68 THE FOREST LANDS OF NORTHERN RUSSIA. 



six hundred yards of cataract in its various phases of 

 sheer fall, boiling cauldron, wave and eddy and rapid, with 

 the spray flying over us in clouds hurled up forty feet into 

 the rainbow -sprinkled air from where the huge waves are 

 breaking in thunder on the ink-black cliffs below us, we 

 find no difficulty in realising that the grandest fall in 

 Europe is before us. The river is about 150 yards across 

 above the crest of the first fall, when at high flood, after 

 the melting of the snows, and some thirty feet in depth ; 

 but now, in early autumn, its volume is much reduced, 

 and huge black rocks divide it into three separate streams 

 at the lip. Some idea of the stupendous rush of waters 

 may be judged from the fact that this superb river falls 

 250 feet in the course of six hundred yards. Immediately 

 below the first fall of forty feet is an inaccessible islet, 

 covered with pines and birches, the leaves of which 

 quiver with the concussion of the falling waters, just as 

 those of the shrubs on Luna Island, hanging on the brink 

 of Niagara, are ever tremulous. 



' So indescribably grand is Njommelsaska, that it is with 

 the utmost reluctance that we turn our backs upon its 

 glories, and wend our way back to Ligga through the 

 silent forest, whence a third long day's walk brings us to 

 Jokkmokk.' 



This, however, though within woody Lapland, lies far to 

 the west of the line which divides Scandinavian Lapland 

 from Russian Lapland. 



The whole of woody Lapland is so level that scarcely 

 one of the mountains rises higher than 21 3 feet above the 

 neighbouring plains, and in none of the first three zones is 

 the height above the level of the sea considerable, but a 

 few high mountains there are. And the Lapland Alps 

 have an altitude such that no part is less than 2000 feet 

 above the level of the sea. 



The fifth region, the higher Alpine region, extends 

 along the north side of Lapland, varying in breadth as it 



