On September 11 they at length reached the port of Archangel, with the agreeable prospect of passing the winter in a comfortable study at St. Petersburg instead of spending it, like Barentz and his associates, as might easily have happened, in a wretched hut beyond the 70th degree of northern latitude.
Having thus briefly sketched Von Baer’s adventures, I will now notice some of the most interesting scientific results of his journey.
The rocky west coast of Nova Zembla has about the same appearance as the analogous part of Spitzbergen, for here also the mountains, particularly in the northern island, rise abruptly to a height of three or four thousand feet from the sea, while the eastern coast is generally flat. In both countries, angular blocks of stone, precipitated from the summits, cover the sides of the hills, and frequently make it impossible to ascend them. In fact, no rock, however hard or finely grained, is able to withstand the effects of a climate where the summer is so wet and the winter so severe. Nowhere in Nova Zembla is a grass-covered spot to be found deserving the name of a meadow. Even the foliaceous lichens, which grow so luxuriantly in Lapland, have here a stunted appearance; but, as Von Baer remarks, this is owing less to the climate than to the nature of the soil, as plants of this description thrive best on chalky ground. The crustaceous lichens, however, cover the blocks of augite and porphyry with a motley vesture, and the dingy carpet with which Dryas octopetala invests here and there the dry slopes, formed of rocky detritus, reminds one of the tundras of Lapland.
The scanty vegetable covering which this only true social plant of Nova Zembla affords is, however, but an inch thick, and can easily be detached like a cap from the rock beneath.
On a clayey ground in moist and low situations, the mosses afford a protection to the polar willow (Salix polaris), which raises but two leaves and a catkin over the surface of its covering.
Even the most sparing sheet of humus has great difficulty to form in Nova Zembla, as in a great number of the plants which grow there the discolored leaf dries on the stalk, and is then swept away by the winds, so that the land would appear still more naked if many plants, such as the snow ranunculus (Ranunculus nivalis), were not so extremely abstemious as to require no humus at all, but merely a rocky crevice or some loose gravel capable of retaining moisture in its interstices.
But even in Nova Zembla there are some more favored spots. Thus when Von Baer landed at the foot of a high slate mountain fronting the south-west, and reflecting the rays of the sun, he was astonished and delighted to see a gay mixture of purple silenes, golden ranunculuses, peach-colored parryas, white cerastias, and blue palemones, and was particularly pleased at finding the well-known forget-me-not among the ornaments of this Arctic pasture. Between these various flowers the soil was everywhere visible, for the dicotyledonous plants of the high latitudes produce no more foliage than is necessary to set off the colors of the blossoms, and have generally more flowers than leaves.
The entire vegetation of the island is confined to the superficial layer of the soil and to the lower stratum of the air. Even those plants which in warm climates have a descending or vertical root have here a horizontal one, and none, whether grasses or shrubs, grow higher than a span above the ground.
In the polar willow, a single pair of leaves sits on a stem about as thick as a straw, although the whole plant forms an extensive shrub with numerous ramifications. Another species of willow (Salix lanata) attains the considerable height of a span, and is a perfect giant among the Nova Zembla plants, for the thick subterranean trunk sometimes measures two inches in diameter, and can be laid bare for a length of ten or twelve feet without finding the end. Thus in this country the forests are more in than above the earth.
This horizontal development of vegetation is caused by the sun principally heating the superficial sheet of earth, which imparts its warmth to the stratum of air immediately above it, and thus confines the plants within the narrow limits which best suit their growth. Hence also the influence of position on vegetation is so great that, while a plain open to the winds is a complete desert, a gentle mountain slope not seldom resembles a garden.