Even in Siberia the climate of this place is ill-reputed for its severity, which is as much due to its unfavorable position as to its high latitude (68° N.). The town stands on a low swampy island of the Kolyma, having on the west the barren tundra, and on the north the Arctic Ocean, so that the almost constant north-west winds have full scope for their violence, and cause frequent snow-storms even in summer.
The mean temperature of the whole year is only +14°. The river at Nishne-Kolymsk freezes early in September, but lower down, where the current is less rapid, loaded horses can sometimes cross on the ice as early as August 20, nor does the ice ever melt before June.
Although the sun remains fifty-two days above the horizon, the light, obscured by almost perpetual mists, is accompanied with little heat, and the solar disc, compressed by refraction into an elliptical form, may be looked at with the naked eye without inconvenience. In spite of the constant light, the common order of the parts of the day is plainly discernible. When the sun sinks down to the horizon, all nature is mute; but when, after a few hours, it rises in the skies, every thing awakens, the few little birds break out in feeble twitter, and the shrivelled flowers venture to open their petals.
Although winter and summer are in reality the only seasons, yet the inhabitants fancy they have spring when about noon the rays of the sun begin to make themselves felt, which generally takes place about the middle of March, but this so-called spring has frequent night-frosts of twenty degrees. Their autumn is reckoned from the time when the rivers begin to freeze over, that is, from the first days of September, when a cold of thirty degrees is already by no means uncommon. As may easily be supposed in a climate like this, the vegetation of summer is scarcely more than a struggle for existence.
In the latter end of May the stunted willow-bushes put out little wrinkled leaves, and those banks which slope towards the south become clothed with a semi-verdant hue; in June the temperature at noon attains 72°; the flowers show themselves, and the berry-bearing plants blossom, when sometimes an icy blast from the sea destroys the bloom. The air is clearest in July, and the temperature is usually mild, but then a new plague arises for the torment of man. Millions and millions of mosquitoes issue from the swamps of the tundra, and compel the inhabitants to seek refuge in the dense and pungent smoke of the “dymokury,” or large heaps of fallen leaves and damp wood, which are kindled near the dwellings and on the pasture-grounds, as the only means of keeping off those abominable insects.
These tormentors, however, are not without use, for they compel the reindeer to migrate from the forests to the sea-shore and the ice, thus exposing them to the attack of the hunters, and they also prevent the horses from straying in the plains, and wandering beyond the protection of the smoke.
Scarcely is the mosquito plague at an end, when the dense autumn fogs rising from the sea spoil the enjoyment of the last mild hours which precede the nine months’ winter. In January the cold increases to -45°; breathing then becomes difficult; the wild reindeer, the indigenous inhabitant of the Polar region, withdraws to the thickest part of the forest, and stands there motionless, as if deprived of life.
With the 22d November begins a night of thirty-eight days, relieved in some degree by the strong refraction and the white of the snow, as well as by the moon and the aurora. On the 28th December the first pale glimmering of dawn appears, which even at noon does not obscure the stars. With the re-appearance of the sun the cold increases, and is most intense in February and March at the rising of the sun. Even in winter completely clear days are very rare, as the cold sea-wind covers the land with mists and fogs.
The character of the vegetation corresponds with that of the climate. Moss, stunted grass, dwarfish willow-shrubs, are all that the place produces. The neighboring valleys of the Aniuj, protected by mountains against the sea-wind, have a somewhat richer flora, for here grow berry-bearing plants, the birch, the poplar, absinthe, thyme, and the low-creeping cedar. This poverty, however, of the vegetable world is strongly contrasted with the profusion of animal life over these shores and on the Polar Sea. Reindeer, elks, bears, foxes, sables, and gray squirrels fill the upland forests, while stone-foxes burrow in the low grounds. Enormous flights of swans, geese, and ducks arrive in spring, and seek deserts where they may moult and build their nests in safety. Eagles, owls, and gulls pursue their prey along the sea-coast; ptarmigan run in troops among the bushes; little snipes are busy among the brooks. In the morasses the crows gather round the huts of the natives; and when the sun shines in spring, the traveller may even sometimes hear the note of the finch, and in autumn that of the thrush. But the landscape remains dreary and dead; 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?
In the district of Kolymsk, which surpasses in size many a European kingdom, the population, at the time of Wrangell’s visit, consisted of 325 Russians, 1034 Jakuts, and 1139 Jukahires of the male sex, of whom 2173 had to pay the jassak, consisting of 803 fox and 28 sable skins, worth 6704 roubles, besides which they were taxed to the amount of 10,847 roubles in money. Thus the Russian double-eagle made, and no doubt still makes, the poor people of Kolymsk pay rather dear for the honor of living under the protection of its talons.