68 FEOM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



defines every hill and valley, illumines every snowfield, makes every 

 glacier and ravine conspicuous and telling, gives effect to every peak, 

 ridge and cliff, shows every lake as a clear and smiling mountain 

 eye, spreads, morning and evening, the blue haze of distance like a 

 delicate veil over the background of the picture, and, at midnight, 

 floods the whole with its deepest rays, so that it is bathed in rosy 

 light. Surely even the tundra is not without its charms. 



In some places, though very rarely, the vegetation gives a 

 certain form and beauty to the scenery. Pines and firs, if not 

 altogether confined to the south, are only to be found in the most 

 sheltered valleys. The few firs which are to be seen look as if they 

 had been seized by a giant hand and twisted like a screw, and 

 they do not thrive in the higher districts. The birches penetrate 

 farther, but even they are stunted and bent like grizzled dwarfs. The 

 larches alone here and there hold the field, and grow to be really 

 trees, but they cannot be described as characteristic of the tundra. 

 The most characteristic plant is certainly the dwarf -birch. Only 

 under exceptionally favourable circumstances attaining to a yard 

 in height, it predominates over by far the greater part of the 

 tundra so absolutely that all other bushes and shrubs seem only 

 to have sprung up between the birches. It spreads over all tracts 

 where it can take root, from the shore of the sea or river to the 

 tops of the mountains, a more or less thick covering so equal in 

 height that great stretches look as if they had been shorn along 

 the top; it recedes only where the ground is so soaked with water 

 that it forms swamp or morass; it is stunted only where the heights 

 are covered with infertile quartz or with stiff clay, which hardens 

 readily in the sun; but it strives for mastery with the bog-moss 

 on all the low grounds and with the reindeer-moss on every 

 height. Areas of many square miles are so thickly clothed — one 

 might almost say felted — that only the indestructible bog-moss 

 ventures to assert its claim to the soil beside, or rather under the 

 birches. In other less moist places we find dwarf-birches, sweet- 

 willow, and marsh-andromeda mixed together. In the same way 

 various berry-bearing bushes are often mixed, especially cowberries, 

 crowberHes, cranberries, and whortleberries. 



