmolested by man. 



Sea-fowl. Innumerable sea-fowl skim the surf or 

 sweep the sky. Responding to their instincts, they line 

 their nests with down, the winter's thick undergrowth, 

 of which they are twice rifled by the daring fowler. 

 The fiords of Norway, the Baltic coasts of Bothnia, the 

 polar shores of Russia, and the islands of the Arctic are 

 filled with sea-fowl. Besides affording the luxury of 

 eider coverlets and beds of elastic down, their flesh is 

 useful, where so much else is denied, and their quills are 

 a constituent of commercial wealth, of which Riga is the 

 chief depot. 



Fisheries. A teeming world of aquatic life exceeds 

 in number, if not in interest, the feathered one. The 

 species are few, but the individuals, as is distinctive 

 of the polar zones, are numerous beyond computation. 

 Fishermen haunt every fiord as well as the open sea, 

 capturing millions of cod and other fish, which they salt 

 for markets as distant as Spain and the Mediterranean, 

 and the streams are tenanted with salmon. Fishing 

 and fowling are the sole maintenance of the granite 

 group of the Lofoden Isles, to whose great cod-fishery 

 men resort from different parts of Norway. Billingsgate 

 relies upon Norway in part for its daily stock of 

 lobsters, the consignments reaching the annual value 

 of 100,000. Fish-oils, for the purposes of illumination 

 as well as for food, are sought from the seal, and from a 

 kind of shark, whose liver, containing several gallons of 

 clear oil, is the only part regarded. 



Revival of Industry. As the summer advances, the 

 whirr of many water-mills blends with the roar of the 

 floods, and industrial sounds reverberate. The mining 



districts are animated with busy labour Swedish, Lap- 

 landish, Finnish, and Russian. Emphatically, the hus< 

 bandman "works while it is called day." Stockholm, the 

 Swedish Venice, glistens in the waters of the archipelago 

 upon which it is founded, and merchandise, unlocked 

 from its icy moorings, gives life again to the Neva. 



Grass grows on every patch of soil, and flowers gladden 

 the ground suddenly, as if touched by a fairy wand. Larks 

 and nightingales make the sky echo with song. Barley, 

 oats, and rye may be measured in their daily growth. 

 They are in seed, blade and ear, ripened and reaped, 

 within the brief three months' summer. In this short 

 season the niggard plains of Lapland produce corn, and 

 potatoes, and butter for export to Sweden. 



An arch of liquid blue, dashed with tufts and patches 

 of pearly vapour, outdazzling the sea-foam and scudding 

 beneath a procession of clouds tinted by sunbeams, is 

 Nature's glorified canopy. The sun keeps above the 

 horizon longer each day, and each night's dispersion 

 of heat grows less. The lengthened day accumulates 

 heat, and tempts out the gnat-like insects ; the reindeer 

 is punctui'ed with the stings of the gad-fly ; midsummer 

 comes before the first summer greetings are over, and 

 then, in the farthest north, the sun sets and rises without 

 leaving the horizon. 



Gradations in the Fauna and Flora. 



Fauna. Interesting gradatioiis in the fauna and flora- 

 are observable through the zone. Animals being limited 

 by the prevalence of their food, it is only in the lower 

 and milder latitudes that the common domestic cattle 

 are found. The deer is stalked in the hills of Scotland 

 and the elk in Sweden. The wild ox is rare even in 

 Russia. The bison or aurochs is found in Moldavia, 

 Wallachia, Lithuania, and the Caucasus. The herds in 

 the forest of Bialowieza are protected by the Emperor of 

 Russia as we protect game in this country. Excepting 

 reindeer, the animals are, beyond the confines of wheat, 

 almost exclusively flesh-eaters. Bears are not fastidious 

 in their diet, but the polar variety is wholly a beast of 

 prey. Nature, however, indulgent in her harshest moods, 

 adapts the beaver, sable, ermine, and fox to an abode 

 amongst the snows, and offers their thick and warm furs 

 as a compensation to man for braving the bitterness of a 

 polar winter. 



Flora. The highest point to which wheat reaches is 

 64; rye, oats, and barley ripen as far as 69 or 70*. 

 The potato and green vegetables grow at North Cape 

 in about the same latitude, but only in lower latitudes 

 inland. Berry fruits, such as cranberries, of which 

 many casks are exported from Russia, strawberries, 

 bilberries, and currants, enhance their flavour in this 

 zone to an excellence unknown in England. Trees have 

 a wide range, their vigour, however, being checked 

 in approaching the pole. The beech and elm extend 

 as far north as 60. In Sweden and Norway the oak 

 reaches 62, and the lime, which in Russia forms the 

 largest European forests, reaches 63. The firs reach 

 68 N., the willow and birch triflingly beyond the potato 

 limit. These high points, nevertheless, are attained only 

 in the parts influenced by the Gulf Stream. Inland, 

 owing to the greater cold, the limit descends as much 

 as five or six degrees of latitude. The birch, at the isle 

 of Hammerfest, does not exceed the height of a man, 

 and at its extreme limits is so dwarfed that half-a-dozen 

 full-grown trees could stand, it is said, on an octavo 

 page. Coniferous trees retain their energy beyond the 

 normal range of the leaf-shedders, and are amongst the 

 last to disappear. Local physical amenities, however, 

 occasionally reproduce examples of these trees, so that 

 the birch, mountain ash, and Scotch fir are not finally 

 arrested before reaching latitude 78 N. At Umbar 

 there are forests of birch and spruce, the trees attaining 

 a height of twenty-five feet, and a girth of two feet. 



