THE ARCTIC WORLD.
As the reader knows, the Poles are the two extremities of the axis round which the Earth revolves. It is to the North Pole, and the regions surrounding it, that the following pages will be devoted.
The inhabitants of Western Europe, and more particularly those of the British Isles, have a peculiar interest in the North Polar Regions. Deriving their wealth and importance from their commercial enterprise, and that commercial enterprise leading their ships and seamen into the furthest seas, they have necessarily a vital concern in the discovery of the shortest possible route from that side of the Earth which they inhabit to the other, or eastern side; and this, more particularly, because the East is rich in natural productions which are of high value to the peoples of the West.
Now a glance at the map will show the reader that the traders of Western Europe—the British, the French, the Dutch, the Scandinavians—are situated on the northern shores of the Atlantic Ocean, and that, to reach the Pacific Ocean or the Indian, only two routes are at present open. For instance, they may cross the Atlantic to the American coast, and, keeping southward, strike through Magellan’s stormy Strait or round the bleak promontory of Cape Horn into the Pacific, and then, over some thousands of miles of water, proceed to Australia or Hindustan or China; or they may keep along the African coast to the Cape of Good Hope, its southernmost point, and so stretch across the warm Tropical seas to India and the Eastern Archipelago. A third, an artificial route, has indeed of late years been opened up; and ships, entering the Mediterranean, may pass through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea. But this last-named route is unsuitable for sailing-ships, and all three routes are laborious and slow. How greatly the distance would be shortened were it possible to navigate the Northern Seas, and, keeping along the north coast of the American continent, to descend Behring’s Strait into the Pacific! In other words, were that North-West Passage practicable, which, for three centuries, our geographers and explorers so assiduously and courageously toiled to discover! But a still shorter route would be opened up, if we could follow a line drawn from the British Islands straight across the North Pole to Behring’s Sea and the Aleutian Archipelago. This line would not exceed 5000 miles in length, and would bring Japan, China, and India within a very short voyage from Great Britain. We should be able to reach Japan in three or four weeks, to the obvious advantage of our extensive commerce.
Hitherto, however, all efforts to follow out this route, and to throw open this great ocean-highway between Europe and Asia, have failed. Man has been baffled by Nature; by ice, and frost, and winds, and climatic influences. With heroic perseverance he has sought to gain the open sea which, it is believed, surrounds the Pole, but a barrier of ice has invariably arrested his progress. His researches have carried him within about 500 miles of the coveted point; but he is as yet unable to move a step beyond this furthest limit of geographical discovery. Immediately around the North Pole, within a radius of eight to ten degrees or more, according to locality, still lies an Unknown Region, on the threshold of which Science stands expectant, eagerly looking forward to the day when human skill and human courage shall penetrate its solitudes and reveal its secrets.
This Unknown Region comprises an area of 2,500,000 square miles; an immense portion of the terrestrial surface to be shut out from the knowledge of Civilized Man. Its further exploration, if practicable, cannot but be rich in valuable results. Not only would it furnish the shortest route from the West to the East, from progressive Europe to conservative Asia, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but it could not fail to add in a very important degree to our stores of scientific information. Sir Edward Sabine is surely right when he says, that it is the greatest geographical achievement which can be attempted, and that it will be the crowning enterprise of those Arctic researches in which England has hitherto had the pre-eminence.
We may briefly indicate to the reader some of the advantages which might be expected from exploration in the Unknown Region. It would unquestionably advance the science of hydrography, and lead to a solution of some of the more difficult problems connected with the Equatorial and Polar ocean-currents, those great movements of the waters of which, as yet, we know so little.
A series of pendulum observations, it is said, at and near the North Pole, would be of essential service to the science of geology. We are unable, at present, for want of sufficient data, to form a mathematical theory of the physical condition of the Earth, and to ascertain its exact configuration. No pendulum observations have been taken nearer than 600 or 620 miles to the North Pole.
Again: what precious information respecting the strange and wonderful phenomena of magnetism and atmospheric electricity would certainly be acquired! How much we have yet to learn in reference to the Aurora, which can be learned only in high latitudes, and at or near the point which apparently represents a magnetic focus or centre!
It has also been pointed out by Mr. Markham that the climate of Europe is largely affected by the atmospheric conditions of the Polar area, in which the development of extremely low temperatures necessarily leads to corresponding extreme changes of pressure, and other atmospheric disturbances, whose influence extends far into the Temperate Zone. For the satisfactory appreciation of these phenomena, says Mr. Markham, a precise knowledge is required of the distribution of land and water within the Polar Region; and any addition to our knowledge of its unknown area, accompanied by suitable observations of its meteorology, cannot fail to afford improved means of understanding the meteorology of our own country, and of the Earth generally.
There can be no doubt, too, that geology would profit, if we could push our researches nearer to the Pole, and force our way through the great barrier of the Polar ice. It is highly desirable, too, that we should know more of that interesting class of animals, the Mollusca, both terrestrial and aquatic, fresh-water and salt-water. Again: what a wide field of inquiry is opened up by the Polar glaciers; their extent, their elevation, their range, and the effects produced by the slow but continuous motion of those huge ice-rivers over the surface of the country. And the botanist has a right to calculate upon the discovery of many precious forms of vegetable life in the Unknown Region. The Arctic flora is by no means abundant, but it is peculiarly interesting. In Greenland, besides numerous mosses, lichens, algæ, and the like, flourish three hundred kinds of flowering plants, all of which are natives of the Scandinavian peninsula; and Dr. Joseph Hooker remarks that they exhibit scarcely any admixture of American types, though these are found on the opposite coast of Labrador. It would seem probable that in the warm period which preceded the Glacial Age, the Scandinavian flora spread over the entire area of the Polar Regions; but that during the Age of Ice it was gradually driven within its present limits, only the hardier types surviving the blight of the long lingering winter.
And what would be the gain to the zoologist? Why, it is a well-known fact that life abounds in the Arctic waters, and especially those minute organisms which play so important a part in the formation of sedimentary deposits, and help to build up the terrestrial crust. We have much to learn, moreover, of the habits and habitats of the fish, the echinoderms, the molluscs, the corals, the sponges of the extreme Northern Seas.
There are questions connected with the migrations of birds which can be elucidated only by an exploration of the Unknown Region. Multitudes which annually visit our shores in the winter and spring, return in summer to the far North. This is their regular custom, and obviously would not have become a custom unless it had been found beneficial. Therefore we may assume that in the zone they frequent they find some water which is not always frozen; some land on which they can rest their weary feet; and an adequate supply of nourishing food.
From Professor Newton we adopt, in connection with this consideration, a brief account of the movements of one class of migratory birds,—the Knots.[1]
The knot, or sandpiper, is something half-way between a snipe and a plover. It is a very active and graceful bird, with rather long legs, moderately long wings, and a very short tail. It swims admirably, but is not often seen in the water; preferring to assemble with its fellows on the sandy sea-shores, where it gropes in the sand for food, or fishes in the rock-pools and shallow waters for the small crustaceans. It is known both as the red and the ash-coloured sandpiper, because it changes the colour of its plumage according to the season of the year; a bright red in summer, a sober ashen-gray in winter. Now, in the spring the knot seeks our island in immense flocks, and after remaining on the coasts for about a fortnight, can be traced proceeding gradually northwards, until it finally takes leave of us. It has been noticed in Iceland and Greenland, but not to stay; the summer there would be too rigorous for its liking, and it goes further and further north. Whither? Where does it build its nest, and hatch its young? We lose all trace of it for some weeks: what becomes of it?
Towards the end of summer back it comes to us in larger flocks than before, and both old birds and young birds remain upon our coasts until November, or, in mild seasons, even later. Then it wings its flight to the south, and luxuriates in blue skies and balmy airs until the following spring, when it resumes the order of its migrations.
Commenting upon these facts, Professor Newton infers that the lands visited by the knot in the middle of summer are less sterile than Iceland or Greenland; for certainly it would not pass over these countries, which are known to be the breeding-places for swarms of water-birds, to resort to regions not so well provided with supplies of food. The food, however, chiefly depends on the climate. Wherefore we conclude that beyond the northern tracts already explored lies a region enjoying in summer a climate more genial than they possess.
Do any races of men with which we are now unacquainted inhabit the Unknown Region? Mr. Markham observes that although scarcely one-half of the Arctic world has been explored, yet numerous traces of former inhabitants have been found in wastes which are at present abandoned to the silence and solitude. Man would seem to migrate as well as the inferior animals, and it is possible that tribes may be dwelling in the mysterious inner zone between the Pole and the known Polar countries.
The extreme points reached by our explorers on the ice-bound Greenland coast are in about 82° on the west, and 76° on the east side; these two points lying about six hundred miles apart. As man has dwelt at both these points, and as they are separated from the settlements further south by a dreary, desolate, uninhabitable interval, it is not an extravagant conjecture that the unknown land to the north has been or is inhabited. In 1818 a small tribe was discovered on the bleak Greenland coast between 76° and 79° N.; their southward range being bounded by the glaciers of Melville Bay, and their northward by the colossal mass of the Humboldt Glacier, while inland their way is barred by the Sernik-sook, a great glacier of the interior. These so-called Arctic Highlanders number about one hundred and forty souls, and their existence “depends on open pools and lanes of water throughout the winter, which attract animal life.” Wherever such conditions as these are found, man may be found.
We know that there are or have been inhabitants north of the Humboldt Glacier, on the very threshold of the Unknown Region; for Dr. Kane’s expedition discovered the runner of a sledge made of bone lying on the beach immediately to the north of it. The Arctic Highlanders, moreover, cherish a tradition that herds of musk-oxen frequent an island situated far away to the north in an iceless sea. Traces of these animals were found by Captain Hall’s expedition, in 1871–72, as far north as 81° 30′; and similar indications have been noted on the eastern side of Greenland. In 1823, Captain Clavering found twelve natives at Cape Borlase Warren, in lat. 79° N.; but when Captain Koldewey, of the German expedition, wintered in the same neighbourhood, in 1869, they had disappeared, though there were traces of their occupancy, and ample means of subsistence. Yet they cannot have gone southward, owing to insuperable natural obstacles; they must have moved towards the North Pole.
We have thus indicated some of the results which may be anticipated from further researches in the Unknown Region. It is not to be forgotten, however, that “the unexpected always happens,” and it is impossible to calculate definitely the consequences which may ensue from a more extensive investigation. “Columbus,” it has been justly said, “found very few to sympathize with him, or perceive the utility of the effort on his part to go out into the unknown waste of waters beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, in search of a new country. Who can, at this time, estimate the advantages which have followed upon that adventure? If now it should be possible to reach the Pole, and to make accurate observations at that point, from the relation which the Earth bears to the sun and to the whole stellar universe, the most useful results are very likely to follow, in a more thorough knowledge of our globe.”
The reader has now before him the particulars which will enable him to form an idea of the extent and character of the undiscovered region of the Pole. Roughly speaking, it is bounded by the 80th parallel of latitude on the European side, except at a few points where our gallant explorers have succeeded in crossing the threshold; on the Asiatic side it descends as low as 75°; and to the west of Behring Strait as low as 72°. Thus, it varies from 500 or 600 to 1400 or 1500 miles across. Below these parallels, and bounded by the Arctic Circle, or, in some places, by the 60th parallel, extends a vast belt of land and water which is generally known as the Arctic or Circumpolar Regions. These have been more or less thoroughly explored; and it is to a description of their principal features, their forms of animal and vegetable life, and their natural phenomena, that we propose to devote the present volume.
A DESERT OF ICE IN THE ARCTIC REGION.
It is important to remember that the northern shores of Europe, Asia, and America are skirted by the parallel of 70°, and that the belt between the 70th and 80th parallels, having been partially explored by the seamen and travellers of various nations, intervenes as a kind of neutral ground between the known and the unknown. We may, indeed, formulate our statement thus; from the Pole to the 80th degree stretches the unknown; from the 80th to the 70th, the partially known; while, south of the 70th, we traverse the lands and seas which human enterprise has completely conquered.
The Circumpolar Zone includes the northernmost portions of the three great continents, Europe, Asia, and America; and by sea it has three approaches or gateways: one, through the Northern Ocean, between Norway and Greenland; another, through Davis Strait,—both these being from the Atlantic; and a third, through Behring Strait,—the entrance from the Pacific.
It will be seen that the Circumpolar Regions, as they are now understood, and as we shall describe them in the following pages, extend to the south of that imaginary line drawn by geographers round the North Pole, at a distance from it equal to the obliquity of the ecliptic, or 23° 30’. Within this circle, however, there is a period of the year when the sun does not set; while there is another when he is never seen, when a settled gloom spreads over the face of nature,—this period being longer or shorter at any given point according as that point is nearer to or further from the Pole.
But as animal and vegetable life are largely affected by climate, it may be justly said that wherever an Arctic climate prevails there we shall find an Arctic or Polar region; and, hence, many countries below even the 60th parallel, such as Kamtschatka, Labrador, and South Greenland, fall within the Circumpolar boundary.
The waters surrounding the North Pole bear the general designation of the Arctic Ocean. But here again it is almost impossible to particularize any uniform limit southward. It joins the Pacific at Behring Strait in about lat. 66° N., and consequently in this quarter extends fully half a degree beyond the Arctic Circle. At Scoresby Sound, as at North Cape, where it meets the Atlantic, it is intersected by the parallel of 71°, and consequently falls short of the Arctic Circle by about 4° 30’.
In the Old World, the Polar Ocean, if we include its gulfs, extends, in the White Sea, fully two degrees beyond the Arctic Circle; while at Cape Severo, the northernmost point of Asia, in lat. 78° 25’ N., it is 11° 55’ distance from it. Finally, in the New World it is everywhere confined within the Circle; as much as 5° at Point Barrow, about 7° 30’ at Barrow Strait, and about 3° at the Hecla and Fury Strait.
We may add that, so far as temperature is concerned, the great gulfs known, in memory of their discoverers, as Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, and Hudson Bay, are portions of the Arctic Ocean.
Of the more southerly area of this great ocean, the only section which has been adequately explored to a distance from the continent, and in the direction of the Pole, is that which washes the north-east of America. Here we meet, under the collective name of the Polar Archipelago, with the following islands:—Banks Land, Wollaston Land, Prince Albert Land, Victoria Land, Prince Patrick Island, Princess Royal Islands, Melville Island, Cornwallis Island, North Devon, Beechey Island, Grinnell Land, and North Lincoln. Further to the east lie Spitzbergen, Jan Mayen Island, Novaia Zemlaia, New Siberia, and the Liakhov Islands. The chief straits and inlets are Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, Smith Sound, Regent Inlet, Hecla and Fury Strait, Wellington Channel, and Cumberland Sound; while further westward are Belcher Channel, Melville Sound, M’Clintock Channel, Banks Strait, and Prince of Wales Strait.
The Arctic Lands comprehend two well-defined sections, or zones; that of the forests, and the treeless wastes.
To the latter belong the islands within the Arctic Circle, and also a considerable tract of the northern continents, forming the “barrens” of North America, and the “tundras” and “steppes” of European Russia and Siberia.
The treeless character of this vast area of wilderness is owing to the bleak sea-winds which drive, without let or hindrance, across the islands and level shores of the Polar Ocean, compelling even the most vigorous plant to bend before them and creep along the ground.
Drearier scenes are nowhere presented than these stony tundras, or their boundless swamps. Almost the only vegetation are a few gray lichens, a few dull blackish-looking mosses; the stunted flowers or crawling grasses that here and there occur do not relieve the uniform desolation,—they serve simply to enhance its gloomy character. In summer, indeed, the tundras are full of life; for the spawning instinct of the salmon and the sturgeon impels them to enter their rivers and seek the quiet recesses of their mysterious lakes. The reindeer assemble in numerous herds to feed on the herbage warmed into temporary vitality by the upward-slanting sun; the whirr of countless wings announces the coming of the migratory birds to breed, and feed their young, on the river-banks and the level shores; and in their trail arrive the eagle and the hawk, intent on prey.
But with the first days of September a change passes over the scene. Animal life hastens to the more genial south; the birds abandon the frozen wastes; the reindeer retires to the shelter of the forests; the fish desert the ice-bound streams; and a terrible silence reigns in the desolate wilderness, broken only by the harsh yelp of a fox or the melancholy hooting of a snow-owl. For some eight or nine months a deep shroud or pall of snow lies on the whitened plains. No cheerful sunbeams irradiate it with a rosy glow; the sky is dull and dark; and it seems as if Nature had been abandoned to eternal Night.
But blank and dreary as the limitless expanse of snow appears, it is the security of man in these far northern regions. It affords the necessary protection to the scanty vegetable life against the rigour of the long winter season. In Rensselaer Bay, Dr. Kane found, when the surface temperature had sunk to -30°, a temperature at two feet deep of -8°, at four feet deep of +2°, and at eight feet deep of +26°, or no more than 6° below freezing-point. Hence, underneath their thick frozen pall, the Arctic grasses and lichens maintain a struggling existence, and are able to maintain it until thoroughly resuscitated by the summer sun. It is owing to this wise and beneficent provision that, in the highest latitudes, the explorer discovers some feeble forms of vegetation. Thus, as Hartwig reminds us, Morton gathered a crucifer at Cape Constitution, in lat. 80° 45’ N.; and Dr. Kane, on the banks of the Minturn River, in lat. 78° 52’, met with a flower-growth which, though fully Arctic in its type, was gaily and richly coloured—including the purple lychnis, the starry chickweed, and the hesperis, among the festuca and other tufted grasses.
In the tundras, the most abundant vegetable forms, next to the lichens and mosses, are the grasses, the crucifers, the saxifrages, the caryophyles, and the compositæ. These grow fewer and fewer as we move towards the north, but the number of individual plants does not decrease. Where the soil is fairly dry, we shall find an extensive growth of lichens; in moister grounds, these are intermingled with the well-known Iceland moss. Lichens are everywhere, except in the sparse tracts of meadow-land lying at the foot of sheltering hills, or in those alluvial inundated hollows which are thickly planted with “whispering reeds” and dwarf willows.
It is not easy to trace exactly the boundary between the tundras and the forest zone. The former descend to the south, and the latter advances to the north, according to the climatic influences which prevail; following the isothermic lines of uniform temperature, and not the mathematical limits of the geographical parallels of latitude. Where the ground undulates, and hilly ridges break the fury of the icy blasts, the forests encroach on the stony treeless region; but the desolate plains strike into the wooded zone in places where the ocean-winds range with unchecked sway.
THE SWAMPS OF THE OBI.
The southernmost limit of the “barrens” is found in Labrador, where they descend to lat. 57°; nor is this to be wondered at, when we remember the peculiar position of that gloomy peninsula, with icy seas washing it on three sides, and cold winds sweeping over it from the north. On the opposite coasts of Hudson Bay they do not strike lower than 60°; and they continue to rise as we proceed westward, until in the Mackenzie Valley we find the tall forest growth reaching as far north as 68° or even 70°. Thence they recede gradually, until, on the bleak shore of Behring Sea, they do not rise higher than 65°. Crossing into the eastern continent, we find them beginning, in the land of the Tuski (or Tchuktche), in 63°, and from thence encroaching gradually upon the tundras until, at the Lena, they reach as high as 71°. From the Lena to the Obi the tundras gain upon the forests, and in the Obi Valley descend below the Arctic Circle; but from the Obi to the Scandinavian coast the forests gain upon the tundras, terminating, after many variations, in lat. 70°.
IN THE FOREST ZONE OF THE NORTH.
The result to which this rapid survey brings us is, that the “tundras” or “barrens” of Europe, Asia, and America occupy an area larger than the whole of Europe. The Siberian wilderness is more extensive than the African Sahara or the South American Pampas. But of still vaster area are the Arctic forest regions, which stretch in an “almost continuous belt” through three quarters of the world, with a breadth of from 15° to 20°—that is, of 1000 to 1400 miles. And it is a peculiarity of these Circumpolar woods, that they are almost wholly composed of conifers, and that frequently a wide space of ground is covered for leagues upon leagues with a single kind of fir or pine.
The American species, however, differ from the Asiatic or European. While in the Hudson Bay territories grow the white and black spruce,[2] the Canadian larch,[3] and the gray pine[4]; in Scandinavia and Siberia, the Siberian fir and larch,[5] the Picea olovata, and the Pinus umbra flourish. But both in the Old World and the New the birch advances beyond the fir and pine, and on the banks of the rivers and the shores of the lakes dwarf willows form immense and almost impenetrable thickets. The Arctic forests also include various kinds of ash, elder, and the service tree; and though orchard trees are wholly wanting, both man and beast find a great boon in the bilberries, cranberries, bog-berries, and the like, which grow plentifully in many localities.
The area of the Arctic flora comprises Greenland, in the western hemisphere, and extends considerably to the south of the Arctic Circle, especially on the coasts, where it reaches the parallel of 60° N. lat., and even overpasses it.
In Greenland the vegetation is more truly of an Arctic character than even in Iceland. The valleys are covered with marsh-plants and dingy mosses; the gloomy rocks are encrusted with lichens; while the grasses on the meadow-lands that border the fiords and inlets are nearly four times less varied than those of Iceland.
The flora of Iceland is approximative to that of Great Britain; yet only one in every four of British plants is included in it. The total number of species may be computed at eight hundred and seventy, of which more than half blossom; this proportion is greater than prevails in Scotland, but then only thirty-two are of woody texture. They are scattered about in groups according as they prefer a marshy, volcanic, dry, or marine soil. Many bloom in the immediate vicinity of the hot springs; some not far from the brink of the basin of the Great Geyser, where every other plant is petrified; and several species of confervæ flourish in a spring the waters of which are hot enough, it is said, to boil an egg.
From the nature of the Arctic forests, the reader will be prepared to learn that they are not inhabited, like those of the Tropics, by swarms of animals; or made musical by the songs of birds, like our European woods. Even the echoes are silent, except when the hoarse wind bears to them the peculiar cry of the reindeer, the howl of the wolf, or the sharp scream of some bird of prey. Insect life, however, is active and abundant; and our Arctic travellers have suffered greatly from the legions of gnats which haunt their swampy recesses.
Passing from the forest region into the treeless wastes, we may glance once again at their strikingly impressive features. North of the 62nd parallel no corn can ripen, on account of the fatal power of the winds which pour down from the Arctic Ocean. As we advance to the northward, a wide-spread area of desolation stretches before us: salt steppes, stony plains, boundless swamps, and lakes of salt and fresh water. So terrible is the cold that the spongy soil is perpetually frozen to the depth of some hundred feet below the surface; and the surface itself, though not thawed until the end of June, is again ice-bound by the middle of September. One of the most graphic sketches with which we are acquainted of the extreme Siberian desert is furnished by Admiral von Wrangel, who travelled during the winter from the mouth of the Kolyma to Behring Strait.
Here, he says, endless snows and ice-crusted rocks bound the horizon; Nature lies shrouded in all but perpetual winter; life is a constant conflict with privation and with the terrors of cold and hunger; the grave of Nature, containing only the bones of another world. The people, and even the snow, throw off a continual vapour; and this evaporation is instantly changed into millions of needles of ice, which make a noise in the air like the sound of torn satin or the rustle of thick silk. The reindeer take to the forest, or crowd together for heat; and the raven alone, the dark bird of winter, still smites the frosty air with heavy laborious wing, leaving behind him a long trail of thin vapour to mark the course of his solitary flight. The trunks of the thickest trees are rent with a loud clang, masses of rock are torn from their sites, the ground in the valleys is split into a myriad fissures, from which the waters that are underneath bubble up, throwing off a cloud of smoke, and immediately congealing into ice. The atmosphere grows dense; the glistening stars are dimmed. The dogs outside the huts of the Siberians burrow in the snow, and their howling, at intervals of six or eight hours, interrupts the general silence of winter.
The abundance of fur-bearing animals in the less rigorous parts of the tundras has induced the hardy Russians to colonize and build towns on these confines of the Frozen World. Yakutsk, on the river Lena, in 62° 1′ 30″ N., may be regarded, perhaps, as the coldest town on the Earth. The ground is perpetually frozen to the depth of more than 400 feet, of which three feet only are thawed in summer, when Fahrenheit’s thermometer frequently marks 77° in the shade. Yet in winter the rigour of the climate is so extreme that mercury is constantly frozen for two and occasionally even for three months.
From the data set forth in the preceding pages, the reader will conclude that, as indeed results from physical laws, the line of perpetual snow will be found to descend lower and lower on advancing to the Pole. By the line of perpetual snow we mean, of course, the limit above which a continual frost endures. Now, this limit varies according to climate. The lower the temperature, the lower the snow-line; the higher the temperature, the higher the snow-line. In the Tropics it does not sink below the summits of the loftiest mountains. Thus, at 1° from the Equator, where the mean temperature at the sea-level is 84°.2, the snow-line must be sought at the elevation of 15,203 feet; in 51° 30’ lat., the latitude of London, it is usually found at about 5900 feet; in lat. 80°, where the mean temperature is 33°.6, it sinks to 457 feet. These figures, however, represent its normal elevations; but temperature, as we all know, is greatly affected by local circumstances, and therefore the perpetual snow-line varies greatly in height. Owing to causes already explained, the snow-line in the Circumpolar Regions sinks to a very low level; and, therefore, many mountainous regions or elevated table-lands, such as Spitzbergen, Greenland, and Novaia Zemlaia, which, in a more temperate climate, would bloom with emerald slopes and waving woods, are covered with huge glaciers and fields of ice, with apparently interminable reaches of untrodden snow.
It should be noted, however, that nowhere does the perpetual snow-line descend to the water’s edge; nowhere has the spell of winter absolutely crushed the life out of all vegetation. Lichens and grasses, on which the reindeer gains its hardy subsistence, are found near lat. 80°; even on the awful plains of Melville Island the snow melts at midsummer; and the deserts of New Siberia afford food for considerable numbers of lemmings. As far as man has reached to the north, says a popular and accurate writer, vegetation, when fostered by a sheltered situation and the refraction of solar heat from the rocks, has everywhere been found to rise to a considerable altitude above the level of the sea; and should there be land at the North Pole, we may reasonably suppose that it is destitute neither of animal nor vegetable life. It would be quite wrong to conclude that the cold of winter invariably increases as we approach the Pole, the temperature of a land being controlled by many other causes besides its latitude. Even in the most northern regions visited by man, the influence of the sea, particularly where favoured by warm currents, considerably mitigates the severity of the winter, while at the same time it diminishes the heat of summer. On the other hand, the large continental tracts of Asia or America that slope towards the Pole, possess a more rigorous winter and a fiercer summer than many coast lands or islands situated far nearer to the Pole. For example: the western shores of Novaia Zemlaia, fronting a wide expanse of sea, have an average winter temperature of only -4°, and a mean summer temperature which rises very little above the freezing-point of water (+ 36° 30’); while Yakutsk, situated in the centre of Siberia, and 20° nearer to the Equator, has a winter temperature of -36° 6’, and a summer of + 66° 6’.
But though such are the physical conditions of the Polar Regions, it must not be supposed that Nature wears only a severe and repellent aspect. There is something beautiful in the vast expanse of snowy plain when seen by the light of a cloudless moon; something majestic in the colossal glaciers which fill up the remote Arctic valleys; something picturesque in the numerous icebergs which grandly sail down the dark Polar waters; something mysterious and wonderful in the coruscations of the Aurora, which illuminates the darkness of the winter nights with the glory of the celestial fires. The law of compensation prevails in the far North, as in the glowing and exuberant regions of the Tropics.