420 OUR ARCTIC PROVIlSrCE. 



mosses and lichens, and a spliagnous combination which produces 

 in the short growing season a yellowish-green carpet, with patches 

 of pale lavender gray where the lichens are most abundant. At 

 sparse and ii'regular intervals bunches of coarse sedge grasses rise, 

 and the entire surface of moor is crossed at various angles with 

 lines of dwarf birches and an occasional clump of alders and 

 stunted mllows. The most attractive feature in such an arctic land- 

 scape, when summer has draped it as we now behold it, is the nod- 

 ding seed-plumes of the equisetum grasses— they are tufts of a pure, 

 fleecy white that, ruffled in the breeze, light up the sombre rus- 

 set swales with an almost electrical beauty. Everywhere here, in 

 less than eighteen inches or two feet beneath this blossoming flora, 

 will be found a solid foundation of perpetual frost and ice — it never 

 thaws lower. The flowers of that tundra embrace a list of over 

 forty beautiful species, chief among them being phloxes, a pale- 

 blue iris, white and yellow poppies, several varieties of the red- 

 flowered saxifrages, the broad-leaved archangelica, and many deli- 

 cately fronded ferns. 



Twittering, darting flocks of barn-swallows hover and glide over 

 the old faded roofs and walls of Michaelovsky, and the bells of a 

 red-painted church, just beyond, come jangling sweetly across the 

 water, mingled with that homelike chattering of these swallows. 

 But a pious mission here is a practical failure in so far as any effect 

 upon the lunuit mind is concerned. During summer-time, in the 

 Upper Yukon country, thunder-showers are very common ; down 

 here, on the coast, they are never experienced. The glory, how- 

 ever, of an auroral display is divided equally between them, when 

 from September until March luminous waves and radii of pulsating 

 rose, purple, green, and blue flames light up and dance about the 

 heavens — gorgeous arches of yellow bands and pencil-points of 

 crimson fire are hung and glitter in the zenith. These exhibitions 

 beggar description ; they are weirdly and surpassingly beautiful, 

 far beyond all comparison with anything else of a spectacular nature 

 on earth. 



In the autumn and in the early days of December, a low de- 

 clination of the sun tints up the clouds at sunrise and sunset into 

 beautiful masses of colors that rapidly come and go in their orig- 

 ination and fading. Twilight is a lovely interval of the day in this 

 latitude, and is even enjoyed by the hard-headed traders themselves. 

 Winter is a weary drag here — about seven months — lasting from 



