[Illustration: A E Brehm]

   BLACKIE & SON, LIMITED, LONDON, GLASGOW AND EDINBURGH.

                            FROM

                    NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR

                            FROM

                    NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR

               STUDIES OF WILD LIFE AND SCENES
                        IN MANY LANDS

                 BY THE NATURALIST-TRAVELLER

                     ALFRED EDMUND BREHM
        AUTHOR OF “BIRD-LIFE”, “TIERLEBEN”, ETC. ETC.

                TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY
                     MARGARET R. THOMSON

                          EDITED BY
              J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., F.R.S.E.

  _WITH EIGHTY-THREE ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ORIGINAL DRAWINGS_

                           LONDON
         BLACKIE & SON, LIMITED, 50 OLD BAILEY, E.C.
                     GLASGOW AND DUBLIN
                            1896

PREFACE

TO THE GERMAN EDITION.

Six years have passed since the grave at Renthendorf closed over the
remains of my esteemed father, whose death--all too early--was as
great a loss to Science as to those who loved and honoured him. It
was strange that his eventful and adventurous life, in the course of
which he visited and explored four quarters of the globe, should have
ended at the little spot in green Thuringia where he was born. He had
just reached his fifty-fifth year when his lips, so apt in speech,
were silenced, and the pen which he held so masterfully dropped from
his hand. He was full of great plans as to various works, and it is
much to be regretted that the notes which he had collected towards
the realization of these were too fragmentary for anyone but their
author to utilize. But the manuscripts which he left contained many a
treasure, and it seemed to me a duty, both to the author and to all
friends of thoughtful observation, to make these available to the
reading public.

The following pages form the first book of the kind, and contain the
most valuable part of the legacy--Alfred Edmund Brehm’s lectures,
once so universally popular. I believe that, in giving these pages to
the world, I am offering a gift which will be warmly welcomed, and I
need add no commendatory words of mine, for they speak adequately for
themselves. Writing replaces spoken words very imperfectly, and my
father, who was never tied down to his paper, may often have delivered
the same matter in different forms according to the responsiveness of
his audience, abbreviating here, expanding there--yet to anyone who
has heard him the following pages will recall his presence and the
tones of his sonorous voice; everyone will not only recognize in them
the individuality of the author of the _Tierleben_ (Animal Life) and
_Bird Life_, but will learn to know him in a new and attractive side
of his character. For it is my father’s lectures almost more than
any other of his works which show the wealth of his experiences, the
many-sidedness of his knowledge, his masterly powers of observation
and description, and not least his delicate kindly humour and the
sympathetic interpretation of animate and inanimate nature which arose
from his deeply poetic temperament.

Therefore I send these pages forth into the world with the pleasant
confidence that they will add many to the author’s already numerous
friends. May they also gain new and unprejudiced sympathizers for the
animal world which he loved so warmly and understood so thoroughly;
and may they, in every house where the love of literature, and of the
beautiful is cherished, open eyes and hearts to perceive the beauty of
nature, the universal mother; then will the highest and noblest aim of
their author be achieved.

So may all success attend these pages, may they receive a joyful
welcome, and wherever they gain an entrance may they remain as a prized
possession.

  HORST BREHM,
  Doctor of Medicine.

 BERLIN, _September, 1890_.

PREFATORY NOTE

TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION.

It has been a privilege to make available to English readers a book
which shows a great naturalist at his best--a book that presents the
reader with a series of vivid pictures of wild life and scenery,
painted from actual observation, and with all the truth and accuracy
that belong to the artist and man of science combined. It consists of
a number of papers or articles that were originally read as public
lectures and were afterwards collected into a volume that has met
with much success in Germany. The subjects treated range over a wide
and varied field. Some of them are unfamiliar to the ordinary reader,
and besides their inherent interest have the added charm of novelty;
others, if more familiar, are here invested with a freshness and charm
that such a trained observer and practised writer as the author could
alone impart.

To the translation of the German original have been added
an introductory essay, showing Brehm’s position among
naturalist-travellers, an extended table of contents, an appendix
containing a number of editorial notes, and an index. The number of
pictorial illustrations has also been increased.

For a notice of the Author and his labours see the concluding part of
the Introductory Essay.

  M. R. T.
  J. A. T.

  UNIVERSITY HALL,
  EDINBURGH, _December, 1895_.

CONTENTS.

                                                                    Page

  PREFACE TO GERMAN EDITION, v

  PREFATORY NOTE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION, vii

  INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY THE EDITOR, xv

  THE BIRD-BERGS OF LAPLAND.

  The legend of Scandinavia’s origin--The harvest of the sea--The
  doves of Scandinavia--Eider-holms and bird-bergs--The nesting of the
  eider-duck--Razor-bills and robber-gulls--Millions of birds--(Notes,
  pp. 565-566),                                                       33

  THE TUNDRA AND ITS ANIMAL LIFE.

  High tundra and low tundra--The jewels of the tundra--The flora of the
  tundra--The Arctic fox--The lemming--The reindeer--The birds of the
  tundra--Mosquitoes--(Notes, pp. 566-568),                           63

  THE ASIATIC STEPPES AND THEIR FAUNA.

  The steppe in summer and in winter--The coming of spring--The
  rendezvous in the reeds--The marsh-harrier--The home of larks--Jerboa
  and souslik--The archar sheep--The kulan and the ancestry of the
  horse--(Notes, pp. 568-571),                                        86

  THE FORESTS AND SPORT OF SIBERIA.

  An ice-wilderness or not--The forest zone--Axe and fire--The
  pines--Hunting and trapping--The elk, the wolf, and the lynx--Sable
  and other furred beasts--Bear-hunting and bear-stories--(Notes, pp.
  571-573),                                                          120

  THE STEPPES OF INNER AFRICA.

  The progress of the seasons--A tropical thunderstorm--Night in
  the steppes--Spiders, scorpions, and snakes--Mudfish and other
  sleepers--Cleopatra’s asp--Geckos--The children of the air--The
  bateleur eagle--The ostrich--The night-jar--The mammals of the
  steppe--Stampede before a steppe-fire--(Notes, pp. 573-576),       168

  THE PRIMEVAL FORESTS OF CENTRAL AFRICA.

  Spring in the forest--The beautiful Hassanie--The baobab--Climbers and
  twiners--The forest birds and their voices--Sociable birds--Conjugal
  tenderness--Salt’s antelope--River monsters--A rain-lake--Hosanna in
  the highest--(Notes, pp. 576-578),                                 201

  MIGRATIONS OF MAMMALS.

  Black rats and brown--Cousin man’s kindness to the monkeys--Migration
  of mountain animals--The restlessness of the reindeer--Wandering herds
  of buffaloes--The life of the kulan--Travellers by sea--Flights of
  bats--The march of the lemmings--(Notes, pp. 578-581),             234

  LOVE AND COURTSHIP AMONG BIRDS.

  Are birds automata?--The battles of love--Different modes of
  courtship--Polygamy--Life-long devotion--(Notes, p. 581),          259

  APES AND MONKEYS.

  Sheikh Kemal’s story--The monkey question--A general picture of monkey
  life--Marmosets and other New World monkeys--Dog-like and man-like Old
  World monkeys--Monkeys as pets--The true position of monkeys--(Notes,
  pp. 581-583),                                                      282

  DESERT JOURNEYS.

  An appreciation of the desert--The start of the caravan--The character
  of the camel--A day’s journey--Oases--Simoom and sand storms--Fata
  morgana--The peace of night--(Note, p. 583),                       318

  NUBIA AND THE NILE RAPIDS.

  Egypt and Nubia contrasted--Wady Halfa and Philæ--The three great
  cataracts--Journey up and down stream--The Nile boatmen--History of
  Nubia--(Notes, pp. 583-584),                                       356

  A JOURNEY IN SIBERIA.

  Russian hospitality--A tedious journey--An excursion into Chinese
  territory--Sport among the mountains--Journeying northwards--On the
  track of splenic fever--(Notes, p. 584),                           390

  THE HEATHEN OSTIAKS.

  Racial affinities--Christians and heathen--The dress of the
  Ostiaks--The tshum of the wandering Ostiaks--The life of the
  herdsmen--A fishing village--The Ostiak at the fair--An Ostiak
  wedding--An interview with a Shaman--Funeral rites--(Notes, pp.
  584-585),                                                          416

  NOMAD HERDSMEN AND HERDS OF THE STEPPES.

  The name Kirghiz--Conditions of life on the steppe--Winter
  dwellings--Breaking up the camp--In praise of the yurt--The herds
  of the Kirghiz--The Kirghiz horse--Summer wanderings--“A sheep’s
  journey”--Returning flocks--Evening in the aul--(Note, p. 585),    451

  FAMILY AND SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE KIRGHIZ.

  The Kirghiz as horsemen--Racing and wrestling--Hunting with eagles and
  greyhounds--A sheep-drive--The “red tongue”--Kirghiz bards--Education
  and character--Kirghiz etiquette--The price of a bride--The
  children--Funeral ceremonies,                                      482

  COLONISTS AND EXILES IN SIBERIA.

  Mistaken impressions--Impartial observation--The emancipation of the
  serfs--The Altai--Compulsory service--Condition of the peasants--The
  superabundant harvest--Romance in Siberia--Domestic life open
  to the convicts--The way of sighs--General picture of Siberian
  life--Runaways--(Notes, pp. 585-586),                              510

  AN ORNITHOLOGIST ON THE DANUBE.

  Twenty eyries--The voyage down the river--The woods on the banks--A
  heronry--Sea-eagles--A paradise of birds--The marsh of Hullo--The black
  vultures of Fruškagora--Homeward once more--(Note, p.586),         540

  INDEX,                                                             587

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

  FIG.                                                             Page

      PORTRAIT OF ALFRED EDMUND BREHM,               _Frontispiece_.

   1. Scene on the Sogne Fjord, Norway,                              35

   2. Colony of Eider-ducks,                                         44

   3. The Bird-bergs of Lapland,                                     51

   4. Razor-bills,                                                   61

   5. The High Tundra in Northern Siberia,                           65

   6. Peregrine Falcons and Lemmings,                                70

   7. The White or Arctic Fox (_Canis lagopus_),                     73

   8. The Reindeer (_Tarandus rangifer_),                            76

   9. Skuas, Phalathrope, and Golden Plovers,                        80

  10. View in the Asiatic Steppes,                                   89

  11. A Salt Marsh in the Steppes,                                   90

  12. A Herd of Horses during a Snowstorm on the Asiatic Steppes,    94

  13. Lake Scene and Waterfowl in an Asiatic Steppe,                 99

  14. The Souslik (_Spermophilus citillus_),                        108

  15. The Jerboa (_Alactaga jaculus_),                              108

  16. Archar Sheep or Argali (_Ovis Argali_),                       111

  17. Pallas’s Sand-grouse (_Syrrhaptes paradoxus_),                113

  18. The Kulan (_Equus hemionus_),                                 118

  19. Reindeer Flocking to Drink,                                   133

  20. Elk and Black-cock in a Siberian Forest,                      137

  21. The Maral Stag,                                               145

  22. The Elk Hunter--A Successful Shot,                            148

  23. A Siberian Method of Wolf-shooting,                           153

  24. Sable and Hazel-grouse in a Siberian Forest,                  159

  25. The Bed of an Intermittent River, Central Africa,             175

  26. Hills of African Termites, or White Ants,                     179

  27. Secretary-bird and Aspis,                                     184

  28. On an Ostrich Farm in South Africa,                           190

  29. Hyæna-dogs pursuing Antelope,                                 196

  30. Zebras, Quaggas, and Ostriches flying before a Steppe Fire,   199

  31. The Baobab Tree, Central Africa,                              211

  32. Long-tailed Monkeys,                                          222

  33. Salt’s Antelope (_Antilope Saltiana_),                        224

  34. Crocodile and Crocodile-birds (_Pluxianus ægyptius_),         228

  35. A Wild Duck defending her Brood from a Brown Rat,             236

  36. A Herd of American Bison or Buffalo,                          243

  37. Wild Horses crossing a River during a Storm,                  246

  38. Flying Foxes,                                                 251

  39. Springbok Antelopes,                                          258

  40. The Strutting of the Tragopan in Pairing-time,                269

  41. Cock Chaffinches Fighting,                                    274

  42. Entellus Monkeys (_Semnopithecus Entellus_),                  285

  43. Common Marmoset or Ouistiti (_Hapale Jacchus_),               292

  44. Red Howling Monkeys (_Mycetis seniculus_),                    295

  45. Old Baboon Rescuing Young One,                                301

  46. Macaque or Bonnet-monkey (_Macacus sinicus_) and Snake,       307

  47. The Hoolock (_Hylobates leuciscus_), one of the Gibbons,      310

  48. Chimpanzee (_Troglodytes niger_),                             313

  49. Caravan in the African Desert,                                323

  50. An Encampment in the Sahara,                                  328

  51. Gazelles lying near a Mimosa,                                 332

  52. An Oasis in the Desert of Sahara,                             343

  53. Band of Mounted Bedouins,                                     353

  54. An Egyptian _Sakieh_ or Water-wheel,                          365

  55. A Nubian Village on the Nile,                                 374

  56. Nubian Children at Play,                                      377

  57. A Passage through the Nile Rapids,                            385

  58. A Post Station in Siberia,                                    395

  59. Imperial Eagle, Marmot, and Souslik,                          407

  60. An Ostiak Settlement on the Banks of the Obi,                 409

  61. Huts and Winter Costume of the Christian Ostiaks,             419

  62. “Heathen” Ostiaks, Reindeer, and Tshums,                      424

  63. Ostiaks with Reindeer and Sledge,                             427

  64. Interior of an Ostiak Dwelling (Tshum),                       435

  65. The Burial of an Ostiak,                                      449

  66. The Home of a Wealthy Kirghiz,                                455

  67. Life among the Kirghiz--the Return from the Chase,            461

  68. Kirghiz with Camels,                                          467

  69. Kirghiz and their Herds on the March in the Mountains,        471

  70. Kirghiz Aul, or Group of Tents,                               478

  71. Hunting the Wolf with the Golden Eagle,                       487

  72. Kirghiz in pursuit of Wild Sheep,                             489

  73. Frolic at a Kirghiz Wedding,                                  505

  74. Miners in the Altai returning from Work,                      517

  75. Exiles on the Way to Siberia,                                 527

  76. Interior of a Siberian Peasant’s Dwelling,                    532

  77. Types of Siberian Convicts--“Condemned to the Mines”,         535

  78. Flight of an Exile in Siberia,                                538

  79. Herons and their Nests,                                       544

  80. Rooks and their Nests,                                        546

  81. Sea-eagles and Nest in a Danube Forest,                       550

  82. Nest of the Penduline Titmouse (_Parus Pendulinus_),          562

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

BY J. ARTHUR THOMSON.

BREHM’S PLACE AMONG NATURALIST-TRAVELLERS.

Though Brehm’s lectures might well be left, as his son has said,
to speak for themselves, it seems useful to introduce them in
their English dress with some notes on the evolution of the
naturalist-traveller and on Brehm’s place in the honourable list; for
an adequate appreciation of a book like this depends in part on a
recognition of the position it occupies among analogous works, and on
having some picture of the illustrious author himself.

In sketching the history of the naturalist-traveller it is not
necessary to go very far back; for though it is interesting to recall
how men of old followed their migrating herds, as the Lapp or Ostiak
does his reindeer, and were led by them to fresh fields and new
conquests, or how others followed the salmon down the rivers and became
the toilers of the sea, this ancient lore is full of uncertainty, and
is, besides, of more moment to the sociologist than to the naturalist.
What we attempt here is merely to indicate the various types of
naturalist-traveller who have in the course of time succeeded one
another in the quest for the new.

I.

The foundations of zoology were laid by Aristotle some three hundred
years before Christ, but they remained unbuilt on for nearly eighteen
centuries. Here and there some enthusiast strove unaided, but only a
fragmentary superstructure was reared. In fact, men were pre-occupied
with tasks of civilization more serious than the prosecution of
zoology, though that is not trivial. Gradually, however, great social
movements, such as the Crusades and the collapse of Feudalism; great
intellectual and emotional movements, such as those of the Renaissance;
great inventions, such as that of printing, gave new life to Europe,
and zoology shared in the re-awakening. Yet the natural history of the
Middle Ages was in great part mystical; fancy and superstition ran riot
along paths where science afterwards established order, and, for all
practical purposes, the history of zoology, apart from the efforts of a
few pioneers, may be said to date from the sixteenth century.

Now, one indubitable factor in the scientific renaissance of the
sixteenth century was the enthusiasm of the early travellers, and this
stimulus, periodically recurrent, has never failed to have a similar
effect--of giving new life to science. But while science, and zoology
as a branch of it, has been evolving during the last three centuries,
the traveller, too, has shared in the evolution. It is this which we
wish to trace.

I. THE ROMANTIC TYPE. Many of the old travellers, from Herodotus
onwards, were observant and enthusiastic; most were credulous and
garrulous. In days when the critical spirit was young, and verification
hardly possible, there could not but be a strong temptation to tell
extraordinary “travellers’ tales”. And they did. Nor need we scoff at
them loudly, for the type dies hard; every year such tales are told.

Oderico de Pordenone and other mediæval travellers who give some
substance to the mythical Sir John de Maundeville were travellers of
this genial type. Oderico describes an interesting connecting link
between the animal and vegetable kingdom, a literal “zoophyte”, the
“vegetable lamb”, which seems to have been a woolly Scythian fern, with
its counterpart in the large fungus which colonials sometimes speak of
as the “vegetable sheep”. As for the pretended Sir John, he had in his
power of swallowing marvels a gape hardly less than that of the great
snakes which he describes. But even now do we not see his snakes in
at least the picture-books on which innocent youth is nurtured? The
basilisk (one of the most harmless of lizards) “sleyeth men beholding
it”; the “cocodrilles also sley men”--they do indeed--“and eate them
weeping, and they have no tongue”. “The griffin of Bactria hath a body
greater than eight lyons and stall worthier than a hundred egles, for
certainly he will beare to his nest flying, a horse and a man upon his
back.” He was not readily daunted, Sir John, for when they told him of
the lamb-tree which bears lambs in its pods, his British pluck did not
desert him, and he gave answer that he “held it for no marvayle, for in
his country are trees which bear fruit which become birds flying, and
they are good to eate, and that that falleth on the water, liveth, and
that that falleth on earth, dyeth; and _they_ marvailed much thereat”.
The tale of the barnacle-tree was a trump card in those days!

Another example of this type, but rising distinctly above it in
trustworthiness, was the Venetian Marco Polo, who in the thirteenth
century explored Asia from the Black Sea to Pekin, from the Altai
to Sumatra, and doubtless saw much, though not quite so much as he
describes. He will correct the fables of his predecessors, he tells us,
demonstrating gravely that the unicorn or rhinoceros does _not_ allow
himself to be captured by a gentle maiden, but he proceeds to describe
tailed men, yea, headless men, without, so far as can be seen, any
touch of sarcasm. Of how many marvels, from porcupines throwing off
their spines and snakes with clawed fore-feet, to the great Rukh, which
could bear not merely a poor Sinbad but an elephant through the air, is
it not written in the books of Ser Marco Polo of Venezia?

II. THE ENCYCLOPÆDIST TYPE.--This unwieldy title, suggestive of
an omnivorous hunger for knowledge, is conveniently, as well as
technically, descriptive of a type of naturalist characteristic of the
early years of the scientific renaissance. Edward Wotton (d. 1555),
the Swiss Gesner (d. 1565), the Italian Aldrovandi (d. 1605), the
Scotsman Johnson (d. 1675), are good examples. These encyclopædists
were at least impressed with the necessity of getting close to the
facts of nature, of observing for themselves, and we cannot blame them
much if their critical faculties were dulled by the strength of their
enthusiasm. They could not all at once forget the mediæval dreams, nor
did they make any strenuous effort to rationalize the materials which
they so industriously gathered. They harvested but did not thrash.
Ostrich-like, their appetite was greater than their power of digesting.
A hasty judgment might call them mere compilers, for they gathered all
possible information from all sources, but, on closer acquaintance,
the encyclopædists grow upon one. Their industry was astounding, their
ambition lofty; and they prepared the way for men like Ray and Linnæus,
in whom was the genius of order.

Associated with this period there were many naturalist-travellers,
most of whom are hardly now remembered, save perhaps when we repeat
the name of some plant or animal which commemorates its discoverer.
José d’Acosta (d. 1600), a missionary in Peru, described some of the
gigantic fossils of South America; Francesco Hernanded published about
1615 a book on the natural history of Mexico with 1200 illustrations;
Marcgrav and Piso explored Brazil; Jacob Bontius, the East Indies;
Prosper Alpinus, Egypt; Belon, the Mediterranean region; and there were
many others. But it is useless to multiply what must here remain mere
citations of names. The point is simply this, that, associated with
the marvellous accumulative industry of the encyclopædists and with
the renaissance of zoology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
there were numerous naturalist-travellers who described what they saw,
and not what they fancied might be seen.

III. THE GENERAL NATURALIST TYPE.--As Ray (d. 1705) and Linnæus (d.
1778) began to reduce to order the accumulations of the encyclopædists,
and as the anatomists and physiologists began the precise study of
structure and function, the naturalist-travellers became more definite
in their aims and more accurate in their observations. Linnæus
himself sent several of his pupils on precisely scientific journeys.
Moreover, in the eighteenth century there were not a few expeditions
of geographical and physical purpose which occasionally condescended
to take a zoologist on board. Thus Captain Cook was accompanied
on his first voyage (1768-1781) by Banks and Solander, and on his
second voyage by the Forsters, father and son. On his third voyage he
expressly forbade the intrusion of any naturalist, but from all that we
can gather it would have been better for himself if he had not done so.
In these combined voyages there was nascent the idea of co-operative
expeditions, of which the greatest has been that of the _Challenger_.

In illustration of travellers who were not specialists, but in varying
degrees widely interested naturalists, it will be sufficient to cite
three names--Thomas Pennant, Peter Pallas, and, greatest of all,
Alexander von Humboldt.

Of Thomas Pennant (1726-1798) we may note that he was one of the early
travellers in Scotland, which was then, as he says, almost as unknown
as Kamchatka, and that he extorted from Dr. Johnson the admission,
“He’s a Whig, sir, a sad dog; but he’s the best traveller I ever read;
he observes more things than any one else does”. He knew Buffon and
corresponded with Linnæus, and was the author of several works on
British and North American zoology. His so-called _Arctic Zoology_ is
mainly a sketch of the fauna in the northern regions of North America,
begun “when the empire of Great Britain was entire, and possessed the
northern part of the New World with envied splendour”. His perspective
is excellent! the botanist, the fossilist, the historian, the
geographer must, he says, accompany him on his zoological tours, “to
trace the gradual increase of the animal world from the scanty pittance
given to the rocks of Spitzbergen to the swarms of beings which enliven
the vegetating plains of Senegal; to point out the causes of the local
niggardness of certain places, and the prodigious plenty in others”.
It was about the same time (1777) that E. A. W. Zimmermann, Professor
of Mathematics at Brunswick, published a quarto in Latin, entitled
_Specimen Zoologiæ Geographicæ Quadrupedum_, “with a most curious
map”, says Pennant, “in which is given the name of every animal in
its proper climate, so that a view of the whole quadruped creation is
placed before one’s eyes, in a manner perfectly new and instructive”.
It was wonderful then, but the map in question looks commonplace enough
nowadays.

Peter Simon Pallas (1741-1811) was a student of medicine and natural
science, and did good work as a systematic and anatomical zoologist.
He was the first, we believe, to express the relationships of animals
in a genealogical tree, but his interest for us here lies in his
zoological exploration of Russia and Siberia, the results of which
are embodied in a series of bulky volumes, admirable in their careful
thoroughness. We rank him rather as one of the forerunners of Humboldt
than as a zoologist, for his services to ethnology and geology were of
great importance. He pondered over the results of his explorations, and
many of his questionings in regard to geographical distribution, the
influence of climate, the variation of animals, and similar problems,
were prophetic of the light which was soon to dawn on biological
science.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was undoubtedly one of the greatest
naturalists of the century which his life well nigh covered. Geologist,
botanist, zoologist, and more, he was almost the last of the all-round
naturalists. In this indeed lay his weakness as well as his strength,
for great breadth of view is apt to imply a lack of precision as to
details. In boyhood, “when life”, as he says, “appears an unlimited
horizon”, he had strong desires after travel, which were in part
gratified by excursions with George Forster and by Swiss explorations
with the sagacious old geographer Leopold von Buch. These, however,
only whetted his enthusiasm for journeys with a larger radius. At
length, after many discouragements, he sailed in 1799 from Corunna,
with Aimé Bonpland as companion, and spent five years in exploring the
equinoctial regions of the New World. The full record of his voyage
one cannot be expected to read, for there are about thirty volumes of
it in the complete edition, but what we should all know is Humboldt’s
_Personal Narrative_, in which the chief results of his explorations
are charmingly set forth. Later in life (1829) he went with Ehrenberg
and Rose to North Asia, and his crowning work was the publication of
_Cosmos_ (1845-58), which originated in a series of lectures delivered
in the University of Berlin. In front of that building his statue now
stands, along with that of his not less famous brother Wilhelm.

We think of Humboldt not so much as an early explorer of tropical
America, nor because he described the habits of the condor and made
observations on electric eels, nor because he furnished Cuvier and
Latreille with many new specimens, but rather as a magnificent type
of the naturalist-traveller, observant, widely interested, and
thoughtful, who pointed forward to Darwin in the success with which
he realized the complexity of inter-relations in nature. Many a
traveller, even among his contemporaries, discovered more new plants
and animals than the author of _Cosmos_, but none approached him as
an all-round naturalist, able to look out on all orders of facts with
keenly intelligent eyes, a man, moreover, in whom devotion to science
never dulled poetic feeling. His work is of real importance in the
history of geographical distribution, for he endeavoured to interpret
the peculiarities of the various faunas in connection with the peculiar
environment of the different regions--a consideration which is at least
an element in the solution of some of the problems of distribution. It
is especially important in regard to plants, and one may perhaps say
that Humboldt, by his vivid pictures of the vegetable “physiognomy” of
different regions, and by his observations on the relations between
climate and flora, laid the foundations of the scientific study of
the geographical distribution of plants. We find in some of his
_Charakterbilder_, for example in his _Views of Nature_, the prototype
of those synthetic pictures which give Brehm’s popular lectures their
peculiar interest and value.

IV. THE SPECIALIST TYPE.--It would say little for scientific discipline
if it were true that a man learned, let us say, in zoology, could
spend years in a new country without having something fresh to tell us
about matters outside of his specialism--the rocks, the plants, and
the people. But it is not true. There have been few great travellers
who have been narrow specialists, and one might find more than one
case of a naturalist starting on his travels as a zoologist and
returning an anthropologist as well. Yet it is evident enough that
few men can be master of more than one craft. There have been few
travellers like Humboldt, few records like Darwin’s _Voyage of the
Beagle_ (1831-6). Hence we recognize more and more as we approach our
own day that naturalist-travellers have been successful either as
specialists, or, on the other hand, in so far as they have furnished
material for generalization (Type V.). The specialism may of course
take various forms: a journey may be undertaken by one who is purely an
ornithologist, or it may be undertaken with one particular problem in
view, or it may be organized, like the _Challenger_ expedition, with
the co-operation of a number of specialists.

The French took the lead in organizing zoological expeditions. As early
as 1800 they sent out the _Géographe_, _Naturaliste_, and _Casuarina_,
zoologically conducted by Bury de St. Vincent, Péron, and Lesueur.
Further expeditions followed with Quoy and Gaimard, Lesson, Eydoux,
Souleyet, Dupetit-Thouars, and others as zoological guides. The English
whaling industry gave early opportunity to not a few naturalists; and
it is now a long time since Hooker went with Sir James Ross on the
South Polar expedition and Huxley went on the _Rattlesnake_ to the
Australian Barrier Reef. The Russians were also active, one of the more
famous travellers being Kotzebue, who was accompanied on one of his
two voyages (1823-6) round the world by Chamisso and Eschscholtz. In
the early part of this century the Americans were also enterprising,
the work of Dana being perhaps the most noteworthy. It would require
several pages to mention even the names of the naturalists who have had
their years of wandering, and have added their pages and sketches to
the book of the world’s fauna and flora, but such an enumeration would
serve no useful purpose here.

There is, however, one form of zoological exploration which deserves
a chapter to itself, that is the exploration of the Deep Sea. Several
generations of marine zoologists had been at work before a zoology of
the deep sea was dreamed of even as a possibility. It is true that in
1818 Sir John Ross had found a star-fish (_Astrophyton_) at a depth of
800-1000 fathoms, but this was forgotten; and in 1841 Edward Forbes
dredged to no purpose in fairly deep water in the Ægean Sea. Indeed
those who thought about the great depths at all deemed it unlikely that
there could be life there, and if it had not been for the practical
affair of laying the ocean cables, we might possibly have been still in
ignorance of the abyssal fauna.

But the cables had to be laid--no easy task--and it became important
to know at least the topography of the depths. Cables broke, too, and
had to be fished up again, and when that which ran between Sardinia
and Algiers was lifted, in 1860, from a depth of 60-1000 fathoms,
no less than 15 different species of animals were found on it. This
was a discovery to fire enthusiasm, and Britain led the way in
following it up. In 1868 Wyville Thomson began his explorations on the
_Lightning_, and proved that most of the types of backboneless animals
were represented at depths of at least 600 fathoms. Soon followed
the similar cruise of the _Porcupine_, famous _inter alia_ for the
discovery of Bathybius, which many sceptics regard as a mare’s nest.
From various quarters the quest after the deep-sea fauna began to be
prosecuted.

It is now more than a score of years since the world-famous
_Challenger_ sailed from Portsmouth with Wyville Thomson, Moseley,
John Murray, and Willemoes-Suhm as naturalists. During three and a
half years the explorers cruised over 68,900 nautical miles, crossed
the Atlantic no less than five times, reached with the long arm of the
dredge to depths equal to reversed Himalayas, raised treasures of life
from over 500 stations, and brought home spoils over which the savants
of Europe have hardly ceased to be busy, and the records of which, now
completed under Dr. Murray’s editorship, form a library of about forty
huge volumes.

The _Challenger_ expedition was important not only in itself, but in
the wave of scientific enthusiasm which it raised. From Germany went
forth the _Gazelle_; Norway sent the _Vöringen_ to Spitzbergen; America
has despatched the _Tuscarora_, the _Blake_, and the _Albatross_;
from Sweden the _Vega_ and the _Sophia_ sailed to Arctic seas: Count
Liechtenstein’s yacht _Hertha_ explored Adria; the Prince of Monaco’s
_Hirondelle_ darted hither and thither; the French sent forth the
_Travailleur_ and _Talisman_; the Italians the _Vettor Pisani_ and
_Washington_; Austria and Hungary organized the _Poli_ for work in
the Mediterranean; the Germans again have recently specialized in
investigating the Plankton, or surface-life of the ocean; and so, with
a range even wider than we have indicated, the wave of enthusiasm has
spread, one of the latest barques which it has borne being the Prince
of Monaco’s, which was specially built for marine exploration.

Specialism in travelling has, of course, gone much further. Thus to
cite only three examples, we have Semper’s zoological work on the
Philippines, the researches of the Sarasins in Ceylon, and the first
results of Semon’s recent visit to Australasia, all of them passing
far beyond records of zoological exploration into monographs on the
structure and development of characteristic members of the fauna
of these countries. And it is no exaggeration to say that private
enterprise, Royal Society subsidies, British Association grants, and
the like have sent scores of naturalists from Britain half round the
world in order to solve special problems, as to the larva of a worm,
for instance, or as to the bird-fauna of some little island.

V. THE BIOLOGICAL TYPE. In some ways the most important scientific
journey ever made was Darwin’s voyage on the _Beagle_. It was the
Columbus-voyage of zoology. There is a great deal to be said for the
_Wanderjahre_ of the old students, for to have time to think is one of
the conditions of intellectual progress. Not that the _Beagle_ voyage
was one of idleness, but it gave Darwin, at the age of twenty-two, a
wealth of impressions and some measure of enforced leisure wherein
to gloat intellectually over what he saw. He has said, indeed, that
various sets of facts observed on his voyage, such as the aspect of the
Galapagos Islands, started him on paths of pondering which eventually
led to his theory of the origin of species.

We take Darwin as the type of the biological, or, we may almost
say, evolutionist travellers; but he must share this position with
his magnanimous colleague, Alfred Russel Wallace, whose journeyings
were more prolonged and not less fruitful. Before Darwin the
naturalist-travellers had been, for the most part, describers,
systematists, and analysts, and it goes without saying that such work
is indispensable, and must continue; but in the light of the conception
of evolution all things had become new; the present world of life was
henceforth seen as a stage in a process, as a passing act in a drama,
not merely as a phantasmagoria to be admired and pictured, but as a
growth to be understood.

It is within this group of biological travellers, which includes
such men as Bates and Belt, that we must also place Brehm. For
although he perhaps had not the firmness of grasp or the fineness of
touch necessary for the successful handling of the more intricate
biological problems, especially those which centre around the factors
of evolution, he had unusual power as an observer of the habits of
animals. His contributions, which must be judged, of course, from his
great _Tierleben_,[A] as well as from his popular lectures, were rather
to the old natural history than to biology in the stricter sense. His
works show that he was as much interested in men as in beasts, that he
was specially an ornithologist, that he was beneath the naturalist a
sportsman; but so scores of other travellers have been. His particular
excellence is his power of observing and picturing animal life _as
it is lived in nature_, without taking account of which biology is a
mockery and any theory of evolution a one-sided dogma.

[A] This well-known treasure-house of Natural History appeared
originally in 1863-69 in six big volumes, which have since increased
to ten. Even the first edition took a foremost place among similar
works on the Natural History of Animals. With a wealth of personal
observation on the habits of animals in their native haunts, it
combined the further charm of very beautiful pictorial illustration.

Let us now bring together briefly the outstanding facts of this
historical outline.

In early days men followed their wandering herds or pursued their prey
from region to region, or were driven by force of competition or of
hunger to new lands. Many of the most eventful journeys have been among
those which had to be taken.

I. Gradually, intellectual curiosity rather than practical need became
the prompter, and men travelled with all manner of mixed aims seeking
what was new. When they returned they told travellers’ tales, mostly
in as good faith as their hunting ancestors had done in the caves of
a winter night, or as the modern traveller does after dinner still.
We pass insensibly from Herodotus to Marco Polo, from “Sir John
Maundeville” to Mr. X. Y. Z., whose book was published last spring.
This is the type romantic.

II. But when science shared in the renaissance there ensued the
extraordinary industry of the encyclopædist school, with which many
naturalist-travellers were associated. Some of these were great
men--perhaps Gesner was greatest of all--but all had the defects of
their qualities. They gathered into stackyards both wheat and tares,
and seldom found time to thrash. The type survives afield in the mere
collector, and its degenerate sedentary representatives are called
compilers.

III. Just as Buffon represents the climax of the encyclopædists, and
is yet something more, for he thrashed his wheat, so Humboldt, while
as ambitious as any encyclopædist traveller, transcended them all by
vitalizing the wealth of impressions which he gathered. He was _the_
general naturalist-traveller, who took all nature for his province, and
does not seem to have been embarrassed. Of successful representatives
of this type there are few, since Darwin perhaps none.

IV. Meanwhile Linnæus had brought order, Cuvier had founded his school
of anatomists, Haller had re-organized physiology, the microscope
had deepened analysis, and zoology came of age as a specialism.
Henceforth travellers’ tales were at a discount; even a Humboldt might
be contradicted, and platitudinarian narratives of a voyage round the
world ceased to find the publisher sympathetic or the public appetized.
The naturalist-traveller was now a zoologist, or a botanist, or an
ornithologist, or an entomologist; at any rate, a specialist. But it
was sometimes found profitable to work in companies, as in the case of
the _Challenger_ expedition.

V. Lastly, we find that on the travellers, too, “evolution” cast its
spell, and we have Darwin and Wallace as the types of the biological
travellers, whose results go directly towards the working out of a
cosmology. From Bates and Belt and Brehm there is a long list down
to Dr. Hickson, _The Naturalist in Celebes_, and Mr. Hudson, _The
Naturalist in La Plata_. Not, of course, that most are not specialists,
but the particular interest of their work is biological or bionomical.

I have added to this essay a list of some of the most important works
of the more recent naturalist-travellers with which I am directly
acquainted, being convinced that it is with these that the general, and
perhaps also the professional student of natural history should begin,
as it is with them that his studies must also end. For, not only do
they introduce us, in a manner usually full of interest, to the nature
of animal life, but they lead us to face one of the ultimate problems
of biology--the evolution of faunas.

II.

Alfred Edmund Brehm (1829-1884) was born at Unter-Renthendorf in
Sachsen-Weimar, where his father--an accomplished ornithologist--was
pastor. Brought up among birds, learning to watch from his earliest
boyhood, accompanying his father in rambles through the Thuringian
forest, questioning and being questioned about all the sights and
sounds of the woods, listening to the experts who came to see the
famous collection in the _Pfarr-haus_, and to argue over questions of
species with the kindly pastor, young Brehm was almost bound to become
a naturalist. And while the father stuffed his birds in the evenings
the mother read aloud from Goethe and Schiller, and her poetic feeling
was echoed in her son. Yet, so crooked are life’s ways, the youth
became an architect’s apprentice, and acted as such for four years!

But an opportunity presented itself which called him, doubtless most
willing, from the desk and workshop. Baron John Wilhelm von Müller, a
keen sportsman and lover of birds, sought an assistant to accompany him
on an ornithological expedition to Africa, and with him the youth, not
yet out of his teens, set forth in 1847. It was a great opportunity,
but the price paid for it was heavy, for Brehm did not see his home
again for full five years, and was forced to bear strains, to incur
responsibilities, and to suffer privations, which left their mark on
him for life. Only those who know the story of his African journeys,
and what African travel may be with repeated fevers and inconsiderately
crippled resources, can adequately appreciate the restraint which Brehm
displays in those popular lectures, here translated, where there is so
much of everything but himself.

After he returned, in 1852, rich in spoils and experience, if otherwise
poor, he spent several sessions at the universities of Jena and Vienna.
Though earnestly busy in equipping himself for further work, he was not
too old to enjoy the pleasures of a student life. When he took his
doctor’s degree he published an account of his travels (_Reiseskizzen
aus Nordostafrica._ Jena, 1855, 3 vols.).

After a zoological holiday in Spain with his like-minded brother
Reinhold--a physician in Madrid--he settled for a time in Leipzig,
writing for the famous “_Gartenlaube_”, co-operating with Rossmässler
in bringing out _Die Tiere des Waldes_, expressing his very self in his
_Bird-Life_ (1861), and teaching in the schools. It was during this
period that he visited Lapland, of whose bird-bergs the first lecture
gives such a vivid description. In 1861 he married Matthilde Reiz, who
proved herself the best possible helpmeet.

In 1862, Brehm went as scientific guide on an excursion to Abyssinia
undertaken by the Duke of Coburg-Gotha, and subsequently published a
characteristic account of his observations _Ergebnisse einer Reise nach
Habesch_: Results of a Journey to Abyssinia (Hamburg, 1863). On his
return he began his world-famous _Tierleben_ (Animal Life), which has
been a treasure-house to so many naturalists. With the collaboration
of Professors Taschenberg and Oscar Schmidt, he completed the first
edition of this great work, in six volumes, in 1869.

Meanwhile he had gone to Hamburg as Director of the Zoological Gardens
there, but the organizing work seems to have suited him ill, and he
soon resigned. With a freer hand, he then undertook the establishment
of the famous Berlin Aquarium, in which he partly realized his dream of
a microcosmic living museum of nature. But, apart from his actual work,
the business-relations were ever irksome, and in 1874 he was forced by
ill-health and social friction to abandon his position.

After recovery from serious illness he took up his rôle as popular
lecturer and writer, and as such he had many years of happy success. A
book on Cage Birds (1872-1876), and a second edition of the _Tierleben_
date from this period, which was also interrupted by his Siberian
journeys (1876) and by numerous ornithological expeditions, for
instance to Hungary and Spain, along with the Crown Prince Rudolph
of Austria. But hard work, family sorrows, and finally, perhaps, the
strain of a long lecturing tour in America aged Brehm before his time,
and he died in 1884.

For these notes I am indebted to a delightful appreciation of Brehm
which Ernest Krause has written in introduction to the third edition
of the _Tierleben_, edited by Pechuel-Loesche, and as regards
the naturalist’s character I can only refer to that essay. As to
his published work, however, every naturalist knows at least the
_Tierleben_, and on that a judgment may be safely based. It is a
monumental work on the habits of animals, founded in great part on
personal observation, which was always keen and yet sympathetic. It is
a classic on the natural history of animals, and readers of Darwin will
remember how the master honoured it.

Doubtless Brehm had the defects of his qualities. He was, it is said,
too generous to animals, and sometimes read the man into the beast
unwarrantably. But that is an anthropomorphism which easily besets the
sympathetic naturalist. He was sometimes extravagant and occasionally
credulous. He did not exactly grip some of the subjects he tackled,
such as, if I must specify, what he calls “the monkey-question”.

It is frankly allowed that he was no modern biologist, erudite as
regards evolution-factors, nor did he profess to attempt what is called
zoological analysis, and what is often mere necrology, but his merit
is that he had seen more than most of us, and had seen, above all, the
naturalist’s supreme vision--the vibrating web of life. And he would
have us see it also.

III.

The success of the pictures which Brehm has given us--of bird-bergs
and tundra, of steppes and desert, of river fauna and tropical
forest--raises the wish that they had been complete enough to embrace
the whole world. As this ideal, so desirable both from an educational
and an artistic standpoint, has not been realized by any one volume,
we have ventured to insert here a list of some more or less analogous
English works by naturalist-travellers, sportsmen, and others--

 Adams, A. Leith. _Notes of a Naturalist in the Nile Valley and Malta_
 (Edinburgh, 1870).

 Agassiz, A. _Three Cruises of the “Blake”_ (Boston and New York,
 1888).

 Baker, S. W. _Wild Beasts and their Ways: Reminiscences of Europe,
 Asia, Africa, and America_ (London, 1890).

 Bates, H. W. _Naturalist on the Amazons_ (6th Ed. London, 1893).

 Belt, T. _Naturalist in Nicaragua_ (2nd Ed. London, 1888).

 Bickmore, A. S. _Travels in the East Indian Archipelago_ (1868).

 Blanford, W. T. _Observations on the Geology and Zoology of Abyssinia_
 (London, 1870).

 Bryden, H. A. _Gun and Camera in Southern Africa_ (London, 1893).
 _Kloof and Karroo_ (1889).

 Burnaby, F. _A Ride to Khiva_ (8th Ed. London, 1877).

 Buxton, E. N. _Short Stalks, or Hunting Camps, North, South, East, and
 West_ (London, 1893).

 Chapman, A. and C. M. Buck. _Wild Spain_ (London, 1892).

 Cunningham, R. O. _Notes on the Natural History of the Straits of
 Magellan_ (Edinburgh, 1871).

 Darwin, C. _Voyage of the “Beagle”_ (1844, New Ed. London, 1890).

 Distant, W. L. _A Naturalist in the Transvaal_ (London, 1892).

 Drummond, H. _Tropical Africa_ (London, 1888).

 Du Chaillu, P. B. _Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa_
 (London, 1861). _Ashango Land_ (1867).

 Eha. _A Naturalist on the Prowl, or in the Jungle_ (London, 1894).

 Forbes, H. O. _A Naturalist’s Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago_
 (London, 1885).

 Guillemard. _Cruise of the “Marchesa”_ (London, 1886).

 Heilprin, A. _The Bermuda Islands_ (Philadelphia, 1889).

 Hickson, S. J. _A Naturalist in North Celebes_ (London, 1889).

 Holub, Emil. _Seven Years in South Africa_ (1881).

 Hudson, W. H. _The Naturalist in La Plata_ (London, 1892). _Idle Days
 in Patagonia_ (London, 1893).

 Humboldt, A. von. _Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial
 Regions of America._ _Views of Nature_ (Trans. 1849). _Cosmos_ (Trans.
 1849-58).

 Johnston, H. H. _Kilima Ndjaro Expedition_ (1885).

 Kingsley, C. _At last! A Christmas in the West Indies_ (1889).

 Lumholtz. _Among Cannibals_ (London, 1889).

 Moseley, H. N. _Notes by a Naturalist on the “Challenger”_ (London,
 1879. New Ed. 1892).

 Nordenskiöld, A. E. _Voyage of the “Vega”_ (London, 1881).

 Oates, F., Ed. by C. G. Oates. _Matabele Land, the Victoria Falls, a
 Naturalist’s Wanderings in the Interior of South Africa_ (1881).

 Phillipps-Wolley. _Big-Game Shooting_ (Badminton Libr. London, 1893).

 Rodway, J. _In the Guiana Forest_ (London, 1894). _British Guiana_
 (London, 1893).

 Roosevelt, Th., and G. B. Grinell. _American Big-Game Hunting_
 (Edinburgh, 1893).

 Schweinfurth, G. _The Heart of Africa_ (1878).

 Seebohm, H. _Siberia in Europe_ (London, 1880), _Siberia in Asia_
 (London, 1882).

 Selous, F. C. _A Hunter’s Wanderings_ (1881). _Travel and Adventure in
 South-East Africa_ (London, 1893).

 Sibree, Rev. J. _The Great African Island_ (1879).

 Solymos, B. (B. E. Falkenberg). _Desert Life_ (London, 1880).

 Stanley, H. M. _How I Found Livingstone_ (1872, New Ed. 1885). _The
 Congo_ (1885). _Through the Dark Continent_ (1890). _In Darkest
 Africa_ (1890).

 Swayne, H. G. C. _Seventeen Trips through Somaliland_ (London, 1895).

 Tennent, J. E. _Natural History of Ceylon_ (London, 1861).

 Thomson, Wyville. _The Depths of the Sea_ (London, 1873). _Narrative
 of the Voyage of the “Challenger”_ (1885). And, in this connection,
 see S. J. Hickson. _Fauna of the Deep Sea_ (London, 1894).

 Tristram, H. B. _The Land of Israel_ (1876). _The Land of Moab_
 (1873). _The Great Sahara_ (1860).

 Wallace, A. R. _Malay Archipelago_ (London 1869). _Tropical Nature_
 (1878). _Island Life_ (1880). _Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro_
 (1889).

 Waterton, Ch. _Wanderings in South America_ (Ed. by J. G. Wood, 1878).

 Woodford, C. M. _Naturalist among the Head-hunters_ (London, 1890).

FROM

NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR.

THE BIRD-BERGS OF LAPLAND.

“When the Creator of the worlds had made the earth, best loved of
all, and was rejoicing in His perfect work, the devil was seized with
a desire to bring it all to nought. Not yet banished from heaven, he
lived among the archangels in the abodes of the blessed. Up to the
seventh heaven he flew, and, seizing a great stone, hurled it with
might down on the earth exulting in the beauty of its youth. But the
Creator saw the ruthless deed, and sent one of His archangels to avert
the evil. The angel flew even more swiftly than the stone to the earth
beneath, and succeeded in saving the land. The huge stone plunged
thundering into the sea, and hissing waves flooded all the shores for
many a mile. The fall shattered the crust of the stone, and thousands
of splinters sank on either side, some disappearing into the depths,
and some rising above the surface, bare and bleak like the rock itself.
Then God took pity, and in His infinite goodness resolved to clothe
even this naked rock with life. But the fruitful soil was all but
exhausted in His hand; there remained scarce enough to lay a little
here and there upon the stone.”

So runs an ancient legend still current among the Lapps. The stone
which the devil threw is Scandinavia; the splinters which fell into
the sea on either side are the skerries which form a richly varied
wreath around the peninsula. The rents and cracks in the rock are the
fjords and the valleys; the sprinkling of life-giving soil which fell
from the gracious Creator’s hand forms the few fertile tracts which
Scandinavia possesses. To appreciate the full depth and meaning of
the childish story one must one’s self have visited Scandinavia, and
especially Norway, have steered a boat among the skerries, and have
sailed round the country from the extreme south to the farthest north.
Marvellous, indeed, is the country; marvellous are its fjords; still
more marvellous is the encircling wreath of islands and reefs.

Scandinavia is an alpine country like Switzerland and the Tyrol, yet
it differs in a hundred ways from both of these. Like our Alps it has
lofty mountains, glaciers, torrents, clear, still alpine lakes, dark
pine and fir forests low down in the gorges, bright green birch woods
on the heights, far-stretching moors--or more strictly tundras--on the
broad shoulders of the mountains, log-huts on the slopes, and the huts
of the cowherds in the upland valleys. And yet all is very different
from our Alps, as is obvious to anyone who has seen both. The reason
of this difference lies in the wonderful way in which two such grand
and impressive features of scenery as lofty mountains and the sea are
associated and harmonized.

The general aspect of Scandinavia is at once grave and gay. Stern
grandeur and soft beauty go hand in hand; gloom alternates with
cheerfulness; with the dead and disquieting is linked the living and
exhilarating. Black masses of rock rear themselves perpendicularly
out of the sea, rise directly from the deeply-cut fjords, and, riven
and cleft, tower precipitously upwards and lean threateningly over.
On their heads lie masses of ice stretching for miles, covering
whole districts and scaring away all life save the torrents to which
they themselves have given birth. These torrents spread themselves
everywhere in ribbons of silver over the dark masses, and not only
give pleasure to the eye, but murmur to the ear the sublime melody of
the mountains. They rush down through every cleft to the depths below,
they burst forth from every gorge, or plunge in mad career from rock
to rock, forming waterfall after waterfall, and awakening echoes from
the farthest mountain sides. These rushing mountain-streams which hurry
down to the valley through every channel, the gleaming bands of water
on every wall of rock, the ascending smoke-like spray which betrays
the most secluded falls--these call forth life even in the most dread
wilderness, in places where otherwise nought can be seen but rocks and
sky--and they are most truly characteristic of the scenery of the
interior.

[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Scene on the Sogne Fjord, Norway.]

But, majestic as this beauty is, bewildering and overwhelming as are
the fjords with their precipitous walls, their ravines and valleys,
headlands and peaks, they are yet less characteristic than the islands
and skerries lying out in the sea, stretching from the south of the
country up to the far north, and forming a maze of bays, sounds, and
straits such as can hardly be seen elsewhere in the wide world.

The larger islands reproduce more or less faithfully the characters
of the mainland; the smaller ones and the skerries present, under all
circumstances, an aspect of their own. But, as one travels towards the
north, this aspect changes more or less with every degree of latitude.
Like the sea, the islands lack the richness of the south, but are,
nevertheless, by no means devoid of beauty. Especially in the midnight
hours, when the low midsummer sun stands large and blood-red on the
horizon, its veiled brilliance reflected alike from the ice-covered
mountain-tops and from the sea, they have an irresistible charm. This
is enhanced by the homesteads which are dotted everywhere over the
landscape--dwellings built of wood and roofed with turf, glowing in
a strange, blood-red colour which contrasts sharply with the green
turf roof, the black darkness of the adjacent mountain-side, and the
ice-blue of the glaciers in the background of the picture.

The southerner remarks, with some surprise, that these homesteads
become larger, handsomer, and more roomy the farther north he travels;
that, though no longer surrounded by fields, but at the most by small
gardens, they far excel in size and equipment the hut-like buildings
of southern Scandinavia; and that the most pretentious of all may
be on comparatively small islands, where the rocks are covered only
with turf, and where not even a little garden can be won from the
inhospitable soil.

The seeming riddle is solved when we remember that in Norland and
Finland it is not the land but the sea that is ploughed; that there
men do not sow and wield the scythe in summer, but reap in midwinter
without having sowed; that it is in the months in which the long night
holds its undisputed sway, when the light of the sun has given place to
that of the moon, and the rosy flush of dawn and sunset to the glow of
the Northern Lights, that the dwellers in the far north gather in the
rich harvest of the sea.

About the time of the autumnal equinox strong men are preparing
themselves all along the coasts of Norway to secure the harvest of
the North. Every town, every village, every hamlet sends one or more
well-manned ships to the islands and skerries within the Polar Circle,
to anchor for months in every suitable bay. Making the ships or the
homesteads on shore their head-quarters, the fishermen proceed to
gather in the abundant booty. In the height of summer the whole country
is still and deserted, but in winter the bays, islands, and sounds are
teeming with busy men, and laborious hands are toiling night and day.
Spacious as the dwelling-houses appear, they cannot contain the crowds
of people who have assembled; many must remain in the ships, or even
seek a rough-and-ready shelter in rudely-constructed turf-covered huts
on the shore.

The bustle is at its height about the time of the winter solstice,
when we celebrate our Christmas, and the Norsemen their Yule festival.
For weeks the sea has been yielding its treasures. Impelled by the
strongest impulse which moves living beings, guided by irresistible
instinct to sow the seed of future generations, there rise from the
depths of the sea innumerable shoals of fishes--cod, haddock, and
the like. They ascend to the upper strata of the water, approach the
coasts, and throng into the straits, sounds, and fjords in such numbers
that they cover the surface of the sea for many miles. Animated,
almost maddened, by one impulse, the fish swim so thickly that the
boat has literally to force a way among them, that the overweighted
net baffles the combined strength of the fishermen or breaks under
its burden, that an oar placed upright among the densely packed crowd
of swimmers remains for a few moments in its position before falling
to one side.[1] Wherever the rocky islands are washed bare by the
raging high tides, from the mean tide-mark to the lower edge of the
turf which covers their summits, the naked rocks are covered by an
unbroken ring of fish split open and laid out to dry, while trestles
are also erected that other fish may be exposed for the same purpose to
the sharp and drying air. From time to time the rocks and frames are
cleared of dried fish, which are packed in bundles and stored in sheds,
but only that room may be found for others which in the meantime have
been caught and prepared.

For months the bustle continues, and the traffic is uninterrupted; for
months the North continues to exchange its treasures with the South.
Then in the days when about noon a clear light in the south heralds
the coming of the sun still hidden, or when the first rays of sunlight
fall for a brief space upon the land, the rich catch comes gradually to
an end. The dried cod and ling are carried from the storing sheds to
the ships, all available space from keel to deck is filled up, and the
fishermen prepare to journey homewards, or abroad into the wide world.
One ship after another hoists its brown-edged sails and steers away.

The North becomes quieter again, more deserted the land, desolate
the sea. At last, by the time of the spring equinox, all the migrant
fishermen have left the fishing grounds, and all the fish have returned
to the depths of the sea. But the sea is already sending forth other
children to people afresh the straits and sounds, and along with them
the skerries and islands; and soon from those same cliffs, at whose
base there was but lately all the bustle of the winter, millions of
bright bird eyes look down upon the waves.

It is a deeply-affecting trait in the life of all true sea-birds that
only two causes can move them to visit the land: the joyous spring-time
sense of new-awakening love, and the mournful foreboding of approaching
death. Not even Winter with its long night, its cold, and its storms
can drive them to the land; they are proof against all the terrors of
the North, and seek their food upon or under the waves; not even the
threatening jaws of voracious fish scare them ashore. They may alight
occasionally, but only for a short time, often on a solitary island in
the sea, to oil their feathers more thoroughly than can be done in the
water. But when, with the sun’s first brightness, love stirs in their
breasts, all, old and young alike, though they may have to swim and fly
thousands of miles, strive to reach the place where they themselves
first saw the light of day. And if, in mid-winter, months after the
breeding-places have been left desolate, a sea-bird feels death in his
heart, he hastens as long as his strength holds out, that he may, if
possible, die in the place where he was cradled.

The annual assembling of innumerable birds at the breeding-places fills
these for several months with a most marvellous life. The communities
differ like the sea-birds themselves, and the places, or _bergs_ (as
the Norsemen call them), which they people vary also. While some choose
only those reefs which rise just above the high-tide mark, and bear
no more vegetation than is enough to provide scanty material for the
nest hollowed out in the sea-weed heaps, others select islands which
rear themselves straight and steep for several hundred feet above the
sea, and are either rich in shelves, ledges, cavities, fissures, and
other hiding-places, or are covered by a thick layer of peat-like
plant remains. The Norseman calls the lower islets ‘eider-holms’ (or
eider bird-hills, as the German would say), for they are the favourite
brooding-places of what is to him the most valuable, and, what is the
same thing, the most useful of all sea-birds. The higher islands which
rise precipitously from the sea, and are chiefly peopled by auks and
gulls, are included under the general name of _bird-bergs_.

The observant naturalist is of course tempted to study and describe in
detail each individual brooding bird of the sea, but the rich variety
of the inhabitants of the bird-bergs of the far north and the variety
of their habits impose certain limits. Similarly, lest I exceed the
time allowed to me, I must refrain from giving detailed pictures of
the habits of all the berg birds, though I think it well at least
to outline those of a few in order to bring into prominence some of
the chief characteristics of sea-bird life. Selection is difficult,
but one, at any rate--the eider-duck, which returns every spring to
these islands, and helps to beautify them and their surroundings so
marvellously--must not be left undescribed.

Three species of these beautiful ducks inhabit or visit European
shores; one of these, the true eider-bird, is to be found every
summer, even on the north-western islands of Germany, especially
Sylt. Its plumage is a faithful mirror of the northern sea. Black and
red, ash-gray, ice-green, white, brown, and yellow are the colours
harmoniously blended in it. The eider-duck proper is the least
beautiful species, but it is nevertheless a handsome bird. The neck and
back, a band over the wings, and a spot on the sides of the body are
white as the crests of the waves; throat and crop have a white ground
faintly flushed with rose-colour as though the glow of the midnight sun
had been caught there; a belt on the cheeks is delicate green like the
ice of the glacier; breast and belly, wings and tail, the lower part of
the back and the rump are black as the depths of the sea itself. This
splendour belongs only to the male; the female, like all ducks, wears a
more modest yet not less pleasing garb, which I may call a house-dress.
The prevailing rust-coloured ground, shading more or less into brown,
is marked with longitudinal and transverse spots, lines and spirals,
with a beauty and variety that words cannot adequately describe.

No other species of duck is so thoroughly a child of the sea as
the eider-duck; no species waddles more clumsily on land, or flies
less gracefully, but none swims more rapidly or dives more deftly
and deeply. In search of food it sinks fully fifty yards below the
surface of the sea, and is said to be able to remain five minutes--an
extraordinarily long time--under water. Before the beginning of the
brooding season it does not leave the open sea at all, or does so very
rarely; following a whim rather than driven by necessity. Towards the
end of winter the flocks in which they congregate break up into pairs,
and only those males who have not succeeded in securing mates swim
about in little groups. Between two mates the most perfect unanimity
reigns. One will, undoubtedly that of the duck, determines the actions
of both. If she rises from the surface of the water to fly for a
hundred yards through the air, the drake follows her; if she dives
into the sea, he disappears directly afterwards; wherever she turns
he follows faithfully; whatever she does seems to express his wishes.
The pair still live out on the sea, though only where the depth is not
greater than twenty-five fathoms, and where edible mussels and other
bivalves are found in rich abundance on the rocks and the sea-bottom.
These molluscs often form the sole food of eider-ducks, and to procure
them they may have to dive to considerable depths. But it is the
abundance of this food which preserves the eiders from the scarcity
from which so many other species of duck often suffer severely.

In April, or at the latest in the beginning of May, the pairs approach
nearer and nearer the fringe of reefs and the shores of the mainland.
Maternal cares are stirring in the breast of the duck, and to these
everything else is subordinated. Out at sea the pair were so shy that
they never allowed a ship or boat to get near them, and feared man,
if he ever happened to approach them, more than any other living
creature; now in the neighbourhood of the islands their behaviour
changes entirely. Obeying her maternal instincts, and these only, the
duck swims to one of the brooding-places, and paying no attention to
the human inhabitants, waddles on to the land. Anxiously the drake
follows her, not without uttering his warning “Ahua, ahua”, not without
visible hesitation, for every now and then he remains behind as if
reflecting for a while, and then swims forward once more. The duck,
however, pays no heed to all this. Careless of the whole world around
her, she wanders over the island seeking a suitable brooding-place.
Being somewhat fastidious, she is not satisfied with the first good
heap of sea-weed cast up by the tide, with the low juniper-bush whose
branches straggling on the ground offer safe concealment, with the
half-broken box which the owner of the island has placed as a shelter
for her, or with the heaps of twigs and brushwood which he has gathered
to entice her, but approaches the owner’s dwelling as fearlessly as if
she were a domestic bird. She enters it, walks about the floor, follows
the housewife through rooms and kitchen, and capriciously selects, it
may be, the inside of the oven as her resting-place, thereby forcing
the housewife to have her bread baked for weeks on another island.
With manifest alarm the faithful drake follows her as far as he dares;
but when she, in his opinion, so far neglects all considerations of
safety as to dwell under the same roof with human beings, he no longer
tries to struggle against her wayward whim, but leaves her to follow
it alone, and flies out to the safety of the sea, there longingly
to await her daily visit. His mate is in no wise distracted by his
departure, but proceeds to collect twigs and brushwood--a task in
which she willingly accepts the Norseman’s help--and to pile up into a
heap her nest materials, which include sea-weed as well as twigs. She
hollows out a trough with her wings and makes it circular by turning
round and round in it with her smooth breast. Then she sets about
procuring the lining and incorporating it with the nest. Thinking only
of her brood, she plucks the incomparably soft down from her breast and
makes with it a sort of felt, which not only lines the whole hollow
but forms such a thick border at its upper edge that it serves as a
cover to protect the eggs from cold when the mother leaves the nest.
Before the work of lining is quite completed, the duck begins laying
her comparatively small, smooth-shelled, clouded-green or grayish-green
eggs. The clutch consists of from six to eight, seldom more or fewer.

This is the time for which the Norseman has been waiting, for it was
self-interest that prompted all his hospitality to the bird. The host
now becomes the robber. Ruthlessly he takes the eggs and the nest with
its inner lining of costly down. From twenty-four to thirty nests yield
about two pounds of down, worth at least thirty shillings on the spot.
This price is sufficient explanation of the Norseman’s way of acting.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Colony of Eider-ducks.]

With a heavy heart the duck sees the downfall of her hopes for that
year. Perturbed and frightened, she flies out to sea, where her mate
awaits her. Whether he takes the opportunity of repeating his warnings
more urgently I cannot say, but I can testify that he very soon
succeeds in consoling her. The joy and spirit of the spring-time still
live in the hearts of both; and in a very few days our duck waddles on
land again as though nothing had happened, to build a second nest! This
time she probably avoids her former position and contents herself with
the first available heap of tangle which is not fully taken up by other
birds. Again she digs and rounds a hollow; again she begins to probe
among her plumage in order to procure the lining of down which seems
to her indispensable. But, however much she exert herself, stretching
her neck and twisting it in intricate snake-like curves, she can find
no more. Yet when was a mother, even a duck mother, at a loss when
her children had to be provided for? Our duck is certainly at none.
She herself has no more down, but her mate bears it untouched on his
breast and back. Now it is his turn. And though he may perhaps rebel,
having a lively recollection of former years, he is the husband and
she the wife, therefore he must obey. Without compunction the anxious
mother rifles his plumage, and in a few hours, or at most within two
days, she has plucked him as bare as herself. That the drake, after
such treatment, should fly out to the open sea as soon as possible, and
associate for some months only with his fellows, troubling himself not
in the least about his mate and her coming brood, seems to me quite
comprehensible. And when, as happens on every nesting island, a drake
is to be seen standing by the brooding duck, I think he must be one who
has not yet been plucked![2]

Our duck broods once more assiduously. And now her house-dress is
seen to be the only suitable, I might say the only possible, garment
which she could wear. Among the tangle which surrounds the nest she
is completely hidden even from the sharp eyes of the falcon or the
sea-eagle. Not only the general colouring, but every point and every
line is so harmonious with the dried sea-weed, that the brooding-bird,
when she has drawn down her neck and slightly spread out her wings,
seems to become almost a part of her surroundings. Many a time it has
happened that I, searching with the practised eye of a sportsman and
naturalist, have walked across eider-holms and only become aware of
the brooding duck at my feet, when she warned me off by pecking at my
shoes. No one who knows the self-forgetting devotion with which the
birds brood will be surprised that it is possible to come so near an
eider-duck sitting in her nest, but it may well excite the astonishment
of even an experienced naturalist to learn that the duck suffers one to
handle the eggs under her breast without flying away, and that she does
not even allow herself to be diverted from her brooding when one lifts
her from the nest and places her upon it again, or lays her on the
ground at some little distance in order to see the charmingly quaint
way in which she waddles back to her brood.

The eider-duck’s maternal self-surrender and desire for offspring show
themselves in another way. Every female eider-duck, perhaps every duck
of whatever species, desires not only the bliss of bearing children,
but wishes to have as many nestlings as possible under her motherly
eye. Prompted by this desire, she has no scruples in robbing, whenever
possible, other eiders brooding near her. Devoted as she is in her
brooding, she must nevertheless forsake her nest once a day to procure
her own food, and to cleanse, oil, and smooth her plumage, which
suffers considerably from the heat developed in brooding. Throwing a
suspicious glance at her neighbours to right and left, she rises early
in the forenoon, after having perhaps suffered the pangs of hunger
for some hours, stands beside her nest and carefully spreads the
surrounding fringe of down with her bill, so that it forms a concealing
and protecting cover for the eggs. Then she flies quickly out to the
sea, dives repeatedly, and hastily fills crop and gullet to the full
with mussels, bathes, cleans, and oils herself, and returns to land,
drying and smoothing her feathers continuously as she walks towards
her nest. Both her neighbours sit seemingly as innocent as before,
but in the interval a theft has been perpetrated by at least one of
them. As soon as the first had flown away, one of them rose from her
nest, and lifting the cover of her neighbour’s nest, quickly rolled
one, two, three, or four eggs with her feet into her own nest, then
carefully replaced the cover, and resumed her place, rejoicing over her
unrighteously-increased clutch. The returning duck probably notices the
trick that has been played, but she makes not the slightest sign, and
calmly settles down to brood again as though she thought, “Just wait,
neighbour, you must go to the sea, too, and then I’ll do to you what
you have done to me”. As a matter of fact, the eggs of several nests
standing close together are shifted continuously from one to another.
Whether it is her own or another’s children that come to life under her
motherly breast seems to matter very little to the eider-duck--they are
children, at any rate!

The duck sits about twenty-six days before the eggs are hatched. The
Norseman, who goes to work intelligently, lets her do as she pleases
this time, and not only refrains from disturbing her, but assists her
as far as possible by keeping away from the island all enemies who
might harass the bird. He knows his ducks, if not personally, at least
to this extent, that he can tell about what time this or that one will
have finished brooding, and will set out with her ducklings to seek
the safety of the sea. The journey thither brings sudden destruction
to many unwatched young eider-ducks. Not only the falcons breeding
on or visiting the island, but even more the ravens, the skuas, and
the larger gulls watch for the first appearance of the ducklings,
attack them on the way, and carry off one or more of them. The owner
of the island seeks to prevent this in a manner which enables one
to appreciate how thoroughly the duck, ordinarily so wild and shy,
has become a domestic bird during the breeding season. Every morning
towards the end of the brooding-time he inspects the island in order
to help the mothers and to gather in a second harvest of down. On his
back hangs a hamper, and on one arm a wide hand-basket. Going from
nest to nest he lifts each duck, and looks to see whether the young
are hatched and are sufficiently dry. If this be the case, he packs
the whole waddling company in his hand-basket, and with adroit grasp
divests the nest of its downy lining, which he throws into his hamper,
and proceeds to another nest. Trustfully the duck waddles after him
or rather after her piping offspring, and a second, third, tenth nest
is thus emptied, in fact the work goes on as long as the basket will
accommodate more nestlings, and one mother after another joins the
procession, exchanging opinions with her companions in suffering on
the way. Arrived at the sea, the man turns the basket upside down and
simply shakes the whole crowd of ducklings into the water. Immediately
all the ducks throw themselves after their piping young ones; coaxing,
calling, displaying all manner of maternal tenderness, they swim about
among the flock, each trying to collect as many ducklings as possible
behind herself. With obvious pride one swims about with a long train
behind her, but soon a second, less favoured, crosses the procession
and seeks to detach as many of the ducklings as she can, and again a
third endeavours to divert a few in her own favour. So all the mothers
swim about, quacking and calling, cackling and coaxing, till at length
each one has behind her a troop of young ones, whether her own or
another’s who can tell? The duck in question certainly does not know,
but her mother-love does not suffer on that account--they are in any
case ducklings who are swimming behind her!

In every case the flock thus collected follows the mother or
foster-mother faithfully even in the first hours of free life. The
mother leads them to places where edible mussels cover the rocks up to
low-water mark, gathers as many as she and her family require, breaks
the shells of the smallest and lays the contents before her brood. On
the first day of their lives the ducklings are able to swim and dive as
well as their parents, and they even excel them in one respect, for
they are incomparably more nimble on land, being able to move about
with surprising activity. If they become tired near an island the
mother leads them on to it, and they run about like young partridges,
and, by simply crouching down at the first warning cry, conceal
themselves so effectively that they can only be found after long
searching. If they get fatigued when they are far from land, the mother
spreads out her wings a little and offers them these and her back as
a resting-place. As they never know want they grow with extraordinary
rapidity, and at the end of two months will have attained nearly the
size, certainly all the adroitness, of their mother. The father soon
joins them in order to pass the winter with his family--usually in
company with many other families, so that a flock of thousands may
occasionally be formed.

The high and annually increasing price of its incomparable down makes
the eider-duck the most valuable of all berg-birds. A thousand pairs
of ducks form a possession well worth having. At least three or four
thousand pairs brood on each island, and the fortunate possessor of
still more numerously visited breeding-places derives revenues through
his birds which many a German land-owner might envy. But besides the
eider-ducks there breed also on the holms oyster-catchers and black
guillemots, whose eggs are preserved and used for food for months, or
are exported to a distance. Furthermore, the flesh of the young birds
is sometimes salted for winter use, and thus the holms yield a rich
harvest. They are therefore strictly preserved and protected by special
laws.[3]

A brooding island peopled by eider-ducks and other sea birds presents a
spectacle as unique as it is fascinating. A more or less thick cloud of
brilliantly white sea-gulls veils such an island. Without intermission
troops and swarms of brooding birds arrive and fly out to sea again,
visiting the neighbouring reefs also, and sometimes marvellously
adorning the drained moorland, now covered with green turf, in front
of the red log-huts. With justifiable pride a dweller on the Lofodens
pointed to several hundred gulls which were assembled directly before
his door seeking for insects. “Our land is too poor, too cold, and
too rough”, he said, “for us to be able to keep domestic birds as
you do in the south. But the sea sends us our doves, and, I ask, have
you ever seen more beautiful?” I could but answer in the negative,
for the picture of the dazzling white and delicate blue-gray gulls on
the luxuriant green turf amid the grand environment of the northern
mountains was indeed magnificent. It is these gulls chiefly which make
the brooding holms conspicuous from a distance, and distinguish them
from others which are physically the same. The other members of the
feathered population are but little noticed, though they number many
thousands. Only when one of the admirable light boats of the country
is pushed off from the inhabited shores and rowed towards the holm
does the quiet life of the birds change. Some oyster-catchers, which
have been feeding directly above the high-water mark, have observed
the boat and fly hastily towards it. These birds, which are absent
from none of the larger islands, scarcely from any of the skerries,
are the guardians of the safety and welfare of the peacefully united
colony. More inquisitive and active than any other birds known to
me, self-possessed, cautious, and deliberate, they possess all the
qualities necessary to make them the sentinels of a mixed colony.
Every new, unusual, or extraordinary event arouses their curiosity,
and incites them to make closer examination. Thus they fly to meet
the boat, sweep round it five or six times in ever-narrowing circles,
screaming uninterruptedly the while, thus attracting others of their
own species to the spot, and rousing the attention of all the cautious
birds in the colony. As soon as they have convinced themselves of the
presence of actual danger, they fly quickly back, and, with warning
notes, communicate the result of their investigation to all the other
birds on the berg who will pay any attention, as indeed many do. Some
gulls now resolve to investigate the cause of the disturbance for
themselves. Five or six of them fly towards the boat, hover falcon-like
in the air, perhaps even dart boldly down upon the intruders, and
return to the holm more quickly than they came. Just as if their report
was mistrusted, twice, three, four--ten times the number take wing,
proceeding exactly as the first spies had done, and soon a cloud of
birds forms above the boat. This cloud becomes thicker and thicker,
more and more threatening, for the birds not only endeavour with
continually increasing boldness to strike against the intruders in the
boat, but they bestow upon them stuff which does not exactly tend to
adorn faces and clothing. In the neighbourhood of the breeding-place
the excitement increases to an apparently distracted confusion, the
cries of individuals unite to form a maddening noise a thousand times
repeated. Before the boat has touched the land the eider-drakes, who
have been visiting their mates, have waddled to the shore and are
now swimming out to sea with a warning “Ahua-ahua”. The cormorants
and mergansers follow them, but the oyster-catchers, plovers, black
guillemots, eider-ducks, gulls, and terns, as well as the stone-chats
and water-wagtails, cannot make up their minds to forsake the island.
Running birds innumerable rush up and down the shore as if pursued by
the evil one; the black guillemots, which had glided up the slanting
blocks of rock, squat flat down upon them and stare in innocent wonder
at the strangers, and the eider-ducks prepare to make themselves
invisible after their fashion when the right moment comes.

The boat touches the shore. We step upon the holm. A screech rises from
thousands of voices at once, the cloud of flying birds thickens to
opaqueness; hundreds of brooding gulls rise croaking to join those in
flight; dozens of oyster-catchers scream loudly, and the maze of moving
birds and the noise of their screeching become so bewildering that one
feels as if one perceived with the bodily senses the din and riot of
the witches’ revel on the Blocksberg.

  “Voices o’er us dost thou hear?
  Voices far, and voices near?
  All the mountain-range along
  Streams a raving Witches’ Song.”

Mephisto’s words are realized. The noise and tumult, the confusion of
forms and cries, fatigue all the senses; everything swims and flickers
before our eyes; there is singing and ringing in our ears, till at
length we are conscious of neither colour nor noise, scarcely even
of the usually very penetrating odour. In whatever direction we may
turn the cloud covers the island; nothing is to be seen but birds, and
when thousands alight to rest thousands more take wing, their care and
anxiety for their brood making them forget their own powerlessness,
and encouraging them to a defence which, though not dangerous, is
certainly embarrassing to the explorers.

[Illustration: Fig. 3.--The Bird-bergs of Lapland.]

Essentially different from the life--after all very inoffensive--on an
eider-holm is the picture presented by an island peopled by silver,
herring, or great black-backed gulls. These also congregate on certain
islands for the breeding season in hundreds and hundreds of pairs, one
such island being sometimes inhabited by from three to five thousand
pairs. The island presents quite as beautiful and noble a spectacle
as the eider-holm. The large, dazzling white, and light or dark gray
forms contrast wonderfully with the whole surroundings, and their
movements possess much of the grace which characterizes all gulls. But
these strong, powerful, rapacious gulls, though gregarious, are not
peaceable neighbours. No member of such a colony trusts any other. Each
pair lives by itself, marks out a definite brooding-ground, however
small its diameter, allows no other pair within its boundaries, and
both birds never leave the nest at the same time. If they have been
disturbed by a powerful common enemy they hasten back as quickly as
possible to the nest to protect it from others of their own species.

Less noisy, but certainly not less impressive, is the life on the
real bird-bergs, the breeding-grounds of razor-bills, guillemots, and
puffins, with at most here and there one or other of the gulls or of
the cormorants. It will suffice if I attempt to describe one such berg
in narrative form.

To the north of the large island belonging to the Lofoden group, and
about three hundred yards from its shore, lie three bell-shaped rocky
islands (the Nyken), rising rugged and steep for about three hundred
feet above the surface of the sea, and closely surrounded by a circle
of little reefs. One of these rocky cones is a bird-berg, and one can
hardly imagine a finer of its kind.

We prepared to visit the island on a beautiful summer day when the
sea was unusually smooth and calm, the sky clear and blue, the air
warm and pleasant. Powerful Norsemen rowed our light boat in and out
among innumerable skerries. Look where we would, we saw birds. Almost
every rock which rose above the surface of the water was peopled with
them. Some of the reefs were coated with white by the excrement of
the cormorants which regularly spent a portion of each day there in
rest. Arranged in rows, like soldiers drawn up, they sat in tens,
twenties, or hundreds, in the most extraordinary positions, their necks
stretched, their wings spread out so that every part of their bodies
might have full benefit of the sunshine, waving their wings also as
if to fan each other, and all the while casting watchful glances in
every direction. On our approach, they threw themselves heavily with
hollow cries into the sea, and then, swimming and diving, defied all
our attempts to get near them. Other reefs were covered with gulls,
hundreds and thousands of the same species; or with male eiders, which
had probably come from some eider-holm or other, to amuse themselves
after the fashion of their sex while their mates were busied with
maternal cares. Around other rocky islands the dazzling eider-birds,
perhaps newly-plucked males, had congregated and arranged themselves
in a circle, suggestive of the great white water-lilies of our quiet
freshwater lakes. In the sounds that were not too deep one could see
the fishing mergansers and divers, one or other of which would every
now and then give full vent to its shrill, far-reaching cry--a cry so
long-drawn-out and so varied in tone that one might call it a song,
were it not rather a wild melody such as can only be executed by a
child of the North Sea who has listened to the howling and blustering
of winter storms, and has echoed the roar of the surging waves. Proud
as a prince upon his throne sat here and there a sea-eagle, the terror
of all the feathered creatures of the sea; sometimes we saw a whole
company of these robbers gorged with prey; the jerfalcon, who had his
eyrie on one of the steep precipices, flew through his wide domain
with the swiftness of an arrow; fluttering gulls and kittiwakes and
fishing terns darted up and down; oyster-catchers greeted us with their
trilling cries; razor-bills and guillemots appeared and disappeared all
about us as they rose to the surface or dived underneath.

In such company we proceeded on our way. When we had traversed about
ten nautical miles we came within range of the Nyke. In whatever
direction we looked we saw some of the temporary dwellers on the berg,
fishing and diving in the sea, or, startled by our boat, flying along
so close to the surface of the water that their bright red webbed feet
struck spray from the waves. We saw swarms of from thirty to fifty or
a hundred birds streaming from or towards the berg, and we could not
doubt that we were approaching a very populous breeding-colony. But
we had been told of millions of brooding birds, and as yet we could
see nothing of such numbers. At length, after we had rowed round a
projecting ridge, the Nyke lay before us. In the sea, all around, were
black points, at the foot of the hill white ones. The former were
without order or regularity, the latter generally in rows, or sharply
defined troops; the one set consisted of razor-bills swimming, with
head, throat, and neck above the water, the others were the same birds
sitting on the hill with their white breasts turned towards the sea.
There were certainly many thousands, but not millions.

After we had landed at the opposite island and refreshed ourselves
in the house of the proprietor of the Nyke, we crossed over to it,
and choosing a place round which the seething waves did not surge
too violently, we sprang out on the rock and climbed quickly up to
the turf which covers the whole Nyke, with the exception of a few
protruding peaks, ledges, and angles. There we found that the whole
turf was so pierced with nest-hollows something like rabbit holes,
that on the whole hill not a single place the size of a table could be
found free from such openings. We made our way upwards in a spiral,
clambering rather than walking to the top of the berg. The undermined
turf trembled under our feet, and from every hole there peeped, crept,
glided, or flew out birds rather larger than pigeons, slate-coloured on
the upper part of the body, dazzlingly white on breast and belly, with
fantastic bills and faces, short, narrow, pointed wings, and stumpy
tails. Out of every hole they appeared and even out of the fissures and
clefts in the rocks. Whichever way we turned we saw only birds, heard
only the low droning noise of their combined weak cries. Every step
onwards brought new flocks out of the bowels of the earth. From the
berg down to the sea, from the sea up to the berg there flew swarms
innumerable. The dozens became hundreds, the hundreds became thousands,
and hundreds of thousands sprang incessantly from the brown-green turf.
A cloud not less thick than that over the holm enveloped us, enveloped
the island, so that it--magically indeed, but in a way perceptible by
the senses--seemed transformed into a gigantic bee-hive, round which
not less gigantic bees, humming and buzzing, hovered and fluttered.

The farther we went, the more magnificent became the spectacle. The
whole hill was alive. Hundreds of thousands of eyes looked down upon
us intruders. From every hole and corner, from every peak and ledge,
out of every cleft, burrow, or opening, they hurried forth, right,
left, above, beneath; the air, like the ground, teemed with birds. From
the sides and from the summit of the berg thousands threw themselves
like a continuous cataract into the sea in a throng so dense that
they seemed to the eye to form an almost solid mass. Thousands came,
thousands went, thousands fluttered in a wondrous mazy dance; hundreds
of thousands flew, hundreds of thousands swam and dived, and yet
other hundreds of thousands awaited the footsteps which should rouse
them also. There was such a swarming, whirring, rustling, dancing,
flying, and creeping all about us that we almost lost our senses; the
eye refused duty, and his wonted skill failed even the marksman who
attempted to gain a prize at random among the thousands. Bewildered,
hardly conscious, we pushed on our way until at length we reached the
summit. Our expectation here at last to regain quietness, composure,
and power of observation, was not at once realized. Even here there was
the same swarming and whirring as further down the slope, and the cloud
of birds around us was so thick that we only saw the sea dimly and
indefinitely as in twilight. But a pair of jerfalcons, who had their
eyrie in a neighbouring precipice, and had seen the unusual bustle,
suddenly changed the wonderful scene. The razor-bills, guillemots,
and puffins were not afraid of us; but on the appearance of their
well-known and irresistible enemies, the whole cloud threw themselves
with one accord, as at the command of a magician, into the sea, and
the outlook was clear and free. Innumerable black points, the heads of
the birds swimming in the sea, stood out distinctly from the water,
and broke up the blue-green colouring of the waves. Their number was
so great that from the top of the berg, which was over three hundred
feet high, we could not see where the swarm ended, could not discover
where the sea was clear from birds. In order to make a calculation, I
measured out a small square with my eye, and began to count the points
in it. There were more than a hundred. Then I endeavoured mentally to
place several similar squares together, and soon came to thousands
of points. But I might have imagined many thousands of such squares
together and yet not exhausted the space covered by birds. The millions
of which I had been told were really there. This picture of apparent
quiet only lasted for a few moments. The birds soon began to fly
upwards again, and as before, hundreds of thousands rose simultaneously
from the water to ascend the hill, as before a cloud formed round it,
and our senses were again bewildered. Unable to see, and deafened by
the indescribable noise about me, I threw myself on the ground, and
the birds streamed by on all sides. New ones crept constantly out of
their holes, while those we had previously startled now crept back
again; they settled all about me, looking with comical amazement at the
strange form among them, and approaching with mincing gait so close
to me that I attempted to seize them. The beauty and charm of life
showed themselves in every movement of these remarkable birds. With
astonishment I saw that even the best pictures of them are stiff and
cold, for I remarked in their quaint forms a mobility and liveliness
with which I had not credited them. They did not remain still a single
instant, their heads and necks at least were moved incessantly to
all sides, and their contours often showed most graceful lines. It
seemed as though the inoffensiveness with which I had given myself
up to observing them, had been rewarded by unlimited confidence on
their part. The thousands just about me were like domestic birds; the
millions paid me no more attention than if I had been one of themselves.

I spent eighteen hours on this bird-berg in order to study the life of
the auks.[4] When the midnight sun stood large and blood-red in the sky
and cast its rosy light on the sides of the hill there came the peace
which midnight brings even in the far North. The sea was deserted; all
the birds which had been fishing and diving in it had flown up to the
berg. There they sat wherever there was room to sit in long rows of
tens, of hundreds, of hundreds of thousands, forming dazzling white
lines as all, without exception, sat facing the sea. Their ‘arr’ and
‘err’, which had deafened our ears notwithstanding the weakness of
the individual voices, were silent now, and only the roar of the surf
breaking on the rocks far below resounded as before. Not till the sun
rose again did the old bewildering bustle begin anew, and as we at
length descended the hill by the way we had climbed it, we were once
more surrounded by a thick cloud of startled birds.

It is not because of their enormous numbers alone that the auks are so
fascinating; there is much that is attractive in their life and habits.
During the brooding time their social virtues reach an extraordinary
height. Till the beginning of that season they live entirely on the
open sea, defying the severest winter and the wildest storms. Even
in the long night of winter very few of them forsake their northern
home, but they range, in flocks of hundreds and thousands, from one
fishing-ground to another, finding all the open spaces among the ice
as unfailingly as they do other promising feeding-grounds in the open
sea. But when the sun reappears they are animated by one feeling--love,
by one longing--to reach as soon as possible the hill where their
own cradle stood. Then somewhere about Easter-time they all set out,
swimming more than flying, for the bird-berg. But among the auks there
are more males than females, and not every male is fortunate enough
to secure a wife. Among other birds such a disproportion gives rise
to ceaseless strife, yet among these auks peace is not disturbed. The
much-to-be-pitied beings whom, making use of a human analogy, we may
call bachelors, migrate to the berg as well as the fortunate pairs, who
coquette and caress by the way; they fly up with these to the heights
and accompany them on their hunting expeditions to the surrounding sea.
As soon as the weather permits, the pairs begin to get the old holes
in order; they clear them out, deepen them, enlarge their chambers,
and, if necessary, hollow out a new brooding-place. As soon as this
has been done the female lays, on the bare ground at the further end
of the hollowed-out brooding-chamber, a single very large, top-shaped,
brightly-spotted egg, and begins to brood alternately with the male.
The poor bachelors have a sad time of it now. They, too, would dearly
like to take parental cares upon themselves if they could only find
a mate who would share them. But all the females are appropriated,
and wooing is in vain. So they resolve to give practical proof of
their good-will, at least in so far that they force themselves on the
fortunate pair as friends of the family. In the hours about midnight,
when the female broods on the nest, they sit with the male as he keeps
watch before it, and, when the male relieves his mate that she may
fish in the sea, they mount guard in his stead. But when both parents
visit the sea at once the bachelors hasten to reap some reward for
their faithfulness. Without delay they thrust themselves into the
interior of the cavity, and sit for the time upon the forsaken egg.
The poor birds who are condemned to celibacy want at least to brood a
little! This unselfish devotion has one result for which men might envy
the auks--there are no orphans on these bird-bergs. Should the male
of a pair come to grief, his widow immediately consoles herself with
another mate, and in the rarer case of both parents losing their lives
at once the good-natured supernumeraries are quite ready to finish
hatching the egg and to rear the young one. The young ones differ
materially from those of the ducks and gulls. They are ‘altrices’, not
‘præcoces’ as the ornithologists say;[5] in plain language, they are
not ready for active life as soon as they are hatched. In a dress of
thick gray down the young auk slips from the egg in which it awakes
to life, but it must spend many weeks in the hole before it is ready
to attempt its first flight to the sea. This first flight is always a
hazardous undertaking, as is proved by the countless dead bodies on
the cliffs at the foot of the berg. The young bird, nervously using
its unpractised legs, hardly less timidly its newly-developed wings,
follows its parents as they lead the way down the hill towards some
place from which the leap into the sea may be attempted with as little
danger as possible. On a suitable ledge the parents often remain a
long time with their young one before they can induce it to take
a spring. Both father and mother persuade it coaxingly; the little
one, usually obedient like all young birds, pays no heed to their
commands. The father throws himself into the sea before the eyes of
his hesitating offspring; the inexperienced young one remains where he
was. More attempts, more coaxing, urgent pressure: at length he risks
the great leap and plunges like a falling stone deep into the sea;
then, unconsciously obeying his instincts, he works his way to the
surface, looks all around over the unending sea, and--is a sea-bird who
thenceforth shuns no danger.

Different again is the life and activity on the bergs chosen as
brooding-places by the kittiwakes. Such a hill is the promontory
Swärtholm, high up in the north between the Laxen and the Porsanger
fjord, not far from the North Cape. I knew well how these gulls appear
on their brooding-places. Faber, with his excellent knowledge of the
birds of the far North, has depicted it, as usual, in a few vivid words:

“They hide the sun when they fly, they cover the skerries when they
sit, they drown the thunder of the surf when they cry, they colour the
rocks white when they brood.” I believed the excellent Faber after I
had seen the eider-holms and auk-bergs, and yet I doubted, as every
naturalist must, and therefore I ardently desired to visit Swärtholm
for myself. An amiable Norseman with whom I became friendly, the pilot
of the mail steamer by which I travelled, readily agreed to row me
over to the breeding-place, and we approached the promontory late one
evening. At a distance of six or eight nautical miles we were overtaken
by flocks of from thirty to a hundred, sometimes even two hundred
kittiwakes flying to their nesting-place. The nearer we approached to
Swärtholm the more rapid was the succession of these swarms, and the
larger did they become. At last the promontory became visible, a rocky
wall about eight hundred yards long, pierced by innumerable holes,
rising almost perpendicularly from the sea to a height of from four
hundred and fifty to six hundred feet. It looked gray in the distance,
but with a telescope one could discern innumerable points and lines.
It looked as though a gigantic slate had been scratched all over with
all sorts of marks by a playful giant child, as though the whole rock
bore a wondrous decoration of chains, rings, and stars. From the dark
depths of large and small cavities there gleamed a brilliant white; the
shelving ledges stood out in more conspicuous brightness. The brooding
gulls on their nests formed the white pattern, and we realized the
truth of Faber’s words, “they cover the rocks when they sit”.

[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Razor-bills.]

Our boat, as it grated on the rocky shore, startled a number of the
gulls, and I saw a picture such as I had seen on many eider-holms
and gull-islands. A shot from my friend’s gun thundered against
the precipice. As a raging winter storm rushes through the air and
breaks up the snow-laden clouds till they fall in flakes, so now it
snowed living birds. One saw neither hill nor sky, nothing but an
indescribable confusion. A thick cloud darkened the whole horizon,
justifying the description “they hide the sun when they fly”. The north
wind blew violently and the icy sea surged wildly against the foot of
the cliffs, but more loudly still resounded the shrill cries of the
birds, so that the truth of the last part also of Faber’s description
was fully proved, “they drown the thunder of the surf when they cry”.
At length the cloud sank down upon the sea, the hitherto dim outlines
of Swärtholm became distinct again, and a new spectacle enchained our
gaze. On the precipices there seemed to sit quite as many birds as
before, and thousands were still flying up and down. A second shot
scared new flocks, a second time it snowed birds down upon the sea,
and still the hillsides were covered with hundreds of thousands.
But on the sea, as far as the eye could reach, lay gulls like light
foam-balls rocking up and down with the waves. How shall I describe the
magnificent spectacle? Shall I say that the sea had woven millions and
millions of bright pearls into her dark wave-robe? Or shall I compare
the gulls to stars; and the ocean to the dome of heaven? I know not;
but I know that I have seen nothing more gorgeous even on the sea.
And as if the charm were not already great enough, the midnight sun,
erewhile clouded over, suddenly shed its rosy light over promontory and
sea and birds, lighting up every wave-crest as if a golden, wide-meshed
net had been thrown over the water, and making the rose-tinted
dazzling gulls appear more brilliant than before. We stood speechless
at the sight! And we, with all our company, even the sailors of our
boat, remained motionless for a long, long time, deeply moved by the
wonderful picture before us, till at last one of us broke the silence,
and, rather to recover himself through the sound of his own voice than
to express his inner feeling, softly uttered the poet’s words:

  Over the bergs the sun blood-red
    Shone through the night;
  Nor day nor dark was over head,
    But weird twilight.

THE TUNDRA AND ITS ANIMAL LIFE.

Around the North Pole lies a broad belt of inhospitable land, a desert
which owes its special character rather to the water than to the sun.
Towards the Pole this desert gradually loses itself in fields of ice,
towards the south in dwarfed woods, becoming itself a field of snow
and ice when the long winter sets in, while stunted trees attempt the
struggle for existence only in the deepest valleys or on the sunniest
slopes. This region is the Tundra.[6]

It is a monotonous picture which I attempt to sketch when I seek to
describe the tundra, a picture gray on gray, yet not devoid of all
beauty; it is a desert with which we have to do, but a desert in which
life, though for many months slumbering and apparently banished, stirs
periodically in wondrous fulness.

Our language possesses no synonym for the word tundra, because our
Fatherland possesses no such tract of country. For the tundra is
neither heath nor moor, neither marsh nor fen, neither highlands nor
sand-dunes, neither moss nor morass, though in many places it may
resemble one or other of these. “Moss-steppes” someone has attempted
to name it, but the expression is only satisfactory to those who have
grasped the idea of steppe in its widest sense. In my opinion the
tundra most resembles one of those moors which we find--and avoid--on
the broad saddles of our lofty mountains; but it differs in many and
important respects even from these boggy plateaus; indeed its character
is in every respect unique. The region is sometimes divided into low
and high tundra, though the differences between the land under three
hundred feet above sea-level and that above this line are in the tundra
more apparent than real.

The low tundra is bounded by flat, wavy outlines; its valleys are
shallow troughs, and even the heights, which, from a distance, look
like hills or even mountains, turn out to be only flat hillocks when
one approaches their base. Flatness, uniformity, expressionlessness
prevail, yet that there is a certain variety in the landscape, a
diversity in some of its individual features, cannot be disputed. As
one wanders through the tundra for days at a time, one’s attention
is often arrested by dainty, even charming little pictures, but such
pictures rarely stamp themselves on the memory, since on closer
examination they prove, in all important details, in setting and
surroundings, in contour and colour, like too many other scenes to
make a distinct impression. Notwithstanding this monotony, the general
aspect of the tundra has little unity, still less grandeur, and on this
account one does not become enthusiastic about the region, does not
reach to the heights of emotion which other landscapes awaken, perhaps
does not even attain to full enjoyment of the real beauties which, it
must be admitted, even this desert possesses.

The tundra receives its greatest beauty from the sky, its greatest
charm from the water. The sky is seldom quite clear and bright, though
even here the sun, shining uninterruptedly for months together, can
beat down hot and oppressive on the flat hills and damp valleys. The
blue sky is usually seen only in isolated places through light, white,
loose-layered clouds; these are often massed together into cloud-banks
which form on all sides of the apparently immeasurable horizon,
continually changing, shifting, assuming new forms, appearing and
vanishing again, so ravishing the eye with their changeful brilliance
that one almost forgets the landscape underneath. When a thunder-storm
threatens after a hot day the sky darkens here and there to the deepest
gray-blue, the vapour-laden clouds sink beneath the lighter ones,
and the sun shines through, clear and brilliant; then the dreary,
monotonous landscape is magically beautified. For light and shade
now diversify the hill-tops and valleys, and the wearisome monotony
of their colour gains variety and life. And when, in the middle of a
midsummer night, the sun stands large and blood-red in the heavens,
when all the clouds are flushed with purple from beneath, when those
hill-tops which hide the luminary bear a far-reaching flaming crown of
rays, when a delicate rosy haze lies over the brown-green landscape,
when, in a word, the indescribable magic of the midnight sun casts its
spell over the soul: then this wilderness is transformed into enchanted
fields, and a blissful awe fills the heart.

[Illustration: Fig. 5.--The High Tundra in Northern Siberia.]

But variety and life are also given by the jewels of the tundra--its
innumerable lakes. Distributed singly or in groups, lying beside
or rising above each other, stretching out into water-basins miles in
breadth, or shrinking into little pools, they occupy the centre of
every hollow, beautify every valley, almost every glen, sparkle in
the all-enlivening sunshine, and gray and colourless though they may
be, assume, if seen from the top of a hill, the deep blue of mountain
lakes. And when the sunlight flashes and twinkles on their mirroring
waves, or when they, too, are touched by the rosy glow of midnight,
they stand out from the surrounding gloom like living lights, on which
the eye delights to linger.

Much grander, though still gloomy and monotonous, is the spectacle
presented by the high tundra. Here the mountains--for such they
are--have all the charms of height. They almost always rise
precipitously, and the chains they form have much-broken lines, and in
all suitable places the snowy sheets which cover them become glaciers.
Tundra in the strict sense is only to be found where the water does
not find rapid outlet; the whole remaining country seems so different
from the low grounds that only the essentially similar vegetation
proclaims it tundra. The boulders, which in the low grounds are
turfed over with thick layers of dead plant remains, are here almost
everywhere exposed; endless heaps of gigantic blocks cover the slopes
and fill the valleys; boulders form the substratum of wide, almost flat
surfaces on which the traveller treads hesitatingly, as he ponders
over the difficult riddle regarding the forces which have distributed
the blocks over these vast surfaces with almost unvarying regularity.
But everywhere between them the water trickles and glides, ripples and
swells, rushes and roars, rages and thunders down to the low ground.
From the slopes it flows in trickling threads, converging runlets, and
murmuring brooklets; from the crevices of the glaciers it breaks forth
in milky torrents; it enters the water-basins in turbid rivulets; it
escapes from the purifying lakes in crystalline streams, and whirling
and foaming, hissing and raging, it hurries onwards down the valleys,
forming alternate waterfalls and whirlpools, till it reaches the low
tundra, a river, or the sea. But the sun, as often as it breaks through
the clouds, floods this unique mountain region also with its magic
colours, defines every hill and valley, illumines every snowfield,
makes every glacier and ravine conspicuous and telling, gives effect to
every peak, ridge and cliff, shows every lake as a clear and smiling
mountain eye, spreads, morning and evening, the blue haze of distance
like a delicate veil over the background of the picture, and, at
midnight, floods the whole with its deepest rays, so that it is bathed
in rosy light. Surely even the tundra is not without its charms.

In some places, though very rarely, the vegetation gives a certain form
and beauty to the scenery. Pines and firs, if not altogether confined
to the south, are only to be found in the most sheltered valleys. The
few firs which are to be seen look as if they had been seized by a
giant hand and twisted like a screw, and they do not thrive in the
higher districts. The birches penetrate farther, but even they are
stunted and bent like grizzled dwarfs. The larches alone here and
there hold the field, and grow to be really trees, but they cannot be
described as characteristic of the tundra. The most characteristic
plant is certainly the dwarf-birch. Only under exceptionally favourable
circumstances attaining to a yard in height, it predominates over by
far the greater part of the tundra so absolutely that all other bushes
and shrubs seem only to have sprung up between the birches. It spreads
over all tracts where it can take root, from the shore of the sea or
river to the tops of the mountains, a more or less thick covering so
equal in height that great stretches look as if they had been shorn
along the top; it recedes only where the ground is so soaked with water
that it forms swamp or morass; it is stunted only where the heights are
covered with infertile quartz or with stiff clay, which hardens readily
in the sun; but it strives for mastery with the bog-moss on all the
low grounds and with the reindeer-moss on every height. Areas of many
square miles are so thickly clothed--one might almost say felted--that
only the indestructible bog-moss ventures to assert its claim to
the soil beside, or rather under the birches. In other less moist
places we find dwarf-birches, sweet-willow, and marsh-andromeda mixed
together. In the same way various berry-bearing bushes are often mixed,
especially cowberries, crowberries, cranberries, and whortleberries.

If the ground lies below the level of the surrounding plains, and
is therefore very moist, the bog-moss gains the day, and, gradually
crowding out the dwarf-birch, forms great swelling cushions. As the
root-parts rapidly die away into peat, these cushions become higher
and more extensive until the water impedes any further advance, or
else they break up into dome-like hillocks. If the basin be very flat,
the accumulated water rarely forms a lake or pond, scarcely even a
pool, but soaks through the soil to an indefinite depth, and so forms
a morass whose thin but tough covering of interlacing sedge-roots can
only be trodden in safety by the broad-hoofed reindeer; and even his
steps, and the deeply-sinking runners of the sledge, make it yield and
tremble like jelly.

When the depression becomes a short confined trough, without outlet,
into which a streamlet flows, however slowly, the morass becomes a
bog, or lower down, a swamp. In the first of these, reeds, in the
second downy willows (sallows), a second characteristic plant of the
tundra, attain to luxuriant growth. Though only in very favourable
circumstances becoming as tall as a man, these plants form thickets
which may be literally impenetrable. Their branches and roots interlace
to an even greater extent than do those of the dwarf-firs on the
mountains, forming an inextricable maze which can best be compared
to a felt compacted out of all the different parts of the willow. It
withstands the strongest arm, when one tries to clear a path through
it, and it offers so much obstruction to the foot that the most
persistent explorer soon gives up the attempt to pierce it, and turns
aside, or retraces his steps. This he does the more readily as the
substratum is in most cases morass or an almost continuous series of
marshy, slimy pools whose fathomableness one is unwilling even to try.

As the traveller journeys through the tundra, he recognizes that the
whole region presents to the eye the individual features already
described, in regular alternation and monotonous repetition. Only where
a large river of considerable volume flows through the low tundra is
there any real change. Such a river deposits on its banks the masses
of sand it has carried down; and the wind, which blows constantly and
usually violently, piles these gradually up into dunes along the
banks; thus a soil foreign to the tundra is formed. On these sand-hills
the larch grows, even in the tundra of Siberia, to a stately tree,
and becomes, in association with willows and dwarf alder bushes, an
ornament to the landscape. In the neighbourhood of small lakes the
trees may even be grouped together, and, with the shrubs already named,
form a natural park which would not escape observation even in a much
richer and more fertile district, and is here so very remarkable that
it leaves a lasting impression.

[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Peregrine Falcons and Lemmings.]

When the larch has taken root in the sand-hills, there grow up under
its sheltering branches other tall-stemmed plants such as sharp-leaved
willows, mountain ash, black alder, and woodbine bushes, and there
spring from the sand many flowers which one thought to have left far
behind in the south. The surprised southerner is cheered by the red
glory of the willow-herb; the charming wild rose clings close to the
motherly earth, decorating it with its slender stems and its flowers;
the bright forget-me-not looks up with home-like greeting; here
hellebore and chives, valerian and thyme, carnations and blue-bells,
bird-vetch and alpine vetch, ranunculus and immortelles, lady’s-smock,
Jacob’s-ladder, cinquefoil, love-lies-bleeding, and others find a home
in the desert. In such places more plants grow than one had expected,
but the traveller is certainly modest in his expectations when he has
seen the same poverty all around for days and weeks together, always
dwarf-birches and sallows, marsh-andromeda and sedge, reindeer-moss
and bog-moss; has refreshed himself with the stunted crowberries and
cranberries half-hidden in the moss, half-creeping on the ground,
and has been obliged to take the cloudberries which decorate the
moss-cushion as flowers; when he has tramped over them and among
them for days together always hoping for a change, and always being
disappointed. Every familiar plant from the south reminds him of
happier regions; he greets it as a dear friend whose value is only
realized when he has begun to fear losing him.[7]

It seems strange that the plants above-named and many others should
spring only from the dry sand of the dunes, but the apparent riddle
is solved when we know that it is only the sand thus piled up, that
becomes sufficiently warmed in the months of uninterrupted sunshine
for these plants to flourish. Nowhere else throughout the tundra is
this the case. Moor and bog, morass and swamp, even the lakes with
water several yards in depth only form a thin summer covering over
the eternal winter which reigns in the tundra, with destructive as
well as with preserving power. Wherever one tries to penetrate to any
depth in the soil one comes--in most cases scarcely a yard from the
surface--upon ice, or at least on frozen soil, and it is said that one
must dig about a hundred yards before breaking through the ice-crust
of the earth. It is this crust which prevents the higher plants from
vigorous growth, and allows only such to live as are content with
the dry layer of soil which thaws in summer. It is only by digging
that one can know the tundra for what it is: an immeasurable and
unchangeable ice-vault which has endured, and will continue to endure,
for hundreds of thousands of years. That it has thus endured is proved
indisputably by the remains of prehistoric animals embedded in it, and
thus preserved for us. In 1807 Adams dug from the ice of the tundras
the giant mammoth, with whose flesh the dogs of the Yakuts sated their
hunger, although it must have died many thousands of years before,
for the race became extinct in the incalculably distant past. The icy
tundra had faithfully preserved the carcase of this primitive elephant
all through these hundreds of thousands of years.[8]

Many similar animals, and others of a more modern time, are embedded
in the ice, though it is not to be supposed that the tundra was ever
able to sustain a much richer fauna than it has now. Bison and musk-ox
traversed it long after the time of the mammoth; giant-elk and moose
belonged to it once. Now its animal life is as poor and monotonous as
its vegetation--as itself. This holds true, however, only with regard
to species, not to individuals, for the tundra is, at least in summer,
the home of numerous animals.

The year is well advanced before the tundra begins to be visibly
peopled. Of the species which never leave it one sees very little in
winter. The fish which ascend its rivers from the sea are concealed by
the ice; the mammals and birds which winter in it are hidden by the
snow, under which they live, or whose colour they wear. Not until the
snow begins to melt on the southern slopes does the animal life begin
to stir. Hesitatingly the summer visitors make their appearance. The
wolf follows the wild reindeer, the army of summer birds follows the
drifting ice blocks on the streams. Some of the birds remain still
undecided in the regions to the South, behave as if they would breed
there, then suddenly disappear from their resting-place by the way, fly
hastily to the tundra, begin to build directly on their arrival, lay
their eggs, and brood eagerly, as though they wished to make up for
the time gained by their relatives in the South. Their summer life is
compressed into few weeks. They arrive already united, paired for life,
or at least for the summer; their hearts stirred by all-powerful love,
they proceed, singing and rejoicing, to build a nest; unceasingly they
give themselves up to their parental duties, brood, rear, and educate
their young, moult, and migrate abroad again.

[Illustration: Fig. 7.--The White or Arctic Fox (_Canis lagopus_).]

The number of species which may be looked upon as native to the tundra
is small indeed, yet it is much greater than that of those which may
be regarded as characteristic of the region. As the first of these, I
should like to place the Arctic fox. He ranges over the whole extent
of the tundra, and is sure of maintenance and food in the south at
least, where he occurs along with our fox and other allied species.
Like some other creatures he wears the colours of his home, in summer
a rock-coloured dress, in winter a snow-white robe, for the hairs
of his thick fur coat are at first stone-gray or grayish-blue, and
become snow-white in winter.[9] He struggles through life with ups
and downs like other foxes, but his whole character and conduct are
quite different from those of our reynard and his near relatives. One