CHAPTER III
TRIBES AROUND THE POLE
Before we begin to follow the achievements of the great Polar worthies, it seems desirable to take a brief survey of the dwellers on the threshold of the Arctic regions; for here are races who have for ages found homes along the European, Siberian, and American coasts of the Polar Ocean and in Greenland.
To begin with the Spitsbergen quadrant; the northern coast of Norway, now known as Finmarken, and the Kola peninsula face the Polar Sea, but, owing to the warm current from the south, this coast has its bays and inlets clear of ice throughout the year. The coast is lined by numerous islands, several of them of considerable size to the west of the North Cape, and is indented by deep fjords. The most northern point of Europe is in 71° 11′. Inland there is a flat mountain plateau, with a height of some 1500 feet, consisting of stony desert with a few patches of reindeer moss, and some morasses. The plateau is traversed by rivers such as the Tana and the Alten, which force their way through accumulations of gravel before reaching the sea. Pine forests have now receded from the coast to the foot of the gneiss mountains in the interior, and their place is taken by dwarf birch near the sea. The Kola peninsula, known to the Russians as the Murman coast, has high and precipitous granite cliffs and a line of central hills sending the drainage on one side to the Murman, and on the other side to the White Sea.
This is the land of the Lapps, encamped for hunting, and on the sea coast for fishing in summer. Their average height is about 5 ft. 1 in., and they have high cheek-bones, small elongated eyes, wide mouths, little or no beard, and dark straight hair. Their circular tents are made of coarse cloth supported by branch poles of birch and pine. A fire is lighted in the centre, and there is an opening at the top by which the smoke escapes. The Lapps are always wandering for food for their reindeer—moss and birch leaves, and in winter lichen. One family requires a herd of at least 200 animals. The Lapps drive their reindeer in sledges, make cheese from their milk, eat the venison, and make most of their clothing of the skins. These people can march great distances with a short quick step and carry very heavy loads. They live to a considerable age. Their language is Mongolian, and their religion one of magic and witchcraft, which inspired some awe in the minds of the Norsemen who enforced tribute from them.
Eastward from the White Sea the nature of the country changes, and we enter upon the tundras, a Russian name for the bare tracts between the forests to the south, and the shores of the Polar Ocean. The Petchora is the greatest river of the western tundra, flowing northwards along the western spurs of the Ural Mountains towards the gulf of Mezen, where the delta is 120 miles long, the channels winding in a network round islets and banks which shift their positions at every thaw. Fifty miles off the coast lies the island of Kolguev, 50 miles long by 40, entirely composed of sand and small stones, all its deposits being referable to oceanic forces; it is, indeed, essentially a water and ice-formed island.
The region from the White Sea to the Ural Mountains is inhabited by a race called Samoyeds, brachycephalic Mongols with a Finnish admixture. Of short stature, averaging a fraction over 5 feet, they have the short broad Mongolian face, long oblique eyes, high cheek-bones and flat noses. Like the Lapps they are dependent for locomotion, clothes, and food on their herds of reindeer, and they also have dogs for rounding up the deer. Their boots, loose tunics, and winter cloaks are of deer-skin, and the Samoyed hut (choon) is made of birch poles covered with deer-skin for winter, and with strips of birch-bark sewn with sinews in summer. Like the Lapps too, and for the same reason—to drive off mosquitos—they light their fires inside the choon. The Samoyed sledge, drawn by three to five reindeer abreast, consists of two thick runners curved upwards in front, about 9 feet long and 30 inches wide, with four uprights and cross bars. These people worship great numbers of wooden idols grouped round a seven-headed idol of Kesaks. They come to the settlement of Khabarova, near the narrow strait which separates the mainland from the island of Waigatz, during the summer; and they look upon the latter as the holy island on which they wish to be buried.
Eastward of the Samoyed country is the Siberian coast, extending for 2000 miles of longitude along the Polar Ocean, a vast tundra traversed by three great rivers—the Obi and its tributary the Irtish, the Yenisei, and the Lena. To the east of the Lena there are three smaller rivers, the Yena, Indigirka, and Kolyma, but all have their sources far to the south of the Arctic Circle. Some other streams, merely rising in the tundra, flow into the Polar Ocean. These are the Piasina, Taimir, Khatanga, Anabara, and Olenek between the Yenisei and Lena, and the Alaseia between the Indigirka and Kolyma.
The three great rivers have remarkable width and volume. The Yenisei is more than three miles wide for at least a thousand miles, and a mile wide for another thousand. The 200 miles of delta have a width of 20 miles. The sudden melting of the winter accumulations of snow gives rise to floods of great magnitude. Vast harvests of ice are thus annually poured out. The tundra is generally a slightly rolling plain sloping towards the rivers, intercepted by deep river valleys with precipitous sides. The ground is frozen for several hundreds of feet below the surface, and for eight months, from October to May, the tundra is a sheet of snow 6 feet thick. In the summer a wild-looking country appears, full of small lakes, swamps, and streams, swarming with mosquitos and frequented by myriads of birds. The sun brings to life a brilliant Alpine flora, and the tundra has a carpet of grass and mosses.
The Siberian shores of the Polar Ocean forming the edge of the tundra are for the most part low and flat, and Cape Chelyuskin, the northern termination of the Taimir Peninsula in 77° 36′ N., is a low promontory.
This Siberian tundra is the coldest region in the world. The earth, alternating in many places with strata of solid ice, is hard frozen in perpetuity for a depth of several hundred feet. The mean temperature of January is -65°, but the interior is much colder than the sea coast, there being a difference of 20°. At Yakutsk -79° has been recorded, but the greatest natural cold ever measured is -93° at Verkhoyansk, in 67° 34′, near the river Lena.