64 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



wanders through the tundra for days at a time, one's attention is 

 often arrested by dainty, even charming little pictures, but such 

 pictures rarely stamp themselves on the memory, since on closer 

 examination they prove, in all important details, in setting and 

 surroundings, in contour and colour, like too many other scenes to 

 make a distinct impression. Notwithstanding this monotony, the 

 general aspect of the tundra has little unity, still less grandeur, and 

 on this account one does not become enthusiastic about the region, 

 does not reach to the heights of emotion which other landscapes 

 awaken, perhaps does not even attain to full enjoyment of the real 

 beauties which, it must be admitted, even this desert possesses. 



The tundra receives its greatest beauty from the sky, its 

 greatest charm from the water. The sky is seldom quite clear and 

 bright, though even here the sun, shining uninterruptedly for months 

 together, can beat down hot and oppressive on the flat hills and 

 damp valleys. The blue sky is usually seen only in isolated places 

 through light, white, loose-layered clouds; these are often massed 

 together into cloud-banks which form on all sides of the apparently 

 immeasurable horizon, continually changing, shifting, assuming new 

 forms, appearing and vanishing again, so ravishing the eye with 

 their changeful brilliance that one almost forgets the landscape 

 underneath. When a thunder-storm threatens after a hot day the 

 sky darkens here and there to the deepest gray -blue, the vapour- 

 laden clouds sink beneath the lighter ones, and the sun shines 

 through, clear and brilliant; then the dreary, monotonous landscape 

 is magically beautified. For light and shade now diversify the hill- 

 tops and valleys, and the wearisome monotony of their colour gains 

 variety and life. And when, in the middle of a midsummer night, 

 the sun stands large and blood-red in the heavens, when all the 

 clouds are flushed with purple from beneath, when those hill-tops 

 which hide the luminary bear a far-reaching flaming crown of rays, 

 when a delicate rosy haze lies over the brown -green landscape, 

 when, in a word, the indescribable magic of the midnight sun casts 

 its spell over the soul: then this wilderness is transformed into 

 enchanted fields, and a blissful awe fills the heart. 



But variety and life are also given by the jewels of the tundra 



