The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II

by A. E. Nordenskiöld

CHAPTER XIV.

Passage through Behring's Straits—Arrival at Nunamo—Scarce species of seal—Rich vegetation—Passage to America—State of the ice—Port Clarence—The Eskimo—Return to Asia—Konyam Bay—Natural conditions there—The ice breaks up in the interior of Konyam Bay—St. Lawrence Island—Preceding visits to the Island—Departure to Behring Island.

After we had passed the easternmost promontory of Asia, the course was shaped first to St. Lawrence Bay, a not inconsiderable fjord, which indents the Chukch peninsula, a little south of the smallest part of Behring's Straits. It was my intention to anchor in this fjord as long as possible, in order to give the naturalists of the Vega expedition an opportunity of making acquaintance with the natural conditions of a part of Chukch Land which is more favoured by nature than the bare stretch of coast completely open to the winds of the Polar Sea, which we hitherto had visited. I would willingly have stayed first for some hours at Diomede Island, the market-place famed among the Polar tribes, situated in the narrowest part of the Straits, nearly half-way between Asia and America, and probably before the time of Columbus a station for traffic between the Old and the New Worlds. But such a delay would have been attended with too great difficulty and loss of time in consequence of the dense fog which prevailed here on the boundary between the warm sea free from drift-ice and the cold sea filled with drift-ice.

Even the high mountains on the Asiatic shore were still wrapped in a thick mist, from which only single mountain-summits now and then appeared. Next the vessel large fields of drift-ice were visible, on which here and there flocks of a beautifully marked species of seal (Histriophoca fasciata, Zimm) had settled. Between the pieces of ice sea-birds swarmed, mostly belonging to other species than those which are met with in the European Polar seas. The ice was fortunately so broken up that the Vega could steam forward at full speed to the neighbourhood of St. Lawrence Bay, where the coast was surrounded by some more compact belts of ice, which however were broken through with ease. First, in the mouth of the fjord itself impenetrable ice was met with, completely blocking the splendid haven of St. Lawrence Bay. The Vega was, therefore, compelled to anchor in the open road off the village Nunamo. But even here extensive ice-fields, though thin and rotten, drifted about; and long, but narrow, belts of ice passed the vessel in so large masses that it was not advisable to remain longer at the place. Our stay there was therefore confined to a few hours.

During the course of the winter Lieutenant Nordquist endeavoured to collect from the Chukches travelling past as complete information as possible regarding the Chukch villages or encampments which are found along the coast between Chaun Bay and Behring's Straits. His informants always finished their list with the village Ertryn, situated west of Cape Deschnev, explaining that farther east and south there lived another tribe, with whom they indeed did not stand in open enmity, but who, however, were not to be fully depended upon, and to whose villages they therefore did not dare to accompany any of us.[344] This statement also corresponds, as perhaps follows from what I have pointed out in the preceding chapter, with the accounts commonly found in books on the ethnography of this region. While we steamed forward cautiously in a dense fog in the neighbourhood of Cape Deschnev, twenty to thirty natives came rowing in a large skin boat to the vessel. Eager to make acquaintance with a tribe new to us, we received them with pleasure. But when they climbed over the side we found that they were pure Chukches, some of them old acquaintances, who during winter had been guests on board the Vega. "Ankali" said they, with evident contempt, are first met with farther beyond St. Lawrence Bay. When we anchored next day at the mouth of this bay we were immediately, as usual, visited by a large number of natives, and ourselves visited their tents on land. They still talked Chukch with a limited mixture of foreign words, lived in tents of a construction differing somewhat from the Chukches', and appeared to have a somewhat different cast of countenance. They themselves would not allow that there was any national difference between them and the old warrior and conqueror tribe on the north coast, but stated that the race about which we inquired were settled immediately to the south. Some days after we anchored in Konyam Bay (64° 49' N. L., 172° 53' W.L. from Greenwich). We found there only pure reindeer-owning Chukches; there was no coast population living by hunting and fishing. On the other hand, the inhabitants near our anchorage off St. Lawrence Island consisted of Eskimo and Namollo. It thus appears as if a great part of the Eskimo who inhabit the Asiatic side of Behring's Straits, had during recent times lost their own nationality and become fused with the Chukches. For it is certain that no violent expulsion has recently taken place here. It ought besides to be remarked that the name Onkilon which Wrangel heard given to the old coast population driven out by the Chukches is evidently nearly allied to the word Ankali, with which the reindeer-Chukch at present distinguishes the coast-Chukch, also that, in the oldest Russian accounts of Schestakov's and Paulutski's campaigns in these regions, there never is any mention of two different tribes living here. It is indeed mentioned in these accounts that among the slain Chukches there were found some men with perforated lips, but probably these were Eskimo from the other side of Behring's Straits, previously taken prisoners by the Chukches, or perhaps merely Eskimo who had been paying a friendly visit to the Chukches and who had taken part as volunteers in their war of freedom. It therefore appears to me to be on the whole more probable that the Eskimo have migrated from America to Asia, than that, as some authors have supposed, this tribe has entered America from the west by Behring's Straits or Wrangel Land.

The tent-village Nunamo, or, as Hooper writes, "Noonahmone," does not lie low, like the Chukch villages we had formerly seen, on the sea-shore, but pretty high up on a cape between the sea and a river which debouches immediately to the south-west of the village, and now during the snow-melting season was much flooded. At a short distance from the coast the land was occupied by a very high chain of mountains, which was split up into a number of summits and whose sides were formed of immense stone mounds distributed in terraces. Here a large number of marmots and lagomys had their haunt. The lagomys, a species of rodent that does not occur in Sweden, of the size of a large rat, is remarkable for the care with which in summer it collects great stores for the winter. The village consisted of ten tents built without order on the first high strand bank. The tents differed somewhat in construction from the common Chukch tents, and as drift-wood appears to be met with on the beach only in limited quantity, whale-bones had been used on a very large scale in the frame of the tent. Thus, for instance, the tent-covering of seal-skin was stretched downwards over the ribs or lower jawbones of the whale which were fixed in the ground like poles. These were united above with slips of whale-bones, from which other slips of the same sort of bones or of whalebone rose to the summit of the tent, and finally, to prevent the blast from raising the tent-covering from the ground, its border was loaded with masses of large heavy bones. Eleven shoulder-blades of the whale were thus used round a single tent. In the absence of drift-wood, whale and seal bones drenched in train-oil are also used as fuel in cooking in the open air during summer; a large curved whale rib was placed over the fire-place to serve as a pot-holder; the vertebræ of the whale were used as mortars; the entrances to the blubber-cellars were closed with shoulder-blades of the whale; hollowed whale-bones were used as lamps; shoes of whale-bone or pieces of the under-jaw and the straighter ribs were used for shoeing the sledges, for spades and ice-mattocks, the different parts of the implement being bound together with whale-bone fibres, &c. [345]

Masses of black seal-flesh, and long, white, fluttering strings of inflated intestines, were hung up between the tents, and in their interior there were everywhere to be seen bloody pieces of flesh, prepared in a disgusting way or lying scattered about, whereby both the dwellings and their inhabitants, who were occupied with hunting, had a more than usually disagreeble appearance. A pleasant interruption was formed by the heaps of green willow branches which were placed at the entrance of nearly every tent, commonly surrounded by women and children, who ate the leaves with delight. At some places whole sacks of Rhodiola and various other plants had been collected for food during winter. As distinctive of the Chukches here it may be mentioned in the last place that they were abundantly provided with European household articles, among them Remington guns, and that none of them asked for spirits.

Most of the seals which were seen in the tents were the common Phoca hispida, but along with them we found several skins of Histriophoca fasciata, Zimm., and I even succeeded, though with great difficulty, in inducing the Chukches to part with the skin and skull of this uncommon species, distinguished by its peculiar marking. The natives appeared to set a special value on its skin, and parted with it unwillingly. We had ourselves, as I have already stated, seen during our passage from Behring's Straits a number of these seals on the ice-floes drifting south, but the limited time at our disposal did not permit us to hunt them.

When we left Pitlekaj, vegetation there was still far from having reached its full development, but at Nunamo the strand-bank was gay with an exceedingly rich magnificence of colour. On an area of a few acres Dr. Kjellman collected here more than a hundred species of flowering plants, among which were a considerable number that he had not before seen on the Chukch Peninsula. Space does not permit me to give another list of plants, but in order that the reader may have an idea of the great difference in the mode of growth which the same species may exhibit under the influence of different climatal conditions, I give here a drawing of the Alpine whitlow grass (Draba alpina, L.) from St. Lawrence Bay. It would not, perhaps, be easy to recognise in this drawing the species delineated on page 341 of vol. i,; the globular form which the plant assumed on the shore of Cape Chelyuskin exposed to the winds of the Polar Sea, has here, in a region protected from them, completely disappeared.

At the rocky headlands there were still, however, considerable snowdrifts, and from the heights we could see that considerable masses of ice were still drifting along the Asiatic side of Behring's Straits. During an excursion to the top of one of the neighbouring mountains, Dr. Stuxberg found the corpse of a native laid out on a stone-setting of the form common among the Chukches. Alongside the dead man lay a broken percussion gun, spear, arrows, tinder-box, pipe, snow-shade, ice-sieve, and various other things which the departed was considered to be in want of in the part of the Elysian fields set apart for Chukches. The corpse had lain on the place at least since the preceding summer, but the pipe was one of the clay pipes that I had caused to be distributed among the natives. It had thus been placed there long after the proper burial.

Anxious as I was to send off soon from a telegraph station some re-assuring lines to the home-land, because I feared that a general uneasiness had already begun to be felt for the fate of the Vega, I would willingly have remained at this place, so important and interesting in a scientific point of view, at least for some days, had not the ice-belts and ice-fields drifting about in the offing been so considerable that if a wind blowing on land had risen unexpectedly, they might readily have been dangerous to our vessel, which even now was anchored in a completely open road, for the splendid haven situated farther in in St. Lawrence Bay was still covered with ice, and consequently inaccessible. On the afternoon of 21st July, accordingly, when all were assembled on board pleased and delighted with the results of the morning visit to land, I ordered the anchor to be weighed that the Vega might steam across to the American side of Behring's Straits. As in all the Polar seas of the northern hemisphere, so also here, the eastern side of the Straits was ice-bestrewn, the western, on the other hand, clear of ice. The passage was at all events a rapid one, so that by the afternoon of the 21st July we were able to anchor in Port Clarence, an excellent haven south of the westernmost promontory of Asia, Cape Prince of Wales. It was the first time the Vega anchored in a proper haven, since on the 18th August 1878 she left Actinia, Haven on Taimur Island. During the intermediate time she had been constantly anchored or moored in open roads without the least land shelter from sea, wind, and drift-ice. The vessel was, however, thanks to Captain Palander's judgment and thoughtfulness, and the ability of the officers and crew, still not only quite free from damage, but even as seaworthy as when she left the dock at Karlskrona, and we had still on board provisions for nearly a year, and about 4,000 cubic feet of coal.

Towards the sea Port Clarence is protected by a long low sandy reef, between the north end of which and the land there is a convenient and deep entrance. There a considerable river falls into the interior of the harbour, the mouth of which widens to a lake, which is separated from the outer harbour by a sandy neck of land. This lake also forms a good and spacious harbour, but its entrance is too shallow for vessels of any considerable draught. The river itself, on the contrary, is deep, and about eighteen kilometres from its mouth flows through another lake, from the eastern shore of which rugged and shattered mountains rise to a height which I estimate at 800 to 1000 metres; but it is quite possible that their height is twice as great, for in making such estimates one is liable to fall into error. South of the river and the harbour the land rises abruptly from the river bank, which is from ten to twenty metres high. On the north side, on the other hand, the bank is for the most part low, but farther into the interior the ground rises rapidly to rounded hills from 300 to 400 metres high. Only in the valleys and at other places where very large masses of snow had collected during the winter, were snow-drifts still to be seen. On the other hand, we saw no glaciers, though we might have expected to find them on the sides of the high mountains which bound the inner lake on the east. It was also clear that during the recent ages no widely extended ice-sheet was to be found here, for in the many excursions we made in different directions, among others up the river to the lake just mentioned, we saw nowhere any moraines, erratic blocks, striated rock-surfaces, or other traces of a past ice-age. Many signs, on the other hand, indicate that during a not very remote geological period glaciers covered considerable areas of the opposite Asiatic shore, and contributed to excavate the fjords there—Kolyutschin Bay, St. Lawrence Bay, Metschigme Bay, Konyam Bay, &c.

When we approached the American side we could see that the shore cliffs were formed of stratified rocks. I therefore hoped to be able, at last, to make a rich collection of fossils, something that I had no opportunity of doing during the preceding part of the voyage. But I found, on reaching them, that the stratified rocks only consisted of crystalline schists without any traces of animal or vegetable remains. Nor did we find on the shore any whale-bones or any of the remarkable mammoth-bearing ice-strata which were discovered in the bay situated immediately north of Behring's Straits, which was named after Dr. Eschscholz, medical officer during Kotzebue's famous voyage.[346]

Immediately after the anchor fell we were visited by several very large skin boats and a large number of kayaks. The latter were larger than the Greenlanders', being commonly intended for two persons, who sat back to back in the middle of the craft. We even saw boats from which, when the two rowers had stepped out, a third person crept who had lain almost hermetically sealed in the interior of the kayak, stretched on the bottom without the possibility of moving his limbs, or saving himself if any accident should happen. It appeared to be specially common for children to accompany their elders in kayak voyages in this inconvenient way.

After the natives came on board a lively traffic commenced, whereby I acquired some arrow-points and stone fishing-hooks. Anxious to procure as abundant material as possible for

instituting a comparison between the household articles of the Eskimo and the Chukches, I examined carefully the skin-bags which the natives had with them. In doing so I picked out one thing after the other, while they did not object to me making an inventory. One of them, however, showed great unwillingness to allow me to get to the bottom of the sack, but this just made me curious to ascertain what precious thing was concealed there. I was urgent, and went through the bag half with violence, until at last, in the bottom, I got a solution of the riddle—a loaded revolver. Several of the natives had also breechloaders. The oldest age with stone implements, and the most recent period with breechloaders, thus here reach hands one to the other.

Many natives were evidently migrating to more northerly hunting-grounds and fishing places, perhaps also to the markets and play-booths, which Dr. John Simpson describes in his well-known paper on the West Eskimo.[347] Others had already pitched their summer tents on the banks of the inner harbour, or of the river before mentioned. On the other hand, there was found in the region only a small number of winter dwellings abandoned during the warm season of the year. The population consisted, as has been said, of Eskimo. They did not understand a word of Chukch. Among them, however, we found a Chukch woman, who stated that true Chukches were found also on the American side, north of Behring's Straits. Two of the men spoke a little English, one had even been at San Francisco, another at Honolulu. Many of their household articles reminded us of contact with American whalers, and justice demands the recognition of the fact that in opposition to what we commonly see stated, contact with men of civilised race appears to have been to the advantage and improvement of the savage in an economical and moral point of view. Most of them now lived in summer-tents of thin cotton cloth, many wore European clothes, others were clad in trousers of seal or reindeer-skin and a light, soft, often beautifully ornamented pesk of marmot skin, over which in rainy weather was worn an overcoat made of pieces of gut sewn together. The arrangement of the hair resembled that of the Chukches. The women were tattooed with some lines on the chin. Many of the men wore small moustaches, some even a scanty beard, while others had attempted the American goatee. Most of them, but not all, had two holes from six to seven millimetres in length, cut in the

lips below the corners of the mouth. In these holes were worn large pieces of bone, glass, or stone (figure 9, page 237). But these ornaments were often removed, and then the edges of the large holes closed so much that the face was not much disfigured. Many had in addition a similar hole forward in the lip. It struck me, however, that this strange custom was about to disappear completely, or at least to be Europeanised by the exchange of holes in the ears for holes in the mouth. An almost full-grown young woman had a large blue glass bead hanging from the nose, in whose partition a hole had been made for its suspension, but she was very much embarrassed and hid her head in a fold of mama's pesk, when this piece of grandeur attracted general attention. All the women had long strings of beads in the ears. They wore bracelets of iron or copper, resembling those of the Chukches. The colour of the skin was not very dark, with perceptible redness on the cheeks, the hair black and tallow-like, the eyes small, brown, slightly oblique, the face flat, the nose small and depressed at the root. Most of the natives were of average height, appeared to be healthy and in good condition, and were marked neither by striking thinness nor corpulence. The feet and the hands were small.

A certain elegance and order prevailed in their small tents, the floor of which was covered with mats of plaited plants. In many places vessels formed of cocoa-nut shells were to be seen, brought thither, like some of the mats, by whalers from the South Sea Islands. For the most part their household and hunting implements, axes, knives, saws, breechloaders, revolvers, &c., were of American origin, but they still used or preserved in the lumber repositories of the tent, bows and arrows, bird-darts, bone boat-hooks, and various stone implements. The fishing implements especially were made with extraordinary skill of coloured sorts of bone or stone, glass beads, red pieces of the feet of certain swimming birds, &c. The different materials were bound together by twine made of whalebone in such a

manner that they resembled large beetles, being intended for use in the same way as salmon-flies at home.

Fire was got partly with steel, flint, and tinder, partly by means of the fire-drill. Many also used American lucifers. The bow of the fire-drill was often of ivory, richly ornamented with hunting figures of different kinds. Their tools were more elegant, better carved and more richly coloured with graphite[348] and red ochre than those of the Chukches; the people were better off and owned a larger number of skin-boats, both kayaks and umiaks. This undoubtedly depends on the sea being here covered with ice for a shorter time and the ice being thinner than on the Asiatic side, and the hunting accordingly being better. All the old accounts however agree in representing that in former times the Chukches were recognised as a great power by the other savage tribes in these regions, but all recent observations indicate that that time is now past. A certain respect for them, however, appears still to prevail among their neighbours.

The natives, after the first mistrust had disappeared, were friendly and accommodating, honourable in their dealings though given to begging and to much haggling in making a bargain. There appeared to be no chief among them, complete equality prevailed, and the position of the woman did not appear to be inferior to that of the man. The children were what we would call in Europe well brought up, though they got no bringing up at all. All were heathens. The liking for spirits appeared to be less strong than among the Chukches. We learn besides that all selling of spirits to savages is not only forbidden on the American side, but forbidden in such a way that the law is obeyed.

During our stay among the Chukches my supply of articles for barter was very limited, for up to the hour of departure uncertainty prevailed as to the time at which we would get free, and I was therefore compelled to be sparing of the stores. I often found it difficult on that account to induce a Chukch to part with things which I wished to acquire. Here on the contrary I was a rich man, thanks to the large surplus that was over from our abundant winter equipment, which of course in warm regions would have been of no use to us. I turned my riches to account by making visits like a pedlar in the tent villages with sacks full of felt hats, thick clothes, stockings, ammunition, &c., for which goods I obtained a beautiful and choice collection of ethnographical articles. Among these may be mentioned beautiful bone etchings and carvings, and several arrow-points and other tools of a species of nephrite,[349] which is

so puzzlingly like the well-known nephrite from High Asia, that I am disposed to believe that it actually comes originally from that locality. In such a case the occurrence of nephrite at Behring's Straits is important, because it cannot be explained in any other way than either by supposing that the tribes living here have carried the mineral with them from their original home in High Asia, or that during the Stone Age of High Asia a like extended commercial intercommunication took place between the wild races as now exists, or at least some decades ago existed, along the north parts of Asia and America.

On the north side of the harbour we found an old European or American train-oil boiling establishment. In the neighbourhood of it were two Eskimo graves. The corpses had been laid on the ground fully clothed, without the protection of any coffin, but surrounded by a close fence consisting of a number of tent poles driven crosswise into the ground. Alongside one of the corpses lay a kayak with oars, a loaded double-barrelled gun with locks at half-cock and caps on, various other weapons, clothes, tinderbox, snow-shoes, drinking-vessels, two masks carved in wood and smeared with blood (figures 1 and 2, page 241), and strangely-shaped animal figures. Such were seen also in the tents. Bags of sealskin, intended to be inflated and fastened to harpoons as floats, were sometimes ornamented with small faces carved in wood (figure 3, page #241). In one of the two amulets of the same kind, which I brought home with me, one eye is represented by a piece of blue enamel stuck in, and the other by a piece of iron pyrites fixed in the same way. Behind two tents were found, erected on posts a metre and a half in height, roughly-formed wooden images of birds with expanded wings painted red. I endeavoured without success to purchase these tent-idols[350] for a large new felt hat—an article of exchange for which in other cases I could obtain almost anything whatever. A dazzlingly

white kayak of a very elegant shape, on the other hand, I purchased without difficulty for an old felt hat and 500 Remington cartridges.

As a peculiar proof of the ingenuity of the Americans when offering their goods for sale, it may be mentioned in conclusion that an Eskimo, who came to the vessel during our stay in the harbour, showed us a printed paper, by which a commercial house at San Francisco offered to "sporting gentlemen" at Behring's Straits (Eskimo?) their stock of excellent hunting shot.

As the west coast of Europe is washed by the Gulf Stream, there also runs along the Pacific coast of America a warm current, which gives the land a much milder climate than that which prevails on the neighbouring Asiatic side, where, as on the east coast of Greenland, there runs a cold northerly current. The limit of trees therefore in north-western America goes a good way north of Behring's Straits, while on the Chukch Peninsula wood appears to be wholly wanting. Even at Port Clarence the coast is devoid of trees, but some kilometres into the country alder bushes two feet high are met with, and behind the coast hills actual forests probably occur. Vegetation is besides already luxuriant at the coast, and far away here, on the coast of the New World, many species are to be found nearly allied to Scandinavian plants, among them the Linnæa. Dr. Kjellman therefore reaped here a rich botanical harvest, valuable for the purpose of comparison with the flora of the neighbouring portion of Asia and other High Arctic regions.

Dr. Almquist in like manner collected very extensive materials for investigating the lichen-flora of the region, probably before very incompletely known. The harvest of the zoologists, on the other hand, was scanty. Notwithstanding the luxuriant vegetation land-evertebrates appeared to occur in a much smaller number of species than in northern Norway. Of beetles, for instance, only from ten to twenty species could be found, mainly Harpalids and Staphylinids, and of land and fresh-water mollusca only seven or eight species, besides which nearly all occurred very sparingly. Among remarkable fishes may be mentioned the same black marsh-fish which we caught at Yinretlen. The avi-fauna was scanty for a high northern land, and of wild mammalia we saw only musk-rats. Even the dredgings in the harbour yielded, on account of the unfavourable nature of the bottom, only an inconsiderable number of animals and algæ.

On the 26th July, at three o'clock in the afternoon, we weighed anchor and steamed back in splendid weather and with for the most part a favourable wind to the shore of the Old World. In order to determine the salinity and temperature at different depths, soundings were made and samples of water taken every four hours during the passage across the straits. Trawling was besides carried on three times in the twenty-four hours, commonly with an extraordinarily abundant yield, among other things of large shells, as, for instance, the beautiful Fusus deformis, Reeve, with its twist to the left, and some large species of crabs. One of the latter (Chionoecetes opilio, Kröyer) the dredge sometimes brought up in hundreds. We cooked and ate them and found them excellent, though not very rich in flesh. The taste was somewhat sooty.

Lieutenant Bove constructed the diagram reproduced at [page 244], which is based on the soundings and other observations made during the passage, from which we see how shallow is the sound which in the northernmost part of the Pacific separates the Old World from the New. An elevation of the land less than that which has taken place since the glacial period at the well-known Chapel Hills at Uddevalla would evidently be sufficient to unite the two worlds with each other by a broad bridge, and a corresponding depression would have been enough to separate them if, as is probable, they were at one time continuous. The diagram shows besides that the deepest channel is quite close to the coast of the Chukch Peninsula, and that that channel contains a mass of cold water, which is separated by a ridge from the warmer water on the American side.

If we examine a map of Siberia we shall find, as I have already pointed out, that its coasts at most places are straight, and are thus neither indented with deep fjords surrounded with high mountains like the west coast of Norway, nor protected by an archipelago of islands like the greater part of the coasts of Scandinavia and Finland. Certain parts of the Chukch Peninsula, especially its south-eastern portion, form the only exception to this rule. Several small fjords here cut into the coasts, which consist of stratified granitic rocks, and in the offing two large and several small rocky islands form an archipelago, separated from the mainland by the deep Senjavin Sound. The wish to give our naturalists an opportunity of once more prosecuting their examination of the natural history

of the Chukch Peninsula, and the desire to study one of the few parts of the Siberian coast which in all probability were formerly covered with inland ice, led me to choose this place for the second anchorage of the Vega on the Asiatic side south of Behring's Straits. The Vega accordingly anchored here on the forenoon of the 28th July, but not, as was at first intended, in Glasenapp Harbour, because it was still occupied unbroken ice, but in the mouth of the most northerly of the fjords, Konyam Bay.

This portion of the Chukch Peninsula had been visited before us by the corvette Senjavin, commanded by Captain, afterwards Admiral, Fr. Lütké, and by an English Franklin Expedition on board the Plover, commanded by Captain Moore. Lütké stayed here with his companions, the naturalists MERTENS, POSTELS, and KITTLITZ, some days in August 1828, during which the harbour was surveyed and various observations in ethnography and the natural sciences made. Moore wintered at this place in 1848-49. I have already stated that we have his companion, Lieut. W. H. Hooper, to thank for very valuable information relating to the tribes which live in the neighbourhood. The region appears to have been then inhabited by a rather dense population. Now there lived at the bay where we had anchored only three reindeer-Chukch families, and the neighbouring islands must at the time have been uninhabited, or perhaps the arrival of the Vega may not have been observed, for no natives came on board, which otherwise would probably have been the case.

The shore at the south-east part of Konyam Bay, in which the Vega now lay at anchor for a couple of days, consists of a rather desolate bog, in which a large number of cranes were breeding. Farther into the country several mountain summits rise to a height of nearly 600 metres. The collections of the zoologists and botanists on this shore were very scanty, but on the north side of the bay, to which excursions were made with the steam-launch, grassy slopes were met with, with pretty high bushy thickets and a great variety of flowers, which enriched Dr. Kjellman's collection of the higher plants from the north coast of Asia with about seventy species. Here were found too the first land mollusca (Succinea, Limax, Helix, Pupa, &c.) on the Chukch Peninsula.[351]

We also visited the dwellings of the reindeer-Chukch families. They resembled the Chukch tents we had seen before, and the mode of life of the inhabitants differed little from that of the coast-Chukches, with whom we passed the winter. They were even clothed in the same way, excepting that the men wore a number of small bells in the belt. The number of the reindeer which the three families owned was, according to an enumeration which I made when the herd had with evident pleasure settled down at noon in warm sunshine on a snow-field in the neighbourhood of the tents, only about 400, thus considerably fewer than is required to feed three Lapp families. The Chukches have instead a better supply of fish, and, above all, better hunting than the Lapps; they also do not drink any coffee, and themselves collect a part of their food from the vegetable kingdom. The natives received us in a, very friendly way, and offered to sell or rather barter three reindeer, a transaction which on account of our hasty departure was not carried into effect.

The mountains in the neighbourhood of Konyam Bay were high and split up into pointed summits with deep valleys still partly filled with snow. No glaciers appear to exist there at present. Probably however the fjords here and the sounds, like St. Lawrence Bay, Kolyutschin Bay, and probably all the other deeper bays on the coast of the Chukch Peninsula, have been excavated by former glaciers. It may perhaps be uncertain whether a true inland-ice covered the whole country; it is certain that the ice-cap did not extend over the plains of Siberia, where it can be proved that no Ice Age in a Scandinavian sense ever existed, and where the state of the land from the Jurassic period onwards was indeed subjected to some changes, but to none of the thoroughgoing mundane revolutions which in former times geologists loved to depict in so bright

colours. At least the direction of the rivers appears to have been unchanged since then. Perhaps even the difference between the Siberia where Chikanovski's Ginko woods grew and the mammoth roamed about, and that where now at a limited depth under the surface constantly frozen ground is to be met with, depends merely on the isothermal lines having sunk slightly towards the equator.

The neighbourhood of Konyam Bay consists of crystalline rocks, granite poor in mica, and mica-schist lowermost, and then grey non-fossiliferous carbonate of lime, and last of all magnesian schists, porphyry, and quartzites. On the summits of the hills the granite has a rough trachytic appearance, but does not pass into true trachyte. Here however we are already in the neighbourhood of the volcanic hearths of Kamchatka, which for instance is shown by the hot spring, which Hooper discovered not far from the coast during a sledge journey towards Behring's Straits. In the middle of the severe cold of February its waters had a temperature of +69° C. Hot steam and drifting snow combined had thrown over the spring a lofty vault of dazzling whiteness formed of masses of snow converted into ice and covered with ice-crystals. The Chukches themselves appear to have found the contrast striking between the hot spring from the interior of the earth and the cold, snow, and ice on its surface. They offered blue glass beads to the spring, and showed Hooper, as something remarkable, that it was possible to boil fish in it, though the mineral water gave the boiled fish a bitter unpleasant taste.[352]

The interior of Konyam Bay was during our stay there still covered by an unbroken sheet of ice. This broke up on the afternoon of the 30th July, and had almost, rotten as it was, suddenly brought the voyage of the Vega to a termination by pressing her ashore. Fortunately the danger was observed in time. Steam was got up, the anchor weighed, and the vessel removed to the open part of the fjord. As on this account several cubic feet of coal had to be used for getting up steam, as our hitherto abundant stock of coal must now be saved, and as, in the last place I was still urged forward by the fear that a too lengthened delay in sending home despatches might not only cause much anxiety but also lead to a heavy expenditure of money, I preferred to sail on immediately rather than to enter a safer harbour in the neighbourhood from which the scientific work might continue to be prosecuted.

The course was now shaped for the north-west point of St. Lawrence Island. A little off Senjavin Sound we saw drift-ice for the last time. On the whole the quantity of ice which drifts down through Behring's Straits into the Pacific is not very great, and most of that which is met with in summer on the Asiatic side of the Behring Sea, is evidently formed in fjords and bays along the coast South of Behring's Straits accordingly I saw not a single iceberg nor any large block of glacier-ice, but only even and very rotten fields of bay-ice.

The Vega was anchored on the 31st July in an open bay on the north-western side of St. Lawrence Island. This island, called by the natives Enguae, is the largest one between the Aleutian Islands and Behring's Straits. It lies nearer Asia than America, but is considered to belong to the latter, for which reason it was handed over along with the Alaska Territory by Russia to the United States. The island is inhabited by a few Eskimo families, who have commercial relations with then Chukch neighbours on the Russian side, and therefore have adopted some words from their language. Then dress also resembles that of the Chukches, with the exception that, wanting reindeer-skin, they use pesks made of the skins of birds and marmots. Like the Chukches and Eskimo they use overcoats of pieces of seal-gut sewed together. On St. Lawrence Island their dress is much ornamented, chiefly with tufts of feathers of the sea-fowl that breed in innumerable flocks on the island. It even appears that gut clothes are made here for sale to other

tribes; otherwise it would be difficult to explain how Kotzebue's sailors could in half an hour purchase at a single encampment 200 coats of this kind. At the time of our visit all the natives went bareheaded, the men with their black tallow-like hair clipped to the root, with the exception of the common small border above the forehead. The women wore their hair plaited and adorned with beads, and were much tattooed, partly after very intricate patterns, as is shown by the accompanying woodcuts. Like the children they mostly went barefooted and barelegged. They were well grown, and many did not look ill, but all were merciless beggars, who actually followed our naturalists on their excursions on land.

The summer-tents were irregular, but pretty clean and light huts of gut, stretched on a frame of drift-wood and whale-bones. The winter dwellings were now abandoned. They appeared to consist of holes in the earth, which were covered above, with the exception of a square opening, with drift-wood and turf. During winter a sealskin tent was probably stretched over this opening, but it was removed for the time, probably to permit the summer heat to penetrate into the hole and melt the ice, which had collected during winter on its walls. At several tents we found large under-jaws of whales fixed in the ground. They were perforated above, and I suppose that the winter-tent, in the absence of other framework, was stretched over them. Masses of whale-bones lay thrown up along the shore, evidently belonging to the same species as those we collected at the shore-dunes at Pitlekaj. In the neighbourhood of the tents graves were also found. The corpses had been placed, unburned, in some cleft among the rocks which are split up by the frost, and often converted into immense stone mounds. They had afterwards been covered with stones, and skulls of the bear and the seal and whale-bones had been offered or scattered around the grave.

North-east of the anchorage the shore was formed of low hills rising with a steep slope from the sea. Here and there ruinlike cliffs projected from the hills, resembling those we saw on the coast of Chukch Land. But the rock here consisted of the same sort of granite which formed the lowermost stratum at Konyam Bay. It was principally at the foot of these slopes that the natives erected their dwellings. South-west of the anchorage commenced a very extensive plain, which towards the interior of the island was marshy, but along the coast formed a firm, even, grassy meadow exceedingly rich in flowers. It was gay with the large sunflower-like Arnica Pseudo-Arnica, and another species of Senecio (Senecio frigidus); the Oxytropis nigrescens, close-tufted and rich in flowers, not stunted here as in Chukch Land; several species of Pedicularis in their fullest bloom (P. sudetica, P. Langsdorfii, P. Oederi and P. capitata); the stately snow auricula (Primula nivalis), and the pretty Primula borealis. As characteristic of the vegetation at this place may also be mentioned several ranunculi, an anemone (Anemone narcissiflora), a species of monkshood with flowers few indeed, but so much the larger on that account, large tufts of Silene acaulis and Alsine macrocarpa, studded with flowers, several Saxifrages, two Claytoniæ, the Cl. acutifolia, important as a food-plant in the housekeeping of the Chukches, and the tender Cl. sarmentosa with its delicate, slightly rose-coloured flowers, and, where the ground was stony, long but yet flowerless, slightly green tendrils of the favourite plant of our homeland, the Linnæa borealis Dr. Kjellman thus reaped a rich harvest of higher plants, and a fine collection of land and marine animals, lichens and algæ was also made here. The ground consisted of sand in which lay large granite blocks, which we in Sweden would call erratic. They appeared however not to have been transported hither, but to be lying in situ, having along with the sand probably arisen through the disintegration of the rocks.

In the sea we found not a few algæ and a true littoral evertebrate-fauna, poor in species indeed, something which is completely absent in the Polar seas proper. As I walked along the coast I saw five pretty large self-coloured greyish-brown seals sunning themselves on stones a short distance from land. They belonged to a species which I had never seen in the Polar seas. As there was no boat at hand, I forbade the hunters that accompanied me, though the seals were within range, to test their skill as shots upon them. Perhaps they were females of Histriophoca fasciata, whose beautifully marked skin (of the male) I had seen and described at St. Lawrence Bay. The natives had a few dogs but no reindeer, which however might find food on the island in thousands. No kayaks were in use, but large baydars of the same construction as those of the Chukches.

St. Lawrence Island was discovered during Behring's first voyage, but the first who came into contact with the natives was Otto von Kotzebue[353] (on the 27th June 1816, and the 20th July

1817). The inhabitants had not before seen any Europeans, and they received the foreigners with a friendliness which exposed Kotzebue to severe suffering. Of this he gives the following account:—

"So long as the naturalists wandered about on the hills I stayed with my acquaintances, who, when they found that I was the commander, invited me into their tents. Here a dirty skin was spread on the floor, on which I had to sit, and then they came in one after the other, embraced me, rubbed their noses hard against mine, and finished their caresses by spitting in their hands and then stroking me several times over the face. Although these proofs of friendship gave me very little pleasure, I bore all patiently; the only thing I did to lighten their caresses somewhat was to distribute tobacco leaves. These the natives received with great pleasure, but they wished immediately to renew their proofs of friendship. Now I betook myself with speed to knives, scissors, and beads, and by distributing some succeeded in averting a new attack. But a still greater calamity awaited me when in order to refresh me bodily they brought forward a wooden tray with whale blubber. Nauseous as this food is to a European stomach I boldly attacked the dish. This, along with new presents which I distributed, impressed the seal on the friendly relation between us. After the meal our hosts made arrangements for dancing and singing, which was accompanied on a little tambourine."[352]

As von Kotzebue two days after sailed past the north point of the island he met three baydars. In one of them a man stood up, held up a little dog and pierced it through with his knife, as Kotzebue believed, as a sacrifice to the foreigners.[355]

Since 1817 several exploring expeditions have landed on St. Lawrence Island, but always only for a few hours. It is very dangerous to stay long here with a vessel. For there is no known haven on the coast of this large island, which is surrounded by an open sea. In consequence of the heavy swell which almost constantly prevails here, when the surrounding sea is clear of ice, it is difficult to land on the island with a boat, and the vessel anchored in the open road is constantly exposed to be thrown by a storm rising unexpectedly upon the shore cliffs. This held good in fullest measure of the Vega's anchorage, and Captain Palander was on this account anxious to leave the place as soon as possible. On the 2nd August at three o'clock in the afternoon we accordingly resumed our voyage. The course was shaped at first for Karaginsk Island on the east coast of Kamchatka, where it was my intention to stay some days in order to get an opportunity of making a comparison between the natural conditions of middle Kamchatka and the Chukch Peninsula. But as unfavourable winds delayed our passage longer than I had calculated on, I abandoned, though unwillingly, the plan of landing there. The Commander's Islands became instead the nearest goal of the expedition. Here the Vega anchored on the 14th August in a very indifferent harbour completely open to the west, north-west, and south, lying on the west side of Behring Island, between the main island and a small island lying off it.

FOOTNOTES:

[344] The enmity appeared, however, to be of a very passive nature and by no means depending on any tribal dislike, but only arising from the inhabitants of the villages lying farthest eastward being known to be of a quarrelsome disposition and having the same reputation for love of fighting as the peasant youths in some villages in Sweden. For Lieut. Hooper, who during the winter 1848-9 made a journey in dog-sledges from Chukotskoj-nos along the coast towards Behring's Straits says that the inhabitants at Cape Deschnev itself enjoyed the same bad reputation among their Namollo neighbours to the south as among the Chukches living to the westward. "They spoke another language." Possibly they were pure Eskimo.

[345] There is still in existence a sketch of a tribe, living far to the south on the coast of the Indian Sea, who at the time of Alexander the Great used the bones of the whale in a similar way. "They build their houses so that the richest among them take bones of the whale, which the sea casts up, and use them as beams, of the larger bones they make their doors. Arrian, Historia Indica, XXIX. and XXX.

[346] These strata were discovered during Kotzebue's cucumnavigation of the globe (Entdeckungs Reise, Weimar, 1821, i. p. 146, and ii. p. 170). The strand-bank was covered by an exceedingly luxuriant vegetable carpet, and rose to a height of eighty feet above the sea. Here the "rock," if this word can be used for a stratum of ice, was found to consist of pure ice, covered with a layer, only six inches thick, of blue clay and turf-earth. The ice must have been several hundred thousand years old, for on its being melted a large number of bones and tusks of the mammoth appeared, from which we may draw the conclusion that the ice-stratum was formed during the period in which the mammoth lived in these regions. This remarkable observation has been to a certain extent disputed by later travellers, but its correctness has recently been fully confirmed by Dall. On the other hand, the extent to which the strong odour, which was observed at the place and resembled that of burned horns, arose from the decaying mammoth remains, is perhaps uncertain. Kotzebue fixed the latitude of the place at 66° 15' 36". During Beechey's voyage in 1827 the place was thoroughly examined by Mr. Collie, the medical officer of the expedition. He brought home thence a large number of the bones of the mammoth, ox, musk-ox, reindeer, and horse, which were described by the famous geologist Buckland (F. W. Beechey, Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Behring's Straits, 1825-28. London, 1831, ii. Appendix).

[347] Further Papers relative to the recent Arctic Expedition, etc. Presented to both Houses of Parliament. London, 1855, p. 917.

[348] Graphite must be found in great abundance on the Asiatic side of Behring's Straits. I procured during winter a number of pieces, which had evidently been rolled in running water. Chamisso mentions in Kotzebue's Voyages (iii. p. 169) that he had seen this mineral along with red ochre among the inhabitants at St. Lawrence Bay; and Lieut Hooper states in his work (p. 139), that graphite and red ochre are found at the village Oongwysac between Chukotskoj-nos and Behring's Straits. The latter colour was sold at a high price to the inhabitants of distant encampments. These minerals have undoubtedly been used in the same way from time immemorial, and they are probably, like flint and nephrite, among the few kinds of stone which were used by the men of the Stone Age. So far as is known, graphite come first into use in Europe during the middle ages. A black-lead pencil is mentioned and delineated for the first time by Conrad Gessner in 1565. The rich but now exhausted graphite seam at Borrowdale, in England, is mentioned for the first time by Dr. Merret in 1667, as containing a useful mineral peculiar to England. Very rich graphite seams have been found during recent decades, both at the mouth of the Yenisej (Sidoroff's graphite quarry) and at a spur of the Sayan mountains in the southern part of Siberia (Alibert's graphite quarry), and these discoveries have played a certain rôle in the recent history of the exploration of the country.

[349] Nephrite is a light green, sometimes grass-green, very hard and compact species of amphibolite, which occurs in High Asia, Mexico, and New Zealand. At all these places it has been employed for stone implements, vases, pipes, &c. The Chinese put an immensely high value upon it, and the wish to procure nephite is said often to have determined their politics, to have caused wars, and impressed its stamp on treaties of peace concluded between millions. I also consider it probable that the precious Vasa Murrhina, which was brought to Rome after the campaign against Mithridates, and has given rise to so much discussion, was nephrite. Nephrite was also perhaps the first of all stones to be used ornamentally. For we find axes and chisels of this material among the people of the Stone Age both in Europe (where no locality is known where unworked nephrite is found) and in Asia, America, and New Zealand. In Asia implements of nephrite are found both on the Chukch Peninsula and in old graves from the Stone Age in the southern part of the country. They have been discovered at Telma, sixty versts from Irkutsk, by Mr. J. N. Wilkoffski, conservator of the East Siberian Geographical Society. In scientific mineralogy nephrite is first mentioned under the name of Kascholong (i.e. a species of stone from the river Kasch). It has been brought home under this name by Renat, a prisoner-of-war from Charles XII.'s army, from High Asia, and was given by him to Swedish mineralogists, who described it very correctly, though kascholong has since been erroneously considered a species of quarts.

[350] The Eskimo however, like the Chukches, do not appear to have any proper religion or idea of a life after this.

[351] We have already found some land mollusca at Port Clarence, but none at St. Lawrence Bay. The northernmost find of such animals now known was made by Von Middendorff, who found a species of Physa on the Taimur Peninsula.

[352] That a fire-emitting mountain was to be found in Siberia east of the Yenisej is already mentioned in a treatise by Isaak Massa, inserted in Hessel Gerritz, Detectio Freti, Amsterdam, 1612. The rumour about the volcanos of Kamchatka thus appears to have reached Europe at that early date.

[353] Kotzebue says that he was the first seafarer who visited the island. This however is incorrect. Billings landed there on the 1st August (21st July), 1791. From the vessel some natives was seen and a baydar which was rowed along the coast. The natives however were frightened by some gunshots fired as a signal (Sarytchev's Reise, ii. p. 91, Sauer, p. 239). Billings says that the place where he landed (the south-east point of the island) was nearly covered with bones of sea-animals. It would be important to have these thoroughly examined, as it is not impossible that Steller's sea-cow (Rhytina) may in former times have occasionally come to this coast. At all events important contributions to a knowledge of the species of whales in Behring's Straits may be gained here.

[354] Otto von Kotzebue Entdeckungs-Reise an die Sud-See und nach der Behring-Strasse, 1815-18 Weimar, 1821, i. p. 135, ii. p. 104, iii. pp. 171 and 178.

[355] On the days after our arrival at Pitlekaj several dogs were killed. I then believed that this was done because the natives were unwilling to feed them during winter, but it is not impossible that they sacrificed them to avert the misfortunes which it was feared the arrival of the foreigners would bring with it.