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

by A. E. Nordenskiöld

In 1875 a "prikaschik" (foreman) and three Russian labourers lived all the year round at Goltschicha. Sverevo was inhabited by one man and Priluschnoj by an old man and his son. All were poor; they dwelt in small turf-covered cabins, consisting of a lobby and a dirty room, smoked and sooty, with a large fireplace, wooden benches along the walls, and a sleeping place fixed to the wall, high above the floor. Of household furniture only the implements of fishing and the chase were numerously represented. There were in addition pots and pans, and occasionally a tea-urn. The houses were all situated near the river-bank, so high up that they could not be reached by the spring inundations. A disorderly midden was always to be found in the near neighbourhood, with a number of draught dogs wandering about on it seeking something to eat. Only one of the Russian settlers here was married, and we were informed that there was no great supply of the material for Russian housewives for the inhabitants of these legions. At least the Cossack Feodor, who in 1875 and 1876 made several unsuccessful attempts to serve me as pilot, and who himself was a bachelor already grown old and wrinkled, complained that the fair or weaker sex was poorly represented among the Russians. He often talked of the advantages of mixed marriages, being of opinion, under the inspiration of memory or hope, I know not which, that a Dolgan woman was the most eligible purti for a man disposed to marry in that part of the world.

A little farther south, but still far north of the limit of trees, there are, however, very well-to-do peasants, who inhabit large simovies, consisting of a great number of houses and rooms, in which a certain luxury prevails, where one walks on floor-coverings of skins, where the windows are whole, the sacred pictures covered with plates of gold and silver, and the walls provided with mirrors and covered with finely coloured copper-plate portraits of Russian Czars and generals. This prosperity is won by traffic with the natives, who wander about as nomads on the tundra with their reindeer herds.

The cliffs around Port Dickson consist of diorite, hard and difficult to break in pieces, but weathering readily. The rocky hills are therefore so generally split up that they form enormous stone mounds. They were covered with a great abundance of lichens, and the plains between them yielded to Dr. Kjellman the following phanerogamous plants:
Cineraria frigida RICHARDS.
Erigeron uniflorus L.
Saussurea alpina DC.
Taraxacum phymatocarpum J. VAHL.
Gymnandra Stelleri CH. &c. SCHL.
Pedicularis sudetica WILLD.
Pedicularis hirsuta L.
Pedicularis Oederi VAHL.
Eritrichium villosum BUNGE.
Myosotis silvatica HOFFM.
Astragalus alpinus L.
Oxytropis campestris (L.) DC.
Dryas octopetala L.
Sieversia glacialis B. BR.
Potentilla emarginata PURSH.
Saxifraga oppositifolia L.
Saxifraga bronchialis L.
Saxifraga Hirculus L.
Saxifraga stellaris L.
Saxifraga nivalis L.
Saxifraga hieraciifolia WALDST. &c. KIT.
Saxifraga punctata L.
Saxifraga cernua L.
Saxifraga rivularis L.
Saxifraga cæspitosa L.
Chrysosplenium alternifolium L.
Rhodiola rosea L.
Parrya macrocarpa R. BR.
Cardamine pratensis L.
Cardamine bellidifolia L.
Eutrema Edwardsii R. BR.
Cochlearia fenestrata R. BR.
Draba alpina L.
Draba oblongata (R. BR.) DC.
Draba corymbosa R. BR.
Draba Wahlenbergii HN.
Draba altaica (LEDEB.) BUNGE.
Papaver nudicaule L.
Banunculus pygmæus WG.
Ranunculus hyperboreus ROTTB.
Ranunculus lapponicus L.
Ranunculus nivalis L.
Ranunculus sulphureus SOL.
Ranunculus affinis R. BR.
Caltha palustris L.
Wahlbergella apetala (L.) FR.
Stellaria Edwardsii R. BR.
Cerastium alpinum L.
Alsine arctica FENZL.
Alsine macrocarpa FENZL.
Alsine rubella WG.
Sagina nivalis FR.
Oxyria digyna (L.) HILL.
Rumex arcticus TRAUTV.
Polygonum viviparum L.
Polygonum Bistorta L.
Salix polaris WG.
Festuca rubra L.
Poa cenisea ALL.
Poa arctica R BR.
Glyceria angustata B. BR.
Catabrosa algida (SOL.) FR.
Catabrosa concinna TH. FR.
Colpodium latifolium E. BR.
Dupontia Fisheri E. BR.
Koeleria hirsuta GAUD.
Aira cæspitosa L.
Alopecurus alpinus SM.
Eriophorum angustifolium ROTH.
Eriophorum vaginatum L.
Eriophorum Scheuchzeri HOPPE.
Carex rigida GOOD.
Carex aquatilis WG.
Juncus biglumis L.
Luzula hyperborea R BR.
Luzula arctica BL.
Lloydia serotina (L.) REICHENB.
Banunculus pygmæus WG.
Our botanists thus made on land a not inconsiderable collection, considering the northerly position of the region. On the other hand no large algæ were met with in the sea, nor was it to be expected that there would, for the samples of water

taken up with Ekman's instrument showed that the salinity at the bottom was as slight as at the surface, viz. only 0.3 per cent. The temperature of the water was also at the time of our visit about the same at the bottom as at the surface, viz. +9° to +10°. In spring, when the snow melts, the water here is probably quite fresh, in winter again cold, and as salt as at the bottom of the Kara Sea. Under so variable hydrographical conditions we might have expected an exceedingly scanty marine fauna, but this was by no means the case. For the dredgings in the harbour gave Dr. Stuxberg a not inconsiderable yield, consisting of the same types as those which are found in the salt water at the bottom of the Kara Sea. This circumstance appears to show that certain evertebrate types can endure a much greater variation in the temperature and salinity of the water than the algæ, and that there is a number of species which, though as a rule they live in the strongly cooled layer of salt water at the bottom of the Kara Sea, can bear without injury a considerable diminution in the salinity of the water and an increase of temperature of about 12°.

For the science of our time, which so often places the origin of a northern form in the south, and vice versâ, as the foundation of very wide theoretical conclusions, a knowledge of the types which can live by turns in nearly fresh water of a temperature of +10°, and in water cooled to -2°.7 and of nearly the same salinity as that of the Mediterranean, must have a certain interest. The most remarkable were, according to Dr. Stuxberg, the following: a species of Mysis, Diastylis Rathkei KR., Idothea entomon LIN., Idothea Sabinei KR., two species of Lysianassida, Pontoporeia setosa STBRG., Halimedon brevicalcar GOËS, an Annelid, a Molgula, Yoldia intermedia M. SARS, Yoldia (?) arctica GRAY, and a Solecurtus.

Driftwood in the form both of small branches and pieces of roots, and of whole trees with adhering portions of branches and roots, occurs in such quantities at the bottom of two well-protected coves at Port Dickson, that the seafarer may without difficulty provide himself with the necessary stock of fuel. The great mass of the driftwood which the river bears along, however, does not remain on its own banks, but floats out to sea to drift about with the marine currents until the wood has absorbed so much water that it sinks, or until it is thrown up on the shores of Novaya Zemlya, the north coast of Asia, Spitzbergen or perhaps Greenland.

Another portion of the wood sinks, before it reaches the sea, often in such a way that the stems stand upright in the river bottom, with one end, so to say, rooted in the sand. They may thus be inconvenient for the navigation, at least at the shallower places of the river. A bay immediately off Port Dickson was almost barred by a natural palisade-work of driftwood stems.

August 7th. The Vega coaled from the Express. In the evening the Lena arrived, 36 hours after the Vega had anchored, that is to say, precisely at the appointed time. Concerning this excursion. Dr. Almquist reports: