CASES OF ADAPTATIO]^ 



153 



miles in twenty-four hours. . . . We slept for a couple of 

 hours, when, looking out of the window, we found that the crash 

 had come; the mighty river, Petchora, was a field of pack-ice and 

 ice-floes marching past towards the sea at the rate of six miles an 

 hour. We ran out on to the banks to find half the inliabitants of 

 Ust-Zylma watching the impressive scene.'' 



A week later he writes : 



" Winter is finally vanquished for the year, and the fragments of 

 his beaten army are compelled to retreat to the triumphant music 



Fig. 18. — Midsummer on the Tundra, at the Mouth of the Petchora River. 



of thousands of song-birds, amidst the waving of green leaves and 

 the illumination of gay flowers of every hue. The transformation 

 is perfect. In a fortnight the endless waves of monotonous white 

 snow have vanished, and between the northern limit of forest growtli 

 and the shores of the Polar basin smiles a fairy-land, full of the 

 most delightful little lakes and tarns, where phalaropes swim about 

 amongst ducks and geese and swans, and upon whose margins stints 

 and sandpipers trip over the moss and the stranded pond-weeds, 

 feeding upon the larvae of mosquitoes, or on the fermenting frozen 

 fruit of last year's autumn. 



