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.