the garments of midsummer and rejoices in almost perpetual sunshine.  There is no long wet, lingering spring, no gradual unfolding of buds and leaves one by one as with us.  The vegetation, which has been held in icy fetters for eight long months, bursts suddenly its bonds, and with one great irresistible sweep takes the world by storm.  There is no longer any night; one day blends almost imperceptibly into another, with only a short interval of twilight, which has all the coolness and repose of night without its darkness.  You may sit by your open window and read until twelve o’clock, inhaling the fragrance of flowers which is brought to you on the cool night wind, listening to the murmur and plash of the river in the valley below, and tracing the progress of the hidden sun by the flood of rosy light which streams up in the North from behind the purple mountains.  It is broad daylight, and yet all Nature is asleep, and a strange mysterious stillness, like that of a solar eclipse, pervades heaven and earth.  You can even hear the faint roar of the surf on the rocky coast ten miles away.  Now and then a song-sparrow hidden in the alder thicket by the river bank dreams that it is morning and breaks out into a quick unconscious trill of melody; but as he wakes he stops himself suddenly and utters a few “peeps” of perplexity, as if not quite sure whether it be morning, or only last evening, and whether he ought to sing or go to sleep again.  He finally seems to decide upon the latter course, and all becomes silent once more save the murmur of the river over its rocky bed and the faint roar of the distant sea.  Soon after one o’clock a glittering segment of the sun appears between the cloud-like peaks of the distant mountains, a sudden flash of golden light illumines the green dewy landscape, the little sparrow in the alder thicket triumphantly takes up again his unfinished song, the ducks, geese, and aquatic birds renew their harsh discordant cries from the marshy flats along the river, and all animated nature wakes suddenly to a consciousness of daylight as if it were a new thing.  There has been no night—­but it is another day.

The traveller who has never before experienced an arctic summer, and who has been accustomed to think of Siberia as a land of eternal snow and ice, cannot help being astonished at the sudden and wonderful development of animal and vegetable life throughout that country in the month of June, and the rapidity of the transition from winter to summer in the course of a few short weeks.  In the early part of June it is frequently possible to travel in ’the vicinity of Gizhiga upon dog-sledges, while by the last of the same month the trees are all in full leaf, primroses, cowslips, buttercups, valerian, cinquefoil, and labrador tea, blossom everywhere upon the higher plains and river banks, and the thermometer at noon frequently reaches 70 deg.  Fahr. in the shade.  There is no spring, in the usual acceptation of the word,