62 THE FOREST LANDS OF NORTHERN RUSSIA. 
civilisation. The scanty population of this part of the 
country may be judged from the fact that in September 
last I drove the entire distance without meeting a single 
vehicle on the road. Most of the farms are to the right ' 
of the road along the river bank; to the left one might 
strike into a pathless forest and wander aimlessly for days 
together with but a slight chance of lighting upon a house 
or even a sign of a human being. At one part of the road 
I drove for three miles through a wilderness of gaunt 
blackened trunks of pines, across which a forest fire had 
swept some three years previously. In Tasmania, New 
South Wales, and California, I had passed through similar 
scenes of desolation, and the surroundings are always eerie 
and depressing, but, like most gloomy things in this world, 
they have redeeming features. The wondrous after-glow of 
these high latitudes showed up in strong relief the naked 
ruined trunks, and the havoc that had been wrought was 
vividly portrayed; but at the same time the growth of the 
new forest, the young pines and birches, the largest of 
them already from five to eight feet in height, and the 
vigorous undergrowth, afforded ample evidence of the 
recuperative properties of forest soil, only requiring time 
to develop themselves in order to replace the old forest 
that had been swept away.’ 
We should err if we were to conclude from this that 
Lapland, even in its wooded parts, is one continuous forest 
such as M. Judre traversed in the Government of Olonetz, 
and Mr Hepworth Dixon in the Governments of Archangel 
and Vologda. The soil of Lapland is generally sterile. The 
greater part is covered with rocks, or moss, or gravelly 
plains, or a kind of turf composed of mosses destroyed by 
the frost, and impregnated with stagnant water ; the variety 
of vegetation is more striking than its abundance. Wah- 
lenberg’s edition of the Flora Lapponica gives descriptions 
of 1087 species of plants ; of which 496 are phanerogamous 
and 591 are cryptogams. Of trees there are 26 kinds, 
consisting af the Scots fir, spruce fir, birch, alder, mountain 
ash, birdcherry, and nineteen species of willow. 
