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.