MARVELLOUS EFFECTS OF THE SOUTH WIND. 293 



the snow lies deep, and the rivers are all fast closed 

 by ice of great thickness. And was all this amount 

 of stored-up cold suffered to remain until it disappeared 

 under the influence of sunshine, it is to be feared 

 that vast areas would become buried like Greenland 

 under a permanent ice cap. In these cases the 

 release of the land from the iron grip of winter is 

 undoubtedly due to the setting in of warm winds, 

 which act which almost magical power in producing 

 the mighty upheaval of the ice-closed rivers and the 

 melting of the great snow drifts. 



Mr. Seebohm, in his account of the break-up of the 

 winter in eastern Siberia has supplied us with a 

 striking description of this great event, which was 

 witnessed by him in 1882, upon the Yenesay River, 

 a gigantic stream some three or four miles wide, 

 which there flows into the Arctic Ocean. 



" Early in June (he says) the sun only touches the horizon 

 at midnight, and for a few days you have the anomaly of 

 unbroken day in midwinter. Then comes the south wind; 

 and often rain ; and the great event of the year takes place 

 the ice on the great rivers breaks up; and the blanket of 

 snow melts away." * 



With reference to the immediate and almost miraculous 

 change thus brought about, Mr. Seebohm states his 

 opinions about it in these words, to which we think 

 it unnecessary to add a single observation: 



" This sudden change, in the space of a fortnight, from 

 midwinter to midsummer, can (he observes) scarcely be called 

 spring. It is a revolution of Nature, so imposing, that the 

 most prosaic of observers cannot witness it without feeling its 



* Siberia in Asia : a Visit to the Valley of the Yenesay in East 

 Siberia, with a description of the Natural History etc., by Henry Seebohm, 

 1882, p. 192. 



