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