CH. Ill] 
Tribes A round the Pole 
15 
thick runners curved upwards in front, about 9 feet long 
and 30 inches wide, with four uprights and cross bars. 
These people worship great numbers of wooden idols 
grouped round a seven-headed idol of Kesaks. They 
come to the settlement of Khabarova, near the narrow 
strait which separates the mainland from the island of 
Waigatz, during the summer ; and they look upon 
the latter as the holy island on which they wish to be 
buried. 
Eastward of the Samoyed country is the Siberian 
coast, extending for 2000 miles of longitude along the 
Polar Ocean, a vast tundra traversed by three great 
rivers — the Obi and its tributary the Irtish, the Yenisei, 
and the Lena. To the east of the Lena there are three 
smaller rivers, the Yena, Indigirka, and Kolyma, but all 
have their sources far to the south of the Arctic Circle. 
Some other streams, merely rising in the tundra, flow into 
the Polar Ocean. These are the Piasina, Taimir, Khatanga, 
Anabara, and Olenek between the Yenisei and Lena, 
and the Alaseia between the Indigirka and Kolyma. 
The three great rivers have remarkable width and 
volume. The Yenisei is more than three miles wide for 
at least a thousand miles, and a mile wide for another 
thousand. The 200 miles of delta have a width of 20 
miles. The sudden melting of the winter accumulations 
of snow gives rise to floods of great magnitude. Vast 
harvests of ice are thus annually poured out. The tundra 
is generally a slightly rolling plain sloping towards the 
rivers, intercepted by deep river valleys with precipitous 
sides. The ground is frozen for several hundreds of feet 
below the surface, and for eight months, from October 
to May, the tundra is a sheet of snow 6 feet thick. In the 
summer a wild-looking country appears, full of small 
lakes, swamps, and streams, swarming with mosquitos 
and frequented by myriads of birds. The sun brings to 
life a brilliant Alpine flora, and the tundra has a carpet 
of grass and mosses. 
The Siberian shores of the Polar Ocean forming the 
edge of the tundra are for the most part low and flat, 
and Cape Chelyuskin, the northern termination of the 
Taimir Peninsula in 77 0 36' N., is a low promontory. 
This Siberian tundra is the coldest region in the world. 
