io8 A TRIP TO HABARIKI 



had flooded the island in front of the village, the willows 

 and pine-tree tops being just visible above the surface. 

 Inland, half the country at least was under water, a vast 

 network of lakes and swamps with forest between. In 

 some places the skirts themselves of the forest were 

 flooded. As we had not brought our wading-boots we 

 had to confine our explorations to the woods. These 

 proved an inexhaustible source of interest to us, and one 

 in no wise lacking in variety. There was much beauty 

 in these woods. U nder foot spread a carpet of soft green 

 moss and lichens, the thick moss predominating in the 

 older and thicker parts of the forest, while the reindeer- 

 moss and the many-coloured lichens abounded in the 

 younger and more open woods. Stray shrubs of arbutus 

 and rhododendron, bushes of bilberry, crowberry, cran- 

 berry, the fruit of which was preserved by seven months' 

 frost, clumps of carices, and other vegetation decked the 

 shady aisles. The monotony of the great pine forest was 

 varied by the delicate hues of willow and alder thickets, 

 by plantations of young pines and firs, by clumps of tall 

 spruce and haggard old larches, while here and there a 

 fine birch spread abroad its glossy foliage, or a gaunt 

 Scotch fir extended wide its copper-coloured arms. All 

 around lay strewn trunks and branches of timber, fallen 

 or felled, in every stage of decomposition, from the hoary 

 log, moss-covered and turned to tinder, to the newly 

 lopped branches of some lofty forest patriarch, whose 

 magnificent boughs had been wantonly cut up to furnish 

 firewood for Sideroffs steamer. The most curious features 

 in these forests were open and slightly hollow places, like 

 tarns, or half dried-up tarns, the bed carpeted with moss 

 and a network of last year's Potamogeton. The shallow 

 places were quite dried up, but the deeper ones had still 

 a lakelet glistening in the centre. These hollows are 



