Miscellaneous Intelligence. 405 



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 sun 

 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 straggling 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. Be- 

 tween May 29 and June 18 I identified sixty-four species which I 

 had not seen before the break up of the ice. Some of them 

 stopped to breed and already had eggs, but many of them fol- 

 lowed the retreating ice to the tundra, and we saw them no more 

 until, many weeks afterwards, we had sailed down the river be- 

 yond 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 five feet. The sudden transforma- 

 tion 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 everything up that 

 comes into its way, is a gigantic display of power compared with 

 which an earthquake sinks into insignificance. It is difficult 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 



The alternate marching of this immense quantity of ice up and 

 down the Kureika was a most curious phenomenon. To see a 

 strong current up stream for many hours is so contrary to all 



