hore, but now crossed over towards the
south side of the strait. When about the middle of the channel I was
startled by all at once seeing the bottom grow light under us, and had
nearly run the boat on a shoal of which no one knew anything. There
was scarcely more than two or three feet of water, and the current
ran over it like a rapid river. Shoals and sunken rocks abound there
on every hand, especially on the south side of the strait, and it
required great care to navigate a vessel through it. Near the eastern
mouth of the strait we put into a little creek, dragged the boat up on
the beach, and then, taking our guns, made for some high-lying land
we had noticed. We tramped along over the same undulating plain-land
with low ridges, as we had seen everywhere round the Yugor Strait. A
brownish-green carpet of moss and grass spread over the plain, bestrewn
with flowers of rare beauty. During the long, cold Siberian winter
the snow lies in a thick mass over the tundra; but no sooner does the
sun get the better of it than hosts of tiny northern flowers burst
their way up through the fast-disappearing coating of snow and open
their modest calices, blushing in the radiant summer day that bathes
the plain in its splendor. Saxifrages with large blooms, pale-yellow
mountain poppies (Papaver nudicaule) stand in bright clusters, and
here and there with bluish forget-me-nots and white cloud-berry
flowers; in some boggy hollows the cotton-grass spreads its wavy
down carpet, while in other spots small forests of bluebells softly
tingle in the wind on their upright stalks. These flowers are not at
all brilliant specimens, being in most cases not more than a couple
of inches high, but they are all the more exquisite on that account,
and in such surroundings their beauty is singularly attractive. While
the eye vainly seeks for a resting-place over the boundless plain,
these modest blooms smile at you and take the fancy captive.

And over these mighty tundra-plains of Asia, stretching infinitely
onward from one sky-line to the other, the nomad wanders with his
reindeer herds, a glorious, free life! Where he wills he pitches
his tent, his reindeer around him; and at his will again he goes on
his way. I almost envied him. He has no goal to struggle towards, no
anxieties to endure--he has merely to live! I wellnigh wished that I
could live his peaceful life, with wife and child, on these boundless,
open plains, unfettered, happy.

After