,
LEDEB.), the fir (_Pinus obovata_, TURCZ.), and scattered trees of
the common pine (_Pinus sylvestris_, L.). Most of these already
north of the Arctic Circle reach a colossal size, but in such a case
are often here, far from all forestry, grey and half-dried up with
age. Between the trees the ground is so covered with fallen branches
and stems, only some of which are fresh, the others converted into a
mass of wood-mould held together only by the bark, that there one
willingly avoids going forward on an unbroken path. If that must be
done, the progress made is small, and there is constant danger of
breaking one's bones in the labyrinth of stems. Nearly everywhere
the fallen stems are covered, often concealed, by an exceedingly
luxuriant bed of mosses, while on the other hand tree-lichens,
probably in consequence of the dry inland climate of Siberia, occur
sparingly. The pines, therefore, want the shaggy covering common in
Sweden, and the bark of the birches which are seen here and there
among the pines is distinguished by an uncommon blinding whiteness.

The western bank of the Yenesej consists, like the innumerable
islands of the river, for the most part of lowlying and marshy
stretches of land, which at the season of the spring floods are
overflowed by the river and abundantly manured with its mud. In this
way there is formed here a fertile tract of meadow covered partly
with a grassy turf untouched by the scythe, partly with a very
peculiar bush vegetation, rising to a height of eight metres, among
which there are to be found a number of families of plants well
known by us in Sweden, as Impatiens, Urtica, Sonchus, Heracleum,
&c., but in gigantic forms unknown at home. Often a dense thicket of
a willow (_Salix vitellenia_, L.), whose straight, branchless stems
resemble at a distance the bamboo woods of the south, alternates
with level, grassy carpets of a lively green and small streams in
such a way as gives the whole the appearance of the most smiling
park carefully kept free of fallen branches and dry grass. It is the
river water which in spring has played the gardener's part in these
parks, seldom trodden by the foot of man and endlessly rich in the
most splendid greenery. Near the river there are also to be found
carpets of a uniform green, consisting of a short kind of Equisetum,
unmixed with any other plants, which forms a "gazon," to which no
nobleman's country seat can show a match. The drawback is, that a