CHAP. xiii. FOREST SCENERY. 137 



appeared, all but a patch or two on the Timanski hills, fifty 

 miles off. The Petchora, freed from ice, had risen some 

 twenty feet or more, and had flooded the island in front of 

 the villagp, the willows and pine-tree tops being just visible 

 above the surface. Inland, half the country at least was 

 under water, a vast network of lakes and swamps with the 

 forest between. In some places the skirts themselves of the 

 forest were flooded. As we had not brought our wading boots 

 we had to confine our explorations to the woods. These 

 proved an inexhaustible source of interest to us, and one in 

 no wise lacking in variety. There was much beauty in these 

 woods. Under foot spread a carpet of soft green moss and 

 lichens, the thick moss predominating in the older and thicker 

 parts of the forest, while the reindeer moss and the many- 

 coloured lichens abounded in the younger and more open 

 woods. Stray shrubs of arbutus and rhododendron, bushes 

 of bilberry, crowberry, cranberry, the fruit of which was pre- 

 served by seven months' frost, clumps of carices and other 

 vegetation decked the shady aisles. The monotony of the 

 great pine forest was varied by the delicate hues of willow 

 and alder thickets, by plantations of young pines and firs, by 

 clumps of tall spruce and haggard old larches, while here 

 and there a fine birch spread abroad its glossy foliage, or a 

 gaunt Scotch fir extended wide its copper-coloured arms. 

 All around lay strewn trunks and branches of timber, fallen 

 or felled, in every stage of decomposition, from the hoary 

 log, moss-covered and turned to tinder, to the newly-lopped 

 branches of some lofty forest patriarch, whose magnificent 

 boughs had been wantonly cut up to furnish firewood for 



