140 THE WORLD OF LIFE chap. 



worth quoting, as few people have any adequate idea of 

 what the greater part of the Arctic regions really are in 

 summer. After describing its extent and boundaries, he 

 says : 



" I have called this district a paradise, and so it is for two 

 or three months of the year. Nowhere else in the whole world can 

 you find such an abundance of animal and vegetable life, brilliant 

 flowers, birds both of gay plumage and melodious of song, where 

 perpetual day smiles on sea and river and lake. For eight months 

 or more (according to the latitude) every trace of vegetable life is 

 completely hidden under a thick blanket which absolutely covers 

 every plant and bush. Far as the eye can reach, in every direction 

 nothing is to be seen but an interminable, undulating plain of white 

 snow." 



Then after describing the few animals that live there 

 even during the winter, and the strange phenomenon in 

 May of continuous day and almost perpetual sunshine, at 

 midday hot enough to blister the skin, yet still apparently 

 in mid-winter so far as the snow is concerned, he goes on 

 to describe what there takes place : 



" The disc of snow surrounding the North Pole at the end of 

 May extends for about two thousand miles in every direction where 

 land exists, and is melting away on its circumference at the rate 

 of about four miles an hour, and as it takes a week or more to melt, 

 it is in process of being melted for a belt of several hundred miles 

 wide round the circumference. This belt is crowded with migratory 

 birds eager to push forwards to their breeding grounds — hurrying on 

 over the melting snow so long as the south wind makes bare places 

 soft enough to feed on, but perpetually being driven back by the 

 north wind, which locks up their food in its ice-chest. ... In 

 watching the sudden arrival of summer on the Arctic circle, both 

 in the valley of the Petchora, in East Russia, and in the valley of 

 the Yenesay, in Central Siberia, I was impressed with the fact that 

 the influence of the sun was nearly nothing, while that of the south 

 wind was almost everything. The great annual battle between 

 summer and winter in these regions is the one event of the year: 

 it only lasts a fortnight, during which a cold winter is transformed 

 into a hot summer." 



He then gives a most interesting account of the breaking 

 up of the ice on the great north-flowing rivers till they 

 become roaring floods of muddy water, crowded with lumps 



