X.] 
UNCEASING SNOW-STREAM. 
483 
the region of Werchojansk. On the existence of two currents 
of air, which at a certain height above the surface of the earth 
contend for the mastery, depends also the surprising rapidity 
with which the vault of heaven in the region of Behring’s Straits 
becomes suddenly clouded over and again completely clear. 
Already the famous Behring’s Straits’ navigator, Rodgers, now 
Admiral in the American Navy, had noticed this circumstance, 
and likened it very strikingly to the drawing up and dropping of 
the curtain of a theatre. 
In our notes on the weather a difference was always made 
between snoyra (fall of snow in wind) and yrsno (snow-storm 
without snow-fall). The fall of snow was not very great, but as 
there was in the course of the winter no thaw of such continu¬ 
ance that the snow was at any time covered with a coherent 
melted crust, a considerable portion of the snow that fell re¬ 
mained so loose that with the least puff of wind it was whirled 
backwards and forwards. In a storm or strong breeze the snow 
was carried to higher strata of the atmosphere, which was 
speedily filled with so close and fine snow-dust, that objects at 
the distance of a few metres could no longer be distinguished. 
There was no possibility in such weather of keeping the way 
open, and the man that lost his way was helplessly lost, if he 
could not, like the Chukch snowed up in a drift, await the ceasing 
of the storm. But even when the wind was slight and the sky 
clear there ran a stream of snow some centimetres in height 
along the ground in the direction of the wind, and thus 
principally from N.W. to S.E. Even this shallow stream heaped 
snowdrifts everywhere where there was any protection from the 
wind, and buried more certainly, if less rapidly, than the drifting 
snow of the storm, exposed objects and trampled footpaths. The 
quantity of water, which in a frozen form is removed in this 
certainly not deep, but uninterrupted and rapid current over the 
north coast of Siberia to more southerly regions, must be equal 
to the mass of water in the giant rivers of our globe, and play 
I I 2 
