Yet the country they traverse is at all times a desert. The mean temperature of the year is only +14°. In November the thermometer sinks to -40°, or 72° below freezing-point. The Yana, at Nishni Kolymsk, freezes early in September; and lower down, where the current is sluggish, loaded horses can cross its frozen surface as early as the middle of August: yet the ice does not melt before June. The sun remains, it is true, about fifty-two days above the horizon; but its light, shrouded by almost continual mists, is attended by but little heat,--and its orb, compressed by refraction into an elliptical form, may be examined by the naked eye without inconvenience. As the climate, so the vegetation. Dwarfish willow-shrubs, stunted grass, moss, and a few berry-bearing plants compose the flora of the cheerless tundras. There is greater abundance and more variety in the neighbouring and better sheltered valleys of the Aniuj; the poplar, birch, thyme, absinth, and low creeping cedar enliven their slopes; but even in these places Nature is most niggardly of her gifts. Such is not the case, however, with the fauna of Arctic Siberia. The forests are tenanted by numbers of reindeer, elks, bears, foxes, sables, and gray squirrels; while in the low grounds stone foxes make their burrows. With the return of spring come immense flights of swans, geese, and ducks, which build their nests in the most sequestered corners. The sea-coast is frequented by eagles, owls, and gulls; the brushwood by the white ptarmigan; the brooks by hundreds of little snipes. Even the songs of the finch are not wanting in spring, nor is the thrush wholly silent in autumn. * * * * * Summing up the details recorded by Admiral Wrangell, a recent writer draws an impressive picture of the mode of life of the people of this desolate waste, and observes: “All denotes that here the limits of the habitable earth are passed; and one asks with astonishment, What could induce human beings to take up their abode in so comfortless a region?”