Tundra

“ Driving southwest, the three boys began the long trek across the tundra, hoping they might soon sight the abandoned igloos indicated on the map as the next landmark.
But two hours of steady mushing failed to raise anything resembling a habitation. The tundra still stretched monotonously ahead of them, the countless acres of snow glaring in their eyes as it reflected the sun’s rays. ”

“ REINDEER
113The tundra has no more characteristic animal than the reindeer. Over the mossy hillocks and the matted tops of the dwarf birches he runs, or through the rivers and lakes he swims, with his broad-hoofed, spade-like feet never at a loss to find a footing. In the long winter he is protected by his thick skin against the influence of the cold, and is seldom at starvation point, as he digs for food in the deepest snow, and is by no means particular what he eats; and in the short summer he is in luxurious ease, for the tundra, as we have seen, is not always as bad as it is painted. ”

“ Over the whole extent of the tundra they visit its waters, but they prefer to the broad inland lakes the little ponds on the hills along the coast, whence they can daily plunge, with their wildly jubilant sea song, into the heaving, bountiful ocean, which is their home. ”

“ The lines of many streams, as they course in carrying off melting snows, are plainly marked over a dreary tundra by the dark fringes of dwarfed willows, birches, and alders which only grow upon their banks. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In winter the tundra is, of course, one vast frozen sheet. In the brief summer it is swampy, steaming, and swarming with mosquitoes. Treeless and sterile, the tundra is the home of strange uncouth tribes, but it is a valuable training ground for hardy hunters. To the minds of most people the tundra is Siberia. This mischievous fallacy is difficult to dispel. In a few years the Siberian railway will have completely dissipated it. Much more valuable is the far wider zone called the taiga, the most wonderful belt of forest on the surface of the earth. ”

“ The sun brings to life a brilliant Alpine flora, and the tundra has a carpet of grass and mosses.
The Siberian shores of the Polar Ocean forming the edge of the tundra are for the most part low and flat, and Cape Chelyuskin, the northern termination of the Taimir Peninsula in 77° 36′ N., is a low promontory.
This Siberian tundra is the coldest region in the world.16 The earth, alternating in many places with strata of solid ice, is hard frozen in perpetuity for a depth of several hundred feet. ”

“ Today I went out for an hour, walking to Chinik Creek over the tundra, from which the snow has almost disappeared, and returned by the hill-top path. The tundra was beautiful with mosses, birds were singing, and the rushing and roaring of the creek waters fairly made my head swim, they were such unusual sounds. The water was cutting a channel in the sands where it empties into the bay. Here it was flowing over the ice, helping to loosen the edge and allow it to drift out to sea.
There is little change in the manners and dispositions of the rough men in camp. ”

“ In the extreme northern part of Canada and Alaska, where the ground is constantly frozen, thawing only on the surface in the summer, and forming the well known tundra, the prevailing plant life consists of reindeer moss, with a few dwarf Arctic willows. But in the short, hot summers of this region even the tundra is gay with bright-colored blossoms. ”

“ The air on the Tundra, and, indeed, in all the Arctic region has a curious way of deceiving the traveler. It makes things look like something else. Take a day when the sunshine lights up the scene and the grey, lichen-covered mounds take wonderful colors in the distance from the blue sky and the haze. Though lakes of water appear to grow and fill the far-off hollows, Mekolka knows they are not lakes, but little snowdrifts. It is the mirage that plays these little tricks. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are called Tundra (Tuntur in Finnish) , and are vast swampy districts, covered 96partly with a thick mantle of Sphagnum palustre and other Liverworts, and partly with a dry snowy-white carpet of Cenomyce rangiferina (Reindeer-moss) , Stereocaulon paschale, and other lichens. “These Tundra,” says Admiral Wrangell, in his perilous expedition to the Islands of New Siberia, so rich in fossil wood, “accompanied me to the extremest Arctic coast. Their soil is composed of earth that has been frozen for thousands of years. ”

“ Yet once exposed, you acquire a craving for the look of tundra. Nowhere else is there such an impatience for spring—the flowers rush into bloom; the male water pipit soars, its skylark song crystal sharp in the thin air. The nesting birds are restless, for sun-days and warm days are few, precious, and quickly spent. Insects and spiders abound—flying about the peaks or crawling 112 among the rocks. ”

“ Where these go, how they end, none can say, but certain it is that the tundra behind them is as if dead, that a number of years pass ere the few who have remained behind, and have managed to survive, slowly multiply, and visibly re-people their native fields. ”

“ Groups of the wild sons and daughters of the tundra, clothed in heavy skins, make their appearance, and stroll slowly through the streets, admiring the high wooden houses, which to them seem palaces. But nothing is to be seen of the animation and activity which usually characterize a fair. ”

“ Thus during several months the tundra presents an animated scene, in which man also plays his part. The birds of the air, the fishes of the water, the beasts of the earth, are all obliged to pay their tribute to his various wants, to appease his hunger, to clothe his body, or to gratify his greed of gain. ”

“ The tundra is generally a slightly rolling plain sloping towards the rivers, intercepted by deep river valleys with precipitous sides. The ground is frozen for several hundreds of feet below the surface, and for eight months, from October to May, the tundra is a sheet of snow 6 feet thick. In the summer a wild-looking country appears, full of small lakes, swamps, and streams, swarming with mosquitos and frequented by myriads of birds. ”

“ Likewise characteristic of the tundra are the birds of prey, or, at least, their manner of life there is characteristic. For it is only on the southern boundary of the region or among the heights that there are trees or rocks on which they can build their eyries, and they are perforce obliged to brood on the ground. ”

“ In exposed situations, especially in the higher latitudes, the tundra does really merit its American name of Barren Ground, being little else than gravel beds interspersed with bare patches of peat or clay, and with scarcely a rush or a sedge to break the monotony. In Siberia, at least, this is very exceptional. By far the greater part of the tundra, both east and west of the Ural Mountains, is a gently undulating plain, full of lakes, rivers, swamps, and bogs. The lakes are diversified with patches of green water plants, amongst which ducks and swans float and dive ”

“ Along the Arctic seaboard, homogeneous from Behring Strait nearly to the North Cape, we have the frozen tundra region, with a characteristic tundra culture; pushed now far north since Europe mellowed into a habitable world, but formerly widespread about the skirts of the shrinking ice-sheet. Here we hunt large animals and sea-shore beasts, and trap small-deer very ingeniously; we fish in the large northward-flowing rivers ”

“ After a few days this winter, as much dreaded by us as by the migratory birds, yet longed for by the human inhabitants of the tundra, sets in on the inhospitable land, to maintain its supremacy longer, much longer than spring, summer, and autumn together. For days and weeks in succession snow falls, sometimes coming down lightly in sharp-cornered crystals, or sometimes in large flakes, driven by a raging storm. Hills and valleys, rivers and lakes are gradually shrouded in the same winter dress. ”

“ Numerous shells of crustacea found here, belonging to species which still live in the Polar Sea, show that at least the upper earthy layer of the tundra was deposited in a sea resembling that which now washes the north coast of Siberia. [211]
The tundra itself is in summer completely free of snow, but at a limited depth from the surface the ground is continually frozen. At some places the earthy strata alternate with strata of pure, clear ice. ”

“ Where it abuts upon the sea the tundra stands from eight to twenty feet above it, at places descending to even lower levels. The sea face is almost everywhere an abrupt one, showing undercutting by high water, and it is continued by a broad, rapidly sloping sand and shingle beach, which packs firmly, and almost immediately beneath the surface exhibits a distinctly stratified construction—the alternate layers of fine, flat gravel, coarse, clayey sand, and finer “ruby” (fragmented garnet) sand sloping like the surface, although generally with a milder pitch, to the sea. ”

“ Here the change from a vigorous growth of spruce-forest to bare hills and grassy tundra is most abrupt and astonishingly sharp in definition; you pass from the jungle of the woods, at a single step, into heather of the moor. This line, with a slight curve to the westward only, strikes the same definition over on the mainland of the peninsula opposite, and runs right up north to Bering’s Straits’ latitude, avoiding the coast everywhere except at Cape Denbigh, Norton’s Sound.
There is scarcely any lowland, indeed none at all, on the large island itself ”

“ On the slopes of the steep tundra bank and in several of the tundra valleys there is an exceedingly rich vegetation, which already, only 100 kilometres south of Yefremov Kamen, forms actual thickets of flowering plants, while the tundra itself is overgrown with an exceedingly scanty carpet, consisting more of mosses than of grasses. ”

“ One writer speaks of the tundra as the very grave of nature, the sepulchre of the primeval world, because it is the tomb of so many animals whose remains have been protected from putrefaction for thousands of years. ”

“ Without these animals the Arctic tundra of Europe, Asia, and America could not have been crossed and opened up so thoroughly, the coast of Greenland could not have been explored except in the most meagre way, and the great Archipelago of islands—great and small, that stretches towards the Pole to the north of our Canadian Dominion—could not have been investigated as it has been. ”

“ Arctic tundra rodent layer, 20 inches in thickness; period of the Bühl Postglacial advance; the banded lemming (Myodes torquatus) most abundant, mingled with early Magdalenian flint and bone implements; one fire-hearth; abundant tundra fauna, including all tundra types except the Obi lemming, and the musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus) which is found in Kesslerloch; indications of a very cold, moist climate; the banded lemming, arctic fox, arctic hare, reindeer, wolverene, ermine, also such forest forms as the wolf, fox, bear, weasel, and a number of northern birds. ”

“ In falling down the face of the ice-wall it is well shaken and rolled before it again comes to rest on terraced or gently sloping portions of the wall. The original vegetation of the tundra is thus destroyed, and tall grasses spring up on the fresh mellow ground as it accumulates from time to time, growing lush and rank, though in many places that we noted these new soil-beds are not more than a foot in depth, and lie on the solid ice. ”

“ Below 2,750 meters and above 2,000 meters, depending on other factors such as exposure to sun and wind and steepness of terrain, exists the alpine tundra community, with vegetation similar to that of the vast, essentially level, treeless zones of the Arctic. ”

“ In Norway this belt of bare country is called the Fjeld, in Russia it is known as the Tundra, and in America its technical name is the Barren Grounds. In the language of science it is the country beyond the limit of forest growth. ”

“ Within three months the heights and low grounds of the tundra teem with lemmings, just as our fields do with mice under similar circumstances. Whichever way we turn, we see the busy little creatures, dozens at a single glance, thousands in the course of an hour. ”

“ A third animal characteristic of the tundra is the reindeer. Those who know this deer, in itself by no means beautiful, only in a state of captivity and slavery, can form no idea of what it is under natural conditions. ”

“ Limber pine at treeline.
Tundra is characteristically composed of grasses, sedges, herbs, and a few dwarfed shrubs. Many lichens and mosses also grow in tundra. The plants are typically small, low-growing, and compact, and often have showy flowers. There seems to be an abundance of blossoms in proportion to the size and amount of foliage of the plants. Their small leaves are protected from excessive water loss by masses of hairs or waxy substances, and they frequently contain high amounts of red pigment. Most of these plants are exceedingly slow-growing ”