16 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



perature above 90° in the shade at Fort Yukon, in Alaska, four 

 miles north of the arctic circle. The maximum recorded there so 

 far is 100° in the shade. 



Still following the typical view of the far north we come to 

 the question of vegetation. Even those who would make the off- 

 hand statement that the land is covered with eternal ice and snow 

 would, if you pressed them, admit that they had heard of vegeta- 

 tion in the North. You would, however, find that in their minds 

 the idea of vegetation was coupled with such adjectives as "humble," 

 "stunted," "clinging," and more specifically they would be of 

 opinion that what vegetation there is must be mosses and lichens. 

 Should you succeed in reminding them that they have read or heard 

 of arctic flowers, they would think of these as an exception. 



Yet Sir Clements Markham in his appendix to the "Life of 

 Admiral McClintock," points out that he knows of the existence 

 of 762 species of arctic flowering plants and only 332 species of 

 mosses, 250 of lichens and 28 of ferns. Similarly Dr. Elmer Ek- 

 blaw, the American botanist, gathered over 120 different species 

 of flowering plants in one vicinity six or seven hundred miles norih 

 of the arctic circle. And these are not flowering plants that are 

 strange to us, but they include such common forms as saxifrage, 

 poppy, Alpine chickweed, bluegrass, heather, mountain avens, 

 sedge, arnica, cat's-paw, reed-bent grass, blue-bell, sixteen species 

 of cress, dandelion, timothy, scouring rushes, ferns and edible mush- 

 rooms. 



Even while we realize that the number of species of flowering 

 plants in the Arctic is far greater than the non-flowering, we might 

 still believe that the non-flowering are comparatively luxuriant 

 and conspicuous and the flowering plants shrinking and rare. In 

 general this is the opposite of the truth. In special cases it may 

 be that, through scarcity or absence of soil, lichens and mosses 

 prevail locally, for the peculiarity of lichens especially is that they 

 manage to live even on the surface of naked rocks. But whenever 

 soil is abundant, and this is as likely to be the case in the Arctic 

 as elsewhere, the prevailing vegetation is grasses, sedges and the 

 like; and in some places, no matter how far north, this kind of 

 vegetation completely obscures the non-flowering. 



"Barren Ground" is a libelous name by which the open land of 

 the north is commonly described. This name is better adapted for 

 creating the impression that those who travel in the North are in- 

 trepid adventurers than it is for conveying to the reader a true pic- 

 ture of the country. If we want to be near the truth we should 



