830 KEPORT — 1893. 



to continuous daylight. The li^ht was a little duller at midnight, but not so much 

 80 as duriug the occasional snowstorms that swept through the forest and drifted 

 up the broad river bed. During the month of May there were a few signs of the 

 possibility of some mitigation of the rigours of winter. Now and then there 

 was a little rain, but it was always followed by frost. If it thawed one day 

 it froze the next, and little or no impression was made on the snow. Tiie 

 most tangible signs of coming summer was an increase in the number of birds, 

 but they were nearly all forest birds, which could enjoy the sunshine in the 

 pines and birches, and which were by no means dependent on the melting 

 away of the snow for their supply of food. Between May 16 and 30 we had 

 more definite evidence of our being within bird flight of bare grass or open 

 water. Migratory flocks of wild geese passed over our winter quarters, hut if 

 they were flying north one day they were flying south the next, proving beyond 

 all doubt that their migration was premature. The geese evidently agreed with 

 us that it ought to be summer, but it was as clear to the geese as to us that 

 it really was winter. 



We afterwards learnt that during the last ten days of May a tremendous 

 battle had been raging 600 miles as the crow flies to the southward of our 

 position on the Arctic Circle. Summer in league with the sun had been fighting 

 winter and the north wind all along the line, and had been as hopelessly beaten 

 everywhere as we were witnesses that it had been in our part of the river. At 

 length, when the final -victory of summer looked the most hopeless, a change was 

 made in the command of the forces. Summer entered into an alliance with the 

 south wind. The eiin retired in dudgeon to his tent behind the clouds, mists 

 obscured the landscape, a soft south wind played gently on the snow, which melted 

 under its all-powerful influence like butter upon hot toast, the tide of battle was 

 suddenly turned, the armies of winter soon vanished into thin water and beat a 

 hasty retreat towards the pole. The effect on the great river was magical. Its 

 thick armour of ice cracked with a loud noise like the rattling of thunder, every 

 twenty-four hours it was lifted up a fathom above its former level, broken up, first 

 into ice floes and then into pack ice, and marched down stream at least a hundred 

 miles. Even at this great speed it was more than a fortnight before the last strag- 

 gling ice-blocks passed our post of observation on the Arctic Circle, but during 

 that time the river had risen 70 feet above its winter level, although it was three 

 miles wide, and we were in the middle of a blazing hot summer, picking flowers of 

 a hundred different kinds, and feasting upon wild ducks' eggs of various species. 

 Birds abounded to an incredible extent. Between May 29 and June 18 I identified 

 sixty-four species which I had cot seen before the break up of the ice. Some of 

 them stopped to breed and already had eggs, but many of them followed the 

 retreating ice to the tundra, and we saw them no more until, many weeks after- 

 wards, we had sailed down the river beyond the limit of forest growth. 



The victory of the south wind was absolute, but not entirely uninterrupted. 

 Occasionally the winter made a desperate stand against the sudden onrush of 

 summer. The north wind rallied its beaten forces for days together, the clouds 

 and the rain were driven back, and the half-melted snow frozen on the surface. 

 But it was too late ; there were many large patches of dark ground which rapidly 

 absorbed the sun's heat ; the snow melted under the frozen crust, and its final 

 collapse was as rapid as it was complete. 



In the basin of the Yenisei the average thickness of the snow at the end of 

 winter is about 5 feet. The sudden transformation of this immense continent of 

 snow, which lies as gently on the earth as an eider-down quilt upon a bed, into an 

 ocean of water rushing madly down to the sea, tearing everj'thing up that comes 

 into its way, is a gigantic display of power compared with which an earthquake 

 sinks into insignificance. It is diflicult to imagine the chaos of water which must 

 have deluged the country before the river beds were worn wide enough and deep 

 enough to carry the water away as quickly as is the case now. If we take the 

 Lower Yenisei as an example it may be possible to form some conception of the 

 work which has already been done. At Yeniseisk the channel is about a mde 

 wide; 800 miles lower down (measuring the windings of the river), at the 



