Regions of America._ _Views of Nature_ (Trans. 1849). _Cosmos_ (Trans.
1849-58).
Johnston, H. H. _Kilima Ndjaro Expedition_ (1885).
Kingsley, C. _At last! A Christmas in the West Indies_ (1889).
Lumholtz. _Among Cannibals_ (London, 1889).
Moseley, H. N. _Notes by a Naturalist on the “Challenger”_ (London,
1879. New Ed. 1892).
Nordenskiöld, A. E. _Voyage of the “Vega”_ (London, 1881).
Oates, F., Ed. by C. G. Oates. _Matabele Land, the Victoria Falls, a
Naturalist’s Wanderings in the Interior of South Africa_ (1881).
Phillipps-Wolley. _Big-Game Shooting_ (Badminton Libr. London, 1893).
Rodway, J. _In the Guiana Forest_ (London, 1894). _British Guiana_
(London, 1893).
Roosevelt, Th., and G. B. Grinell. _American Big-Game Hunting_
(Edinburgh, 1893).
Schweinfurth, G. _The Heart of Africa_ (1878).
Seebohm, H. _Siberia in Europe_ (London, 1880), _Siberia in Asia_
(London, 1882).
Selous, F. C. _A Hunter’s Wanderings_ (1881). _Travel and Adventure in
South-East Africa_ (London, 1893).
Sibree, Rev. J. _The Great African Island_ (1879).
Solymos, B. (B. E. Falkenberg). _Desert Life_ (London, 1880).
Stanley, H. M. _How I Found Livingstone_ (1872, New Ed. 1885). _The
Congo_ (1885). _Through the Dark Continent_ (1890). _In Darkest
Africa_ (1890).
Swayne, H. G. C. _Seventeen Trips through Somaliland_ (London, 1895).
Tennent, J. E. _Natural History of Ceylon_ (London, 1861).
Thomson, Wyville. _The Depths of the Sea_ (London, 1873). _Narrative
of the Voyage of the “Challenger”_ (1885). And, in this connection,
see S. J. Hickson. _Fauna of the Deep Sea_ (London, 1894).
Tristram, H. B. _The Land of Israel_ (1876). _The Land of Moab_
(1873). _The Great Sahara_ (1860).
Wallace, A. R. _Malay Archipelago_ (London 1869). _Tropical Nature_
(1878). _Island Life_ (1880). _Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro_
(1889).
Waterton, Ch. _Wanderings in South America_ (Ed. by J. G. Wood, 1878).
Woodford, C. M. _Naturalist among the Head-hunters_ (London, 1890).
FROM
NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR.
THE BIRD-BERGS OF LAPLAND.
“When the Creator of the worlds had made the earth, best loved of
all, and was rejoicing in His perfect work, the devil was seized with
a desire to bring it all to nought. Not yet banished from heaven, he
lived among the archangels in the abodes of the blessed. Up to the
seventh heaven he flew, and, seizing a great stone, hurled it with
might down on the earth exulting in the beauty of its youth. But the
Creator saw the ruthless deed, and sent one of His archangels to avert
the evil. The angel flew even more swiftly than the stone to the earth
beneath, and succeeded in saving the land. The huge stone plunged
thundering into the sea, and hissing waves flooded all the shores for
many a mile. The fall shattered the crust of the stone, and thousands
of splinters sank on either side, some disappearing into the depths,
and some rising above the surface, bare and bleak like the rock itself.
Then God took pity, and in His infinite goodness resolved to clothe
even this naked rock with life. But the fruitful soil was all but
exhausted in His hand; there remained scarce enough to lay a little
here and there upon the stone.”
So runs an ancient legend still current among the Lapps. The stone
which the devil threw is Scandinavia; the splinters which fell into
the sea on either side are the skerries which form a richly varied
wreath around the peninsula. The rents and cracks in the rock are the
fjords and the valleys; the sprinkling of life-giving soil which fell
from the gracious Creator’s hand forms the few fertile tracts which
Scandinavia possesses. To appreciate the full depth and meaning of
the childish story one must one’s self have visited Scandinavia, and
especially Norway, have steered a boat among the skerries, and have
sailed round the country from the extreme south to the farthest north.
Marvellous, indeed, is the country; marvellous are its fjords; still
more marvellous is the encircling wreath of islands and reefs.
Scandinavia is an alpine country like Switzerland and the Tyrol, yet
it differs in a hundred ways from both of these. Like our Alps it has
lofty mountains, glaciers, torrents, clear, still alpine lakes, dark
pine and fir forests low down in the gorges, bright green birch woods
on the heights, far-stretching moors--or more strictly tundras--on the
broad shoulders of the mountains, log-huts on the slopes, and the huts
of the cowherds in the upland valleys. And yet all is very different
from our Alps, as is obvious to anyone who has seen both. The reason
of this difference lies in the wonderful way in which two such grand
and impressive features of scenery as lofty mountains and the sea are
associated and harmonized.
The general aspect of Scandinavia is at once grave and gay. Stern
grandeur and soft beauty go hand in hand; gloom alternates with
cheerfulness; with the dead and disquieting is linked the living and
exhilarating. Black masses of rock rear themselves perpendicularly
out of the sea, rise directly from the deeply-cut fjords, and, riven
and cleft, tower precipitously upwards and lean threateningly over.
On their heads lie masses of ice stretching for miles, covering
whole districts and scaring away all life save the torrents to which
they themselves have given birth. These torrents spread themselves
everywhere in ribbons of silver over the dark masses, and not only
give pleasure to the eye, but murmur to the ear the sublime melody of
the mountains. They rush down through every cleft to the depths below,
they burst forth from every gorge, or plunge in mad career from rock
to rock, forming waterfall after waterfall, and awakening echoes from
the farthest mountain sides. These rushing mountain-streams which hurry
down to the valley through every channel, the gleaming bands of water
on every wall of rock, the ascending smoke-like spray which betrays
the most secluded falls--these call forth life even in the most dread
wilderness, in places where otherwise nought can be seen but rocks and
sky--and they are most truly characteristic of the scenery of the
interior.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Scene on the Sogne Fjord, Norway.]
But, majestic as this beauty is, bewildering and overwhelming as are
the fjords with their precipitous walls, their ravines and valleys,
headlands and peaks, they are yet less characteristic than the islands
and skerries lying out in the sea, stretching from the south of the
country up to the far north, and forming a maze of bays, sounds, and
straits such as can hardly be seen elsewhere in the wide world.
The larger islands reproduce more or less faithfully the characters
of the mainland; the smaller ones and the skerries present, under all
circumstances, an aspect of their own. But, as one travels towards the
north, this aspect changes more or less with every degree of latitude.
Like the sea, the islands lack the richness of the south, but are,
nevertheless, by no means devoid of beauty. Especially in the midnight
hours, when the low midsummer sun stands large and blood-red on the
horizon, its veiled brilliance reflected alike from the ice-covered
mountain-tops and from the sea, they have an irresistible charm. This
is enhanced by the homesteads which are dotted everywhere over the
landscape--dwellings built of wood and roofed with turf, glowing in
a strange, blood-red colour which contrasts sharply with the green
turf roof, the black darkness of the adjacent mountain-side, and the
ice-blue of the glaciers in the background of the picture.
The southerner remarks, with some surprise, that these homesteads
become larger, handsomer, and more roomy the farther north he travels;
that, though no longer surrounded by fields, but at the most by small
gardens, they far excel in size and equipment the hut-like buildings
of southern Scandinavia; and that the most pretentious of all may
be on comparatively small islands, where the rocks are covered only
with turf, and where not even a little garden can be won from the
inhospitable soil.
The seeming riddle is solved when we remember that in Norland and
Finland it is not the land but the sea that is ploughed; that there
men do not sow and wield the scythe in summer, but reap in midwinter
without having sowed; that it is in the months in which the long night
holds its undisputed sway, when the light of the sun has given place to
that of the moon, and the rosy flush of dawn and sunset to the glow of
the Northern Lights, that the dwellers in the far north gather in the
rich harvest of the sea.
About the time of the autumnal equinox strong men are preparing
themselves all along the coasts of Norway to secure the harvest of
the North. Every town, every village, every hamlet sends one or more
well-manned ships to the islands and skerries within the Polar Circle,
to anchor for months in every suitable bay. Making the ships or the
homesteads on shore their head-quarters, the fishermen proceed to
gather in the abundant booty. In the height of summer the whole country
is still and deserted, but in winter the bays, islands, and sounds are
teeming with busy men, and laborious hands are toiling night and day.
Spacious as the dwelling-houses appear, they cannot contain the crowds
of people who have assembled; many must remain in the ships, or even
seek a rough-and-ready shelter in rudely-constructed turf-covered huts
on the shore.
The bustle is at its height about the time of the winter solstice,
when we celebrate our Christmas, and the Norsemen their Yule festival.
For weeks the sea has been yielding its treasures. Impelled by the
strongest impulse which moves living beings, guided by irresistible
instinct to sow the seed of future generations, there rise from the
depths of the sea innumerable shoals of fishes--cod, haddock, and
the like. They ascend to the upper strata of the water, approach the
coasts, and throng into the straits, sounds, and fjords in such numbers
that they cover the surface of the sea for many miles. Animated,
almost maddened, by one impulse, the fish swim so thickly that the
boat has literally to force a way among them, that the overweighted
net baffles the combined strength of the fishermen or breaks under
its burden, that an oar placed upright among the densely packed crowd
of swimmers remains for a few moments in its position before falling
to one side.[1] Wherever the rocky islands are washed bare by the
raging high tides, from the mean tide-mark to the lower edge of the
turf which covers their summits, the naked rocks are covered by an
unbroken ring of fish split open and laid out to dry, while trestles
are also erected that other fish may be exposed for the same purpose to
the sharp and drying air. From time to time the rocks and frames are
cleared of dried fish, which are packed in bundles and stored in sheds,
but only that room may be found for others which in the meantime have
been caught and prepared.
For months the bustle continues, and the traffic is uninterrupted; for
months the North continues to exchange its treasures with the South.
Then in the days when about noon a clear light in the south heralds
the coming of the sun still hidden, or when the first rays of sunlight
fall for a brief space upon the land, the rich catch comes gradually to
an end. The dried cod and ling are carried from the storing sheds to
the ships, all available space from keel to deck is filled up, and the
fishermen prepare to journey homewards, or abroad into the wide world.
One ship after another hoists its brown-edged sails and steers away.
The North becomes quieter again, more deserted the land, desolate
the sea. At last, by the time of the spring equinox, all the migrant
fishermen have left the fishing grounds, and all the fish have returned
to the depths of the sea. But the sea is already sending forth other
children to people afresh the straits and sounds, and along with them
the skerries and islands; and soon from those same cliffs, at whose
base there was but lately all the bustle of the winter, millions of
bright bird eyes look down upon the waves.
It is a deeply-affecting trait in the life of all true sea-birds that
only two causes can move them to visit the land: the joyous spring-time
sense of new-awakening love, and the mournful foreboding of approaching
death. Not even Winter with its long night, its cold, and its storms
can drive them to the land; they are proof against all the terrors of
the North, and seek their food upon or under the waves; not even the
threatening jaws of voracious fish scare them ashore. They may alight
occasionally, but only for a short time, often on a solitary island in
the sea, to oil their feathers more thoroughly than can be done in the
water. But when, with the sun’s first brightness, love stirs in their
breasts, all, old and young alike, though they may have to swim and fly
thousands of miles, strive to reach the place where they themselves
first saw the light of day. And if, in mid-winter, months after the
breeding-places have been left desolate, a sea-bird feels death in his
heart, he hastens as long as his strength holds out, that he may, if
possible, die in the place where he was cradled.
The annual assembling of innumerable birds at the breeding-places fills
these for several months with a most marvellous life. The communities
differ like the sea-birds themselves, and the places, or _bergs_ (as
the Norsemen call them), which they people vary also. While some choose
only those reefs which rise just above the high-tide mark, and bear
no more vegetation than is enough to provide scanty material for the
nest hollowed out in the sea-weed heaps, others select islands which
rear themselves straight and steep for several hundred feet above the
sea, and are either rich in shelves, ledges, cavities, fissures, and
other hiding-places, or are covered by a thick layer of peat-like
plant remains. The Norseman calls the lower islets ‘eider-holms’ (or
eider bird-hills, as the German would say), for they are the favourite
brooding-places of what is to him the most valuable, and, what is the
same thing, the most useful of all sea-birds. The higher islands which
rise precipitously from the sea, and are chiefly peopled by auks and
gulls, are included under the general name of _bird-bergs_.
The observant naturalist is of course tempted to study and describe in
detail each individual brooding bird of the sea, but the rich variety
of the inhabitants of the bird-bergs of the far north and the variety
of their habits impose certain limits. Similarly, lest I exceed the
time allowed to me, I must refrain from giving detailed pictures of
the habits of all the berg birds, though I think it well at least
to outline those of a few in order to bring into prominence some of
the chief characteristics of sea-bird life. Selection is difficult,
but one, at any rate--the eider-duck, which returns every spring to
these islands, and helps to beautify them and their surroundings so
marvellously--must not be left undescribed.
Three species of these beautiful ducks inhabit or visit European
shores; one of these, the true eider-bird, is to be found every
summer, even on the north-western islands of Germany, especially
Sylt. Its plumage is a faithful mirror of the northern sea. Black and
red, ash-gray, ice-green, white, brown, and yellow are the colours
harmoniously blended in it. The eider-duck proper is the least
beautiful species, but it is nevertheless a handsome bird. The neck and
back, a band over the wings, and a spot on the sides of the body are
white as the crests of the waves; throat and crop have a white ground
faintly flushed with rose-colour as though the glow of the midnight sun
had been caught there; a belt on the cheeks is delicate green like the
ice of the glacier; breast and belly, wings and tail, the lower part of
the back and the rump are black as the depths of the sea itself. This
splendour belongs only to the male; the female, like all ducks, wears a
more modest yet not less pleasing garb, which I may call a house-dress.
The prevailing rust-coloured ground, shading more or less into brown,
is marked with longitudinal and transverse spots, lines and spirals,
with a beauty and variety that words cannot adequately describe.
No other species of duck is so thoroughly a child of the sea as
the eider-duck; no species waddles more clumsily on land, or flies
less gracefully, but none swims more rapidly or dives more deftly
and deeply. In search of food it sinks fully fifty yards below the
surface of the sea, and is said to be able to remain five minutes--an
extraordinarily long time--under water. Before the beginning of the
brooding season it does not leave the open sea at all, or does so very
rarely; following a whim rather than driven by necessity. Towards the
end of winter the flocks in which they congregate break up into pairs,
and only those males who have not succeeded in securing mates swim
about in little groups. Between two mates the most perfect unanimity
reigns. One will, undoubtedly that of the duck, determines the actions
of both. If she rises from the surface of the water to fly for a
hundred yards through the air, the drake follows her; if she dives
into the sea, he disappears directly afterwards; wherever she turns
he follows faithfully; whatever she does seems to express his wishes.
The pair still live out on the sea, though only where the depth is not
greater than twenty-five fathoms, and where edible mussels and other
bivalves are found in rich abundance on the rocks and the sea-bottom.
These molluscs often form the sole food of eider-ducks, and to procure
them they may have to dive to considerable depths. But it is the
abundance of this food which preserves the eiders from the scarcity
from which so many other species of duck often suffer severely.
In April, or at the latest in the beginning of May, the pairs approach
nearer and nearer the fringe of reefs and the shores of the mainland.
Maternal cares are stirring in the breast of the duck, and to these
everything else is subordinated. Out at sea the pair were so shy that
they never allowed a ship or boat to get near them, and feared man,
if he ever happened to approach them, more than any other living
creature; now in the neighbourhood of the islands their behaviour
changes entirely. Obeying her maternal instincts, and these only, the
duck swims to one of the brooding-places, and paying no attention to
the human inhabitants, waddles on to the land. Anxiously the drake
follows her, not without uttering his warning “Ahua, ahua”, not without
visible hesitation, for every now and then he remains behind as if
reflecting for a while, and then swims forward once more. The duck,
however, pays no heed to all this. Careless of the whole world around
her, she wanders over the island seeking a suitable brooding-place.
Being somewhat fastidious, she is not satisfied with the first good
heap of sea-weed cast up by the tide, with the low juniper-bush whose
branches straggling on the ground offer safe concealment, with the
half-broken box which the owner of the island has placed as a shelter
for her, or with the heaps of twigs and brushwood which he has gathered
to entice her, but approaches the owner’s dwelling as fearlessly as if
she were a domestic bird. She enters it, walks about the floor, follows
the housewife through rooms and kitchen, and capriciously selects, it
may be, the inside of the oven as her resting-place, thereby forcing
the housewife to have her bread baked for weeks on another island.
With manifest alarm the faithful drake follows her as far as he dares;
but when she, in his opinion, so far neglects all considerations of
safety as to dwell under the same roof with human beings, he no longer
tries to struggle against her wayward whim, but leaves her to follow
it alone, and flies out to the safety of the sea, there longingly
to await her daily visit. His mate is in no wise distracted by his
departure, but proceeds to collect twigs and brushwood--a task in
which she willingly accepts the Norseman’s help--and to pile up into a
heap her nest materials, which include sea-weed as well as twigs. She
hollows out a trough with her wings and makes it circular by turning
round and round in it with her smooth breast. Then she sets about
procuring the lining and incorporating it with the nest. Thinking only
of her brood, she plucks the incomparably soft down from her breast and
makes with it a sort of felt, which not only lines the whole hollow
but forms such a thick border at its upper edge that it serves as a
cover to protect the eggs from cold when the mother leaves the nest.
Before the work of lining is quite completed, the duck begins laying
her comparatively small, smooth-shelled, clouded-green or grayish-green
eggs. The clutch consists of from six to eight, seldom more or fewer.
This is the time for which the Norseman has been waiting, for it was
self-interest that prompted all his hospitality to the bird. The host
now becomes the robber. Ruthlessly he takes the eggs and the nest with
its inner lining of costly down. From twenty-four to thirty nests yield
about two pounds of down, worth at least thirty shillings on the spot.
This price is sufficient explanation of the Norseman’s way of acting.
[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Colony of Eider-ducks.]
With a heavy heart the duck sees the downfall of her hopes for that
year. Perturbed and frightened, she flies out to sea, where her mate
awaits her. Whether he takes the opportunity of repeating his warnings
more urgently I cannot say, but I can testify that he very soon
succeeds in consoling her. The joy and spirit of the spring-time still
live in the hearts of both; and in a very few days our duck waddles on
land again as though nothing had happened, to build a second nest! This
time she probably avoids her former position and contents herself with
the first available heap of tangle which is not fully taken up by other
birds. Again she digs and rounds a hollow; again she begins to probe
among her plumage in order to procure the lining of down which seems
to her indispensable. But, however much she exert herself, stretching
her neck and twisting it in intricate snake-like curves, she can find
no more. Yet when was a mother, even a duck mother, at a loss when
her children had to be provided for? Our duck is certainly at none.
She herself has no more down, but her mate bears it untouched on his
breast and back. Now it is his turn. And though he may perhaps rebel,
having a lively recollection of former years, he is the husband and
she the wife, therefore he must obey. Without compunction the anxious
mother rifles his plumage, and in a few hours, or at most within two
days, she has plucked him as bare as herself. That the drake, after
such treatment, should fly out to the open sea as soon as possible, and
associate for some months only with his fellows, troubling himself not
in the least about his mate and her coming brood, seems to me quite
comprehensible. And when, as happens on every nesting island, a drake
is to be seen standing by the brooding duck, I think he must be one who
has not yet been plucked![2]