



































108 Messrs. H. Seebohm and.J. A. Harvie Brown on 
banks are low swampy land, covered, like the islands of the 
delta, with dwarf willow. These islands, as well as the swamps 
near the shore, are three to four feet under water when the 
river is swollen by the rapidly melted snow. The shores of 
the delta, as well as of the lagoon, are strewn with drift- 
wood, trees of all sizes from the inland forests, squared balks 
from the stores of the Petchora trading-company, and spars 
of luckless ships that have been wrecked upon the coast. 
Some of these piles of drift-wood lie far inland, and are over- 
grown with centuries of moss, suggesting the idea that a gra- 
dual upheaval of the land is taking place, or that ages ago the 
breaking up of the ice upon the Petchora was attended with 
higher floods than are experienced now. The west bank of 
the river is flat as far as the delta, and is in some places 
flooded for many miles inland when the ice breaks up. We 
had left the forests before the spring flowers were out; but on 
the tundra they almost rivalled the alpine flora in their abun- 
dance and brilliancy, especially on the banks of the great 
river. The tundra is full of lakes, large and small, generally 
with steep banks of peat, sometimes with flat banks of rushy 
grass, and rarely of sand. In some places the lakes seem 
to have been almost dried up, or choked with coarse grasses, 
rushes, and carices, and have become swamps, with frequently 
a little open water in the middle. The tundra is gay with 
many-coloured lichens, mosses, and liverworts, of which the 
well-known reindeer-moss is the most abundant. As soon 
as the long winter snow has disappeared, there is no lack of 
food for fruit- and seed-eating birds. Last year’s crowberries 
and cranberries, preserved by the frost for nearly seven 
months, were common enough everywhere ; and early in July 
the white flowers of the cloudberry and the red flowers of the 
arctic strawberry were very brilliant. The delicious cloud- 
berry, the ‘maroshka’ of the Russians, and the ‘moltebeere’ of 
the Norwegians, is undoubtedly the fruit of the tundra par 
excellence, and deserves to be better known in this country. 
There was no heath; but the pale magenta flowers of Andro- 
meda polifolia represented it very fairly. An aromatic Rho- 
dodendron-like dwarf shrub (Ledum palustre) was common, 


