THE TUNDRA AND ITS ANIMAL LIFE. 67 



— its innumerable lakes. Distributed singly or in groups, lying 

 beside or rising above each other, stretching out into water-basina 

 miles in breadth, or shrinking into little pools, they occupy the centre 

 of every hollow, beautify every valley, almost every glen, sparkle 

 in the all- enlivening sunshine, and gray and colourless though they 

 may be, assume, if seen from the top of a hill, the deep blue of 

 mountain lakes. And when the sunlight flashes and twinkles on 

 their mirroring waves, or when they, too, are touched by the rosy 

 glow of midnight, they stand out from the surrounding gloom like 

 living lights, on which the eye delights to linger. 



Much grander, though still gloomy and monotonous, is the 

 spectacle presented by the high tundra. Here the mountains — for 

 such they are — have all the charms of height. They almost always 

 rise precipitously, and the chains they form have much-broken 

 lines, and in all suitable places the snowy sheets which cover them 

 become glaciers. Tundra in the strict sense is only to be found 

 wher e the water does not find rapid outlet ; the whole remaining 

 country seems so diflPerent from the low grounds that only the essen- 

 tially similar vegetation proclaims it tundra. The boulders, which 

 in the low grounds are turfed over with thick layers of dead plant 

 remains, are here almost everywhere exposed; endless heaps of 

 gigantic blocks cover the slopes and fill the valleys; boulders form 

 the substratum of wide, almost flat surfaces on which the traveller 

 treads hesitatingly, as he ponders over the difficult riddle regarding 

 the forces which have distributed the blocks over these vast surfaces 

 with almost unvarying regularity. But everywhere between them the 

 water trickles and glides, ripples and swells, rushes and roars, rages 

 and thunders down to the low ground. From the slopes it flows in 

 trickling threads, converging runlets, and murmuring brooklets; 

 from the crevices of the glaciers it breaks forth in milky torrents ; 

 it enters the water-basins in turbid rivulets; it escapes from the 

 purifying lakes in crystalline streams, and whirling and foaming, 

 hissing and raging, it hurries onwards down the valleys, forming 

 alternate waterfalls and whirlpools, till it reaches the low tundra, a 

 river, or the sea. But the sun, as often as it breaks through the 

 clouds, floods this unique mountain region also with its magic colours. 



