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Marine Biological Laboratory yh shrary
Woods Hole. Massachusetts

(VOYAGES - OF - EXPLORATION

Dl

Collected
Newcoms Tuomeson Montgomery
(1907-1986)
Philadelphia archutect nephew of
Thomas Harrison M ontgomery (1873-1912 ),

MBL investigator, and Priscila Braislin
Montgomery (1874-1956), MBL Ibrarvan.

Gift of ther sons Hugh Montgomery, MD.
and Raymond B. Montgomery — 1987.

THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA

ROUND

ASIA AND EUROPE,

THE

» VOYAGE OF THE VEGA

ROUND

ASIA AND EUROPE

WITH A HISTORICAL REVIEW
OF PREVIOUS JOURNEYS ALONG THE NORTH COAST OF THE
OLD WORLD

BY

A. E. NORDENSKIOLD

TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER LESLIE

WITH FIVE STEEL PORTRAITS, NUMEROUS MAPS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Hew Pork
MACMILLAN AND CO.

1882

i Waa | et |

Ava -

ir

TO. HIS MAJESTY
KING OSCAR II.
THE HIGH PROTECTOR OF THE VEGA EXPEDITION
THIS SKETCH OF THE VOYAGE
HE SO MAGNANIMOUSLY AND GENEROUSLY PROMOTED
IS WITH THE DEEPEST GRATITUDE
MOST HUMBLY
Dedicated

BY

A. E. NORDENSKIOLD.

aay

;
T

i

US

ary

rae b's a oa ie | Me : i aa ;

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

THIS popular account of the voyage of the Vega round Asia
and Europe is herewith presented to the friends of geographical
research in an English translation. Along with the sketch
of the voyage itself, of the natural conditions on the north
coast of Siberia, of the animal and vegetable life prevailing
there, and of the races with whom we came in contact in
the course of the voyage, the work contains a review, as com-
plete as space permitted, of preceding exploratory voyages
to the Polar Sea of Europe and Asia, from King ALFRED'S
account of the first North-East voyage under the Northman,
OTHERE, down to the expeditions for sport and hunting of
the past decade. For it would have been too ungrateful, in
an account of the voyage of the Vega, not to have referred
at some length to our predecessors, who, with indescribable
struggles and difficulties, and generally with the sacrifice of
health and life, paved the way along which we advanced,
made possible the victory we achieved. In this way, besides,
the work itself has gained a much-needed variety, for nearly
all the narratives of the older North-East voyages contain
in abundance what a sketch of our own adventures has not
to offer, but what many readers, perhaps, will expect to find
in a book such as this—accounts of dangers and misfortunes
of a thousand sorts by land and sea.

May the prominent part which England and America have
played in the history of Polar Exploration, and the lively
interest that everywhere in these countries has been taken in
the voyage of the Vega, secure for this work a friendly recep-
tion; and, above all, may the voyage of the Vega conduce to
maintain the desire for Arctic Research till the veil which still
conceals the lands round the North and South Poles be com-
pletely removed. Many a problem of great importance to
mankind still waits for a solution from the ice-deserts of the
Polar Seas and the Polar Lands; many a splendid victory in
the service of science is still to be won in those distant
regions.

A. E. NORDENSKIOLD.

Lonpon, November, 1881.

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.

HAviINnG been honoured by a request from Baron Nordenskiold
that I would undertake the translation of the work in which
he gives an account of the voyage by which the North-East
Passage was at last achieved, and Asia and Europe circum-
navigated for the first time, I have done my best to reproduce
in English the sense of the Swedish original as faithfully as
possible, and at the same time to preserve the style of the
author as far as the varying idioms of the two languages
permit.

I have to thank two ladies for the help they kindly gave
me in reading proofs, and my friend Herr Gustar LINDSTROM,
for valuable assistance rendered in various ways.

Where not otherwise indicated, temperature is stated in
degrees of the Centrigrade or Celsius thermometer. Longi-
tude is invariably reckoned from the meridian of Greenwich.

Where distance is stated in miles without qualification,
the miles are Swedish (one of which is equal to 664
English miles), except at page 282, where the geographical
square miles are German, each equal to sixteen English
geographical square miles.

ALEX. LESLIE.

CHERRYVALE, ABERDEEN,
24th November, 1881.

- ERRATA.

Page 38, under Wood-cut, for ““chammmorus,”’ read ‘‘ chamemorus.””
Page 109, line 12 from top, for ‘‘remove,” read ‘‘ roll away.” ;

CONTENTS.

“INTRODUCTION Page 1

CHAPTER I.

Departure—Tromsoe—Members of the Expedition—Stay at Maosoe—Limit of

Trees—Climate—Scurvy and Antiscorbutics—The first doubling of North
Cape—Othere’s account of his Travels—Ideas concerning the Geography of
Scandinavia current during the first half of the sixteenth century—The
oldest Maps of the North—Herbertstein’s account of Istoma’s voyage—
Gustaf Vasa and the North-East Passage—Willoughby and Chancelor’s
voyages - ° ; ; : 6 : : . Pages 30—57

CHAPTER II.

Departure from Maosoe—Gooseland—State of the Ice—The Vessels of the

Expedition assemble at Chabarova—The Samoyed town there—The Church—
Russians and Samoyeds—Visit to Chabarova in 1875—Purchase of Samoyed
Idols—Dress and dwellings of the Samoyeds—Comparison of the Polar
Races—Sacrificial Places and Samoyed Grave on Waygats Island visited
Former accounts of the Samoyeds—Their place in Ethnography.

Pages 57—83

CHAPTER III.

From the Animal World of Novaya Zemlya—The Fulmar Petrel—The Rotge or

The

Little Auk—Brimnich’s Guillemot—The Black Guillemot—The Arctic Puffin
—The Gulls—Richardson’s Skua—The Tern—Ducks and Geese—The Swan
—Waders—The Snow Bunting—The Ptarmigan—The Snowy Owl—The
Reindeer—The Polar Bear—The Arctic Fox—YThe Lemming—Insects—The
Walrus—The Seal—Whales : : : : ; . Pages 83—130

CHAPTER IV.

Origin of the names Yugor Schar and Kara Sea—Rules for Sailing through
Yugor Schar—The ‘“ Highest Mountain” on Earth—Anchorages—Entering
the Kara Sea—Its Surroundings—The Inland-ice of Novaya Zemlya—True
Icebergs rare in certain parts of the Polar Sea—The Natural Conditions of
the Kara Sea—Animals, Plants, Bog-ore—Passage across the Kara Sea—The
Influence of the Ice on the Sea-bottom—Fresh-water Diatoms on Sea-ice
Arrival at Port Dickson—Animal Life there—Settlers and Settlements at the
Mouth of the Yenisej—The Flora at Port Dickson—Evertebrates—Excursion
to White Island—Yalmal—Previous Visits—Nummelin’s Wintering on the
Briochov Islands 5 ; : : - € ; . Pages 131—164

The

The

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER YV.

history of the North-East Passage from 1556 to 1878—Burrough, 1556—Pet
and Jackman, 1580—The first voyage of the Dutch, 1594—Oliver Brunel—
The second voyage, 1595—The third voyage, 1596—Hudson, 1608—Gourdon,
1611—Bosman, 1625—De la Martinicre, 1653—Vlamingh, 1664—Snobberger,
1675—Roule reaches a land north of Novaya Zemlya—Wood and Flawes,
1676—Discussion in England concerning the state of the ice in the Polar Sea
—Views of the condition of the Polar Sea still divided—Payer and
Weyprecht, 1872-74 . é > : F ; . Pages 164—205

CHAPTER VI.

North-east Voyages of the Russians and Norwegians—Rodivan Ivanov,
1690—The Great Northern Expedition, 1734-37—-The supposed richness in

‘ metals of Novaya Zemlya—Juschkov, 1757—Savva Loschkin, 1760—

Rossmuislovy, 1768 — Lasarev, 1819—Liitke, 1821-24—Ivanoy, 1822-28—
Pachtussov, 1832-25—Von Baer, 1837—Zivolka and Moissejev, 1838-39—
Von Krusenstern, 1860-62—The Origin and History of the Polar Sea
Huntins—Carlsen, 1868—Ed. Johannesen, 1869-70—Ulve, Mack, and
Quale, 1870—Mack, 1871—Discovery of the Relics of Barents’ wintering
—Tobiesen’s wintering, 1872-73—The Swedish Expeditions, 1875 and 1876
—Wigzgins, 1876—Later Voyages to and from the Yenisej} Pages 205—242

CHAPTER VII.

Departure from Port Dickson—Landing on a rocky island east of the Yenisej—

The

The

Self-dead animals—Discovery of crystals on the surface of the drift-ice—
Cosmie dust—Stay in Actinia Bay—Johannesen’s discovery of the island
Ensamheten—Arrival at Cape Chelyuskin—The natural state of the land and
sea there—Attempt to penetrate right eastwards to the New Siberian Islands
—The effect of the mist—Abundant dredging-yield—Preobraschenie Island—
Separation from the Zena at the meuth of the river Lena. Pages 243—270

CHAPTER VIII.

voyage of the Fraser and the Lzpress up the Yenisej] and their return to
Norway—Contract for the piloting of the Zena up the Lena river—The
voyage of the Zena through the delta and up the river to Yakutsk—The
natural state of Siberia in general—The river territories—The fitness of the
land for cultivation and the necessity for improved communications—The
great rivers, the future commercial highways of Siberia—Voyage up the
Yenisej in 1875—Sibiriakoff’s Island—The twndra—The primeval Siberian
forest—The inhabitants of Western Siberia: the Russians, the Exiles, the
‘* Asiaties ’’—Ways of travelling on the Yenisej : dog-boats, floating trading
stores propelled by steammNew prospects for Siberia . Pages 270—300

CHAPTER IX.

new Siberian Islands —The Mammoth— Discovery of Mammoth and
Rhinoceros mummies—Fossil Rhinoceros horns—Stolbovoj Island—Liachoff’s
Island—First discovery of this island—Passage through the sound between
this island and the mainland—Animal life there—Formation of ice in water
above the freezing point—The Bear Islands—The quantity and dimensions
of the ice begin to increase—Different kinds of sea-ice—Renewed attempt to
leave the open channel along the coast—Lighthouse Island—Voyage along
the coast to Cape Schelagskoj—Advance delayed by ice, shoals, and fog

CONTENTS. XV

—First meeting with the Chukches—Landing and visits to Chukch villages
—Discovery of abandoned encampments—Trade with the natives rendered
difficult by the want of means of exchange—Stay at Irkaipij—Onkilon
graves—Information regarding the Onkilon race—Renewed contact with the
Chukches—Kolyutschin Bay—American statements regarding the state of
the ice north of Behring’s Straits—The Vega beset A Pages 301—348

CHAPTER X.

Wintering becomes necessary—The position of the Vega—The ice round the

vessel— American ship in the neighbourhood of the Vega when frozen in—
The nature of the neighbouring country—The Vega is prepared for wintering
-—Provision-dep6t and observatories established on land—The winter dress
—Temperature on board—Health and dietary—Cold, wind, and snow—The
Chukehes on board—Menka’s visit—Letters sent home—Nordquist and
Hovgaard’s excursion to Menka’s encampment—Another visit of Menka
The fate of the letters—Nordquist’s journey to Pidlin—Find of a Chukch
grave—Hunting—Scientific work—Life on board—Christmas Eve.

z Pages 349—395

CHAPTER XI.

Hope of release at the new year—Bove’s excursion to the open water—Mild

Th

@

The

weather and renewed severe cold— Mercury frozen— Popular lectures—
Brusewitz’s excursion to Najtskaj—Another despatch of letters home—The
natives’ accounts of the state of the ice on the coast of Chukch Land—The
Chukches carry on traffic between Arctic America and Siberia—Excursions in
the neighbourhood of winter quarters—The weather during spring—The
melting of the snow—The aurora—The arrival of the migratory birds—The
animal world of Chukch Land—Noah Elisej’s relief expedition—A remarkable
fish— The country clear of snow— Release—The North-East Passage
achieved P E - Pages 395—451

CHAPTER XII.

history, physique, disposition, and manners of the Chukches Pages 451—510

CHAPTER XIII.

development of our knowledge of the north coast of Asia—Herodotus—
Strabo—Pliny—Marco Polo—Herbertstein’s map—-The conquest of Siberia
by the Russians—Deschney’s voyages—Coast navigation between the Lena
and the Kolyma—aAccounts of islands in the Polar Sea and old voyages to
them—The discovery of Kamchatka—The navigation of the Sea of Okotsk is
opened by Swedish prisoners-of-war—The Great Northern Expedition—
Behring —Schalaurov — Andreyev’s Land —The New Siberian islands —
Hedenstriim’s expeditions—Anjou and Wrangel—Voyages from Behring’s
Straits westward—Fictitious Polar voyages : ; . Pages 510—562

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 . . Pages 562—592

Xvi CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XV.

The position of Behring Island—Its inhabitants—The discovery of the Island by
Behring—Behring’s death—Steller—The former and present fauna on the
Island: foxes, sea-otters, sea-cows, sea-lions, and sea-bears—Collection of
bones of the Rhytina—Visit to a ‘‘ rookery ” —Torporkoff Island—
Alexander Dubovski—Voyage to Yokohama—Lightning stroke.

Pages 592—620

CHAPTER XVI.

Arrival at Yokohama—A Telegram sent to Europe—The stranding of the Steamer
A. E. Nordenskiéld— Fétes in Japan—The Minister of Marine, Kawamura—
Prince Kito-Shira-Kava—Audience of the Mikado—Graves of the Shoguns—
Imperial Garden at Tokio—The Exhibition there—Visit to Enoshima—
Japanese Manners and Customs—Thunberg and Kimpfer . Pages 621—644

CHAPTER XVII.

Excursion to Asamayama—The Nakasendo road—Takasaki— Difficulty of obtain-
ing Quarters for the Night—The Baths at Ikaho—Massage in Japan—
Swedish matches—Travelling in Kago—Savavatari—Criminals—Kusatsu—
The Hot Springs and their healing power—Rest at Rokurigahara—The
Summit of Asamayama—The Descent—Journey over Usui-toge—Japanese
Actors—Pictures of Japanese Folk-life—Return to Yokohama.

Pages 644—668

CHAPTER XVIII.

Farewell dinner at Yokohamz Joyage to Kobe—Purchase
of Japanese Books—Journey by rail to aa ase Lake and the Legend of
its Origin—Dredging there—Japanese Dancing-Girls—Kioto—The Imperial
Palace—Temples—Swords and Sword-bearers—Shintoism and Buddhism—
The Porcelain Manufacture—Japanese Poetry—Feast in a Buddhist Temple
—Sailing across the Inland Sea of Japan—Landing at Hirosami and Shimo-
noseki — N Nagasaki — Excursion to Mogi— Collection of Fossil Plants —
Departure from Japan . : ; : 5 : Z Pages 668—693

CHAPTER XIX.

Hong Kong and C Stone-polishing Establishments at Canton—Political
Relations in an English Colony--Treatment of the Natives—Voyage to
Labuan—Coal Mines there—Excursion to the shore of Borneo—Malay
Villages—Singapore—Voyage to Ceylon—Point de Galle—The Gem Mines
at Ratnapoora— Visit to a Temple—Purchase of Manuscripts—The Popula-
tion of Ceylon—Dr. Aimquist’s Excursion to the Interior of the Island.

Pages 693—721

CHAPTER XX.

The Journey Home—Christmas, 1879—Aden—Suez—Cairo—Excursion to the
Pyramids and the Mokattam Mountains—Petrified Tree-stems—The Suez
Canal—Landing on Sicily by night—Naples—Rome—The Members of the
Expedition separate Lisbon — Bngland—Paris—Copenhagen— Festive Entry
into Stockholm—Fétes there—Conclusion . : Pages 721—741

“ eo

sR? ee?

Adolf Erik Nordenskiold
Oscar Dickson .

PORTRAITS.
Engraved on Steel by G. J. Stodart of London.

“ Page

Alexander Sibiriakoff

Louis Palander

ms

to bo

LITHOGRAPHED MAPS.

. Map of North Europe, from Nicholas Donis’s edition of ee

Cosmographia, Ulm, 1482

. Map of the North, from Jakob Ziegler’s ‘Saude Straschiin, 1532
. Map of North Europe from Olai Magni Historia de gentium septen-

trionalium variis conditionibus, Basil, 1567 .

4. Russian Map of the North Polar Sea from the beginning of the 17th

Or

be |

© oO

century, published in Holland in 1612 by Isaac Massa .

. Map showing Barents’ Third Voyage, from J. L. Pontani Rerum et ur bis

Amstelodamensium historia, Arnst., 1611

. Map of Port Dickson, by G. Bove. Map of Cape Sitar on Vavents

Island, by the author. The Zena’s cruise in Malygin Sound, a
A. Hovgaard. Map of Cape Chelyuskin, by G. Bove .

. Sketch-Map of Taimur Sound ; Map of Actinia Bay, both by G. Bove:
. Map of the River System of Siberia

. Herbertstein’s Map of Russia, 1550 (photiithoarahie facsimile).
10.

Map of the North Coast of the Old World from Norway to Behring’s
Straits, with the track of the Vega, constructed from old and
recent sources, and from observations made during the Voyage of
the Vega, by N. Selander, Captain in the General Staff

To face Title-page.

450

LIST OF WOOD-CUTS.

The wood-cuts, when not otherwise stated below, were engraved at Herr Wilhelm

MI gt go bo

nn
| = ee 2)

i |
em CO

tt
ID NH

Meyer's Xylographic Institute in Stockholm,

. The Pega under sail, drawn by Captain J. Hiigg
. The Vega —Longitudinal section, drawn by Lieut. C. A. M. SAHILpae

3 », Plan of arrangement under deck, drawn by ditto
= », Plan of upper deck, drawn by ditto ; s

. The Lena—Longitudinal section, drawn by Marine-engineer J. Pihlgren

. », Plan of arrangement under deck, drawn by ditto
- », Plan of upper deck, drawn by ditto

. Flag of the Swedish Yacht Club, drawn by V. Andrén

. Tromsoe, drawn by R. Haglund :

. Old World Polar dress, drawn by O, Sorling :

. New World Polar Dress, drawn by Docent A, Kornerup, Gapeshament
. Limit of Trees in Norway, drawn by R. Haglund, engraved by

J. Engberg .

. Limit of Trees in Siberia, drawn by ditto . : ‘ : 5
. The Cloudberry (Rubus EDIE: eh drawn " Mrs. Professor

A. Anderssen

. Norse Ship of the Tenth Genteee ape by le: ae Seieren! Christiania
. Sebastian Cabot, engraved by Miss Ida Falander :

. Sir Hugh Willoughby, engraved by J. D. Cooper, London Zo ae page
18. : : 5
. Vardoe in our days, drawn by R. Haglund ‘

. Coast Landscape from Matotschkin Schar, drawn by R. rapeibene
. Church of Chabarova, drawn by V. Andrén

. Samoyed Woman’s Hood, drawn by O. Sorling .

Vardoe in 1594 .

. Samoyed Sleigh, drawn by R. Haglund

. Lapp Akja, drawn by ditto ; engraved by J. See

. Samoyed Sleigh and Idols , : :

. Samoyed Idols, drawn by O. Sorling . 5 : : : 3 :
. Samoyed Hair Ornaments, drawn by ditto.

. Samoyed Woman’s Dress, drawn by R. Haglund

. Samoyed Belt with Knife, drawn by O. Sorling

PAGE

xX

. Samoyed Archers . é

. The Arctie Puffin (Merion Ups ih )), ante by ditto 3
. The Black Guillemot (Uvia Grylle, L.), drawn by ditto

. Breeding-place for Glaucous Gulls, drawn by R. Haglund . :
. The Kittiwake (Larus tridactylus, L.), and the Ivory Gull (Pane

LIST OF WOOD-CUTS.

. Sacrificial Eminence on Vaygats Island, drawn by R. Haglund ;

engraved by J. Engberg

.

. Idols from the Sacrificial Cairn, drew by 0. Sérling :
. Sacrificial Cavity on Vaygats Island, drawn by V. Andrén
. Samoyed Grave on Vaygats Island, drawn by R. Haglund ; engraved

by O. Dahlbick .

° . . . . .

. Samoyeds from Schleissing’s Neu-entdecktes Sieweria .

. Breeding-place for Little Auks, drawn by R. Haglund :
. The Little Auk, or Rotge (Mergulws Alle, L.), drawn by M. West
. The Loom, or Briinnich’s Guillemot (op ia Briinnichtii, Sabine), drawn

by ditto

eburneus, L.), drawn by M. Westergren

. Rare Northern Gulls—Sabine’s Gull (Larus Sabiniti, Sayin) Ross’ s

Gull (Larus Rossii, Richards), drawn by ditto

. .

. The Common Skua (Lestris parasitica, L.)—Buffon’s Skua (Lestris

Buffonii, Boie)—the Pomarine Skua ea ee Bae
drawn by ditto

. Heads of the Eider, King meee Tenet Gone: cae White. ne

Goose, drawn by ditto

. Bewick’s Swan (Cygnus Bewickii, ome ys oe by M. Wotan
. Breastbone of Cygnus Bewickii, showing the peculiar position of the

windpipe, drawn by ditto

. Ptarmigan Fell, drawn by R. Haglund

. The Snowy Owl (Strix nyctea, L.), drawn by M. avesenteen
. Reindeer Pasture, drawn by R. Haglund

. Polar Bears, drawn by G. Miitzell, engraved me K. shinee et, both of

Berlin . : 7

2. Ditto c 5 :

. Walruses, drawn by M. Westergren

. Walrus Tusks, drawn by ditto
. Hunting Implements, drawn by O. Sorling
. Walrus Hunting, after Olaus Magnus

. Walruses (female with young)

. Japanese Drawing of the Walrus

.

Young of the Greenland Seal, drawn by M. Westergren

. The Bearded Seal (Phoca barbata, Fabr.), drawn by ditto .
. The Rough Seal (Phoca hispida, Erxl.), drawn by ditto
. The White Whale (Delphinapterus leucas, Pallas), drawn by ditto
. Section of Inland-ice

. View from the Inland-ice of Genial, ae n Ne Jal eee
. Slowly advancing Glacier, drawn by ditto . ;
. Glacier with Stationary Front, drawn by O. Sorling .

101

LIST OF WOOD-CUTS.

67. Greenland Ice-fjord, drawn by H. Haglund : “ ; : 4
68. Umbellula from the Kara Sea, drawn by M. Westergren
69. Elpidia Glacialis (Théel), from the Kara Sea, drawn by ditto

~“I ~ I
Hm CO bo

“I
Or

~T1T sr ~7 “7
oOo ao nr

; gee Iron-ore Formations from the Kara Sea, drawn by

O. Sorling

. Section from the South Coast of Martech sana as by the

geologist, E. Erdman . : i ti :

. Map of the Mouth of the Yenisej (antenee ih)
. Ruinsof a Simovie at Krestovskoj, drawn by O. Sorling
. Sieversia Glacialis, R. Br., from Port heh aoe drawn oy Mrs. Prof,

Anderssen

. Evertebrates from Port Dickson Yoldia ieee Gray, oa Diastytis

Rathkei, Kr., drawn by M. Westergren

. Place of Sacrifice on Yalmal, drawn by R. Haglund
. “Jordgammor” on the Briochov Islands, drawn by ditto .
. Russian ‘‘ Lodja”

. Dutch Skipper .

. Capture of a Polar Bear

. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten

. Kilduin, in Russian Lapland, in 1594

. Map of Fretum Nassovicum or Yugor Schar

. Unsuccessful Fight with a Polar Bear

. Barents’ and Rijp’s Vessels

. Barents’ House, outside

Ditto inside

. Jacob van Heemskerk
. De la Martiniere’s Map , é : : 3 : 5
. Ammonite with Gold Lustre (Ammonites alternans, v. Buch), drawn by

M. Westergren : 5 -
View from Matotschkin Schar, ae n by R. Haglund

. Friedrich Benjamin von oe drawn and engraved by Miss Ida

Falander

. August Karlovitz Zivolka, dae n La engraved ne ditto

. Paul von Krusenstern, Junior, drawn and engraved by ditto

. Michael Konstantinovitsch Sidoroff, drawn and engraved by ditto
. Norwegian Hunting Sloop, drawn by Captain J. Higg

. Elling Carlsen, engraved by J. D. Cooper, of London

8. Edward Hohn Johannesen, engraved by ditto

. Sivert Kristian Tobiesen, engraved by ditto ; :
. Tobiesen’s Winter House on Bear Island, drawn by R. Haglund .
. Joseph Wiggins, drawn by R. Haglund

David Ivanovitsch Schwanenberg, drawn and Le by Miss Ida
Fallander

. Gustaf Adolf Nummelin, it and engraved by ditto :
. The Sloop Utrennaja Saria, drawn by CaptainJ. Higg ; :
. The Vega and Lena anchored to an Ice-floe, drawn by R. Haglund

XXi

PAGE

138

XXil

106.

108.
109,

LIST OF WOOD-CUTS.

Hairstar from the Taimur Coast (Antedon tele J. Miller) drawn
by M. Westergren . . : : z

. Form of the Crystals found on the ice off the Trace Coast

Section of the upper part of the Snow on a Drift-ice Field in 80° N.L

Grass from Actinia Bay (Plewropogon oe R. Br ), drawn px eet
Professor Anderssen ;

The Vega and Lena saluting Cape Cheleuceiss oe by R. Beiea

. View at Cape Chelyuskin seas the ata of the epee drawn

by ditto. < 3

. The Beetle living farthest to the Nor th (ieriyne Dicksine. Muck)

drawn by M. Westergren . C

. Draba Alpina, L., from Give Cheynoee: drawn by ditto . :
» Ophiurid from the Sea north of Cape oes (OE iacantha iene

tata, Retz.), drawn by ditto .

: Sea Spider (Pycnogonid) from the Sea east of Cape C heya ne ie

by ditto ; $ : ‘ ; C

. Preobraschenie Island, drawn by R. Seelendl

. The steamer Fraser, drawn by ditto

. The Steamer Zena, drawn by ditto : : :

. Hans Christian Johannesen, engraved by J. D. Cooper, London .

. Yakutsk in the Seventeenth Century

. Yakutsk in our days, drawn by R. Haglund

. River View on the Yenissej, drawn by ditto : : .
. Sub-fossil Marine Crustacea from the tundra, drawn by M. Westergren
. Siberian River Boat, drawn by R. Haglund

. Ostyak Tent, drawn by ditto : : :

. Towing with Dogs on the Yenisej, drawn = Professor R. D. Holm

. Fishing-boats on the Ob, drawn by R Haglund

. Graves in the Primeval Forest of Siberia, drawn by ditto

- Chukch Village on a Siberian River, drawn by ditto . : :
. Mammoth Skeleton in the Imperial Museum of the Academy of

Sciences in St. Petersburg, drawn by M. oe
Restored Form of the Mammoth

. Siberian Rhinoceros Horn, drawn by M. Wester gren and VY. Andrén .
. Stolbovoj Island, drawn by R. Haglund . A

. Idothea Entomon, Lin., drawn by M. Westergren

. Idothea Sabinei, Kroyer, drawn by ditto . s : ; a

. Ljachoff’s Island, drawn by R. Haglund , : :

. Beaker Sponges from the Sea off the mouth of the Kolyma, drawn by

M. Westergren . A

. Lighthouse Island, drawn by R. Haglund .
. Chukch Boats, drawn by O. Sorling .
. A Chukch in Seal-gut Great-coat, drawn ee engrav eal - Miss Ida

Falander

. Chukch Tent, drawn by R. eeecinad d
. Section of a Chukch Grave, drawn by O. Soérling
. Irkaipij, drawn by R. Haglund

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LIST OF WOOD-CUTS.

. Ruins of an Onkilon House, drawn by O. Sérling :
. Implements found in the Ruins of an Onkilon House, drawn by ditto
. Alga from Irkaipij ee Pie dle Ce Ag:)s drawn i

“M. Wester. eren ;
. Cormorant from Irkaipij (Gr aculus bicrustatus, Pallas), ieee i ditto
Pieces of Ice from the Coast of the Chukch Peninsula, drawn by O. Sorling

. Toross from the neighbourhood of the Veg ae *s Winter Quar ee drawn

by R. Haglund . ; : :
. The Vega in Winter Quarters, pee Me ditte , 4 : ‘

. The Winter Dress of the Vega men, drawn by Jungstedt ;
2. Cod from Pitlekaj (Gadus navaga, Kolreuter), drawn by M. Westergren
. Kautljkau, a Chukch Girl from Irgunnuk, drawn and engraved by Miss

Ida Falander

. Chukches Angling, drawn by O. Sorling
- Ice-Sieve, drawn by ditto . : c : : ; : ‘
. Smelt from the Chukch Peninsula (Oenieite Spethontis. Lin.), drawn

by M. Westergren

7. Wassili Menka, drawn by O. Sirling, ea se Miss Ida fotenden
. Chukch Dog-Sledge, drawn by ditto .

. Chukch Bone-earvings, drawn by O. Sorling

. Hares from Chukch Land, drawn by M. Westergren ,

. The Observatory at Pitlekaj, drawn by R. Haglund

. An Evening in the Gun-room of the Vega during the Wintering,
drawn by ditto, engraved by R. Lindgren

. Refraction Halo, drawn by ditto

. Reflection Halo, drawn by ditto :

5. Section of the Beach Strata at Pitlekaj :

. Christmas Eve on the Vega, drawn by V. Andrén

. The Open Water

. The Encampment Pitlekaj maiacleneal te its Toten on. the 18th

February, 1879

. Notti and his Wife Aitanga : ;
0, Map of the Region round the Vega’s Winter jhe c

71. The Sleeping Chamber in a Chukch Tent .
172. Chukch Lamps.

3. Section of a Chukeh Lamp
. Chukch Shaman Drum...

. The Coast between Padljonna and Enjurmi

Bracelet of Copper

. The North End of Idlidlja Tafa

. The Common Aurora-Are at the Vega’s Winter ( Quarters

. Aurora at the Vega’s Winter Quarters, 3rd March, 1879, at 9 p.m.

. Double Aurora-Arecs seen 20th March, 1879, at 9.30 P.M.
. Elliptic Aurora*seen 21st March, 1879, at 2.15 A.M.

. Elliptic Aurora seen 21st March, 1879, at 3 A.M.

. Song-Birds in the Rigging of the Vega, June, 1879

XXIV LIST OF WOOD-CUTS.

PAGE

184, Spoon-billed Sand- pee from Chukch Land aur UE Pys-
meus, Li.) . 431
185. Marmots from Chukeh tan A ; ‘ 5 5 ‘ “ . 433
186. Stegocephalus Kessleri, Stuxb. . 5 : . : . ; . 434
187. Sabinea septemcarinata, Sabine . A ; , ; ; i . 484
188. Acanthostephia Malmgreni, Goes ¢ ; : : : 6 . 435
189. Onhioglypha nodosa, Litken . ; ; : ‘ : : Peo
190. Noah Elise} . : 5 ; é 5 5 : 3 : . 438
191. Beetles from Pitlekaj : 4 5 ; : 3 2 : . 441
192. Phosphorescent Crustacea from Mussel Bay 5 : : : . 442
193. Reitinacka : ; . 443

194. Dog-Fish from the Chukeh Does (Dalia Aeiabiatn a Smith) - 444
195. Crab from the Sea North of Behring’s Straits (Chionoccetes opilio,

Kroyer) , . ; : 5 : c ; a Ad
196. Tree from Pitlekaj (Salix yee Pallas) : : 2 - : . 448
197. Typical Chukch Faces ; . 5 : ; : : : . 462
198. an 39 0 ; 0 = 2 c 5 C . 465
199. Plan of a Chukch Grave . F : ; : : : ; . 464
200. Tent Frame at Pitlekaj . : : : : : ; ; . 466
201. Chukch Oar . : . ‘ : ; ; : ; , . 468
202. Dog Shoe . 6 : _ ¢ F 2 d 5 : . 470
203. Chukch Face-Tattooing . 2 : ; 5 3 : : « AMZ
204. Chukch Children. : ; : : ; ‘ 3 : . 473
205. Snow-Shoes : : 5 : 6 : , : : : . 474
206. An Aino-Man skating after a Reindeer : : 3 : ° . 475
207. Hunting Cup and Snow-seraper : ‘ : : : 2 « 476
208. Chukch Weapons and Hunting Implements ; : 3 Se eedi th
209. Chukch Bow and Quiver . ; ; é F F : ‘ 5 eS
210. Chukch Arrows - p : E : : ‘ : 4 47@
211. Stone Hammers and Anvil for Grantee Bones . ‘ ; j . 483
212. Chukch Implements . ; P : : : : : : . 486
213. Fire- Drill : : : : : : ; : : : . 489
214. Ice Mattocks . 5 2 : ; ; 5 ‘ : : ceo
215. Human Figures. : ; : ‘ ; : : ; , . 494
216. Musical Instruments 3 : ; : 6 ; : : one,
217. Drawings made by Chukches . SUP : : ; . 498—499
218. Chukch Buckles and Hooks of Ivory . : : é 5 : 5 BOL
219. Chukch Bone Carvings . : é : ; : : : . 503
220. Chukeh Doll . ; ‘ ; . : x : : : 3: 505
221. Chukch Bone Carvings. 6 : : ‘ : . 506—507
222, Chukch Bone Carvings of Birds . : A 5 3 : a5 09)
223. Map of the World, said to be of the Tenth Conte : : 5 5 ails}
224, Map of the World showing Asia to be continuous with Africa . . ol4
225. Map of the World after Fra Mens from the middle of the Fifteenth

Century ; 5 : 5 ; - oillG

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. Reconstructed Form of the Sea-Cow .

LIST OF WOOD-CU'IS.

. Map of Asia from an Atlas Eee i the Russian si es of

Sciences in 1737. é é

-

. Peter Feodorovitsch Anjou.

. Ferdinand.von Wrangel C ¢ : -

. Seal from the Behring Sea, Histriophoca fasciata, Zimm
. Draba Alpina, L., from St. Lawrence Bay .

. Hunting Implements at Port Clarence.

. Eskimo Family at Port Clarence.

233.
. Eskimo at Port Clarence

Eskimo at Port Clarence

5. Eskimo Fishing Implements, &c.

. Eskimo Bone Carvings, &e.

7. Eskimo Grave ‘ : :

. Animal Figure from an Eskimo Grave.

. Ethnographical Objects from Port Clarence. :

. Shell from Behring’s Straits, Fusws deformis, Reeve . : ;
. Diagram showing the temperature and depth of the water at Behring’s

Straits between Port Clarence and Senjavin Sound, by G. Bove

. Konyam Bay : é s .
. Tattooing Patterns from St. Lawrence Island
. Tattooed Woman from St. Lawrence Island

. The ‘‘Colony” on Behring Island

The ‘‘ Colony” on Copper Island

. Natives of Behring Island = é -
. Skeleton of Rhytina, shown at the ie Exhibition at ae Reya Pate,

Stockholm

. Original Drawings of the Rhyti tina

. Sea Bears, Male, Female, and Young

. ‘Seal Rookery ” on St. Paul’s Island, one of ae Bribyloy Tans

. Slaughter of Sea-Bears

. Sea-Bears on their way to ‘‘ the eee ze

. Alga from the shore of Behring Island, Thalas sign Elathous,

Post. and Rupr.

. Fusiyama j
. The steamer A. L. Ne or denskiétd atmeideate on oe East hast of y ezO .
. Kawamura Sumiyashi, Japanese Minister of Marine :

. The First Medal which was struck as a Memorial of the Voyage of

the Vega

. The First Medal which was struck as a Motes of the Voyage of

the Vega

. Stone Lantern and Stone Monument in a Japanese 1 Tésapls Ga
. Japanese House in Tokio

. Japanese Lady at her Toilette

. A Jinrikisha

5. Japanese Bedroom

XXXVI

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LIST OF WOOD-CUTS.

. Tobacco-Smokers, Japanese Drawing .

. Ito-Keske, a Japanese Editor of Thunberg’s Writings

. Monument to Thunberg and Kaempfer at Nagasaki

. Japanese Kago . < : ; 5

. Japanese Wrestlers . 5 : 3 : : : 5 :
. Japanese Bridge, after a Japanese drawing . ; ‘

. Japanese Mountain Landscape, drawn by Prof. P. D. Holm

3. Inn at Kusatsu, drawn by R. Haglund :

. Bath at Kusatsu, Japanese drawing, drawn by O. Sorling .

. Japanese Landscape, drawn by Prof. P. D. Holm ; . °
. Burden-bearers on a Ji wee Road, Japanese drawing, drawn by

O. Sorling

. Japanese Shop, drawn by y. AS, ; 4 : g : :
. Japanese Court Dress, drawn by ditto

. Noble in Antique Dress, drawn by ditto

. Buddhist Priest, drawn by ditto

. A Samurai, drawn by ditto : 0 :

. Gate across the Road to a Shinto Tepe eae n sit Prof P. Dz Holm
. Buddhist Temple at Kobe, drawn by ditto.

. Rio-San’s Seal . : : : ; ‘

. Burying-Place at Kioto, drawn = Prof, Pe. ‘D. dna ; :

. Entrance to Nagasaki, drawn by R. Haglund 4 2
. Fossil Plants from Mogi—1, 2, Beech Leaves (Fagus ferr ey Ait.,

var. pliocend, Nath. ), drawn by M. Westergren

. Fossil Plant from Mogi—3, ae Leaf ae Mono, te var.

pliocena, Nath.) .

. Fossil Plant from Mogi—Leaf of Ze Pe Keakit, Sieh., var. pliocena,

Nath., drawn by M. Westergren .

. Gem Diggings at Ratnapoora, drawn by R. Hain
. Statues in a Temple in Ceylon, drawn by ditto.
2, A Country Place in Ceylon, drawn by V. Andrén
. Highland View from the Interior of Ceylon, drawn by Rh. Shaina
. The Scientific Men of the Vega. é : :
. The Officers of the Vega
. The Crew of the Vega, drawn by R. Ww ne :
. The Entrance of the Vega into Stockholm on the 24th Apt, 1880,

drawn by R. Haglund .

. The Vega moored off the Royal Palace, Stockholm, ae oa ditto

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INTRODUCTION.

THE voyage, which it is my purpose to sketch in this book,
owed its origin to two preceding expeditions from Sweden to the
western part of the Siberian Polar Sea, in the course of which.
I reached the mouth of the Yenisej, the first time in 1875 in
a walrus-hunting sloop, the Proeven, and the second time in
1876 in a steamer, the Ymer.

After my return from the latter voyage, I came to the conclu-
sion, that, on the ground of the experience thereby gained, and
of the knowledge which, under the light of that experience, it
was possible to obtain from old, especially from Russian, explora-
tions of the north coast of Asia, I was warranted in asserting
that the open navigable water, which two years in succession
had carried me across the Kara Sea, formerly of so bad repute,
to the mouth of the Yenisej, extended in all probability as far
as Behring’s Straits, and that a circumnavigation of the old
world was thus within the bounds of possibility.

It was natural that I should endeavour to take advantage
of the opportunity for making new and important discoveries
which thus presented itself. An opportunity had arisen for
solving a geographical problem—the forcing a north-east passage
to China and Japan—which for more than three hundred years
had been a subject of competition between the world’s fore-
most commercial states and most daring navigators, and which,

B

2 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA.

if we view it in the light of a circumnavigation of the old world,
had, for thousands of years back, been an object of desire for
geographers. I determined, therefore, at first to make use, for
this purpose, of the funds which Mr. A. SIBIRIAKOFF, after my
return from the expedition of 1876, placed at my disposal for
the continuation of researches in the Siberian Polar Sea. For
a voyage of the extent now contemplated, this sum, however,
was quite insufficient. On this account I turned to His Majesty
the King of Sweden and Norway, with the inquiry whether any
assistance in making preparations for the projected expedition
might be reckoned upon from the public funds. King Oscar,
who, already as Crown Prince, had given a large contribution
to the Torell Expedition of 1861, immediately received my pro-
posal with special warmth, and promised within a short time
to invite the Swedish members of the Yenisej expeditions and
others interested in our voyages of exploration in the north, to
meet him for the purpose of consultation, asking me at the
same time to be prepared against the meeting with a complete
exposition of the reasons on which I grounded my views—
ditfermg so widely from the ideas commonly entertained—of
the state of the ice in the sea off the north coast of Siberia.
This assembly took place at the palace in Stockholm, on
the 26th January, 1877, which may be considered the birth-
day of the Vega Expedition, and was ushered in by a dinner, to
which a large number of persons were invited, among whom were
the members of the Swedish royal house that happened to be
then in Stockholm; Prince JOHN OF GLUCKsBURG; Dr. OSCAR
Dickson, the Gothenburg merchant; Baron F. W. von OTTER,
Councillor of State and Minister of Marine, well known for his
voyages in the Arctic waters in 1868 and 1871; Docent F. R.
KJELLMAN, Dr. A. StTUXBERG, the former a member of the expedi-
tion which wintered at Mussel Bay in 1872-73, and of that which
reached the Yenisej] in 1875, the latter, of the Yenise] Expedi-
tions of 1875 and 1876; and Docents HJALMAR THEEL and A. N.
LunpDstr6M, both members of the Yenisej Expedition of 1875.
After dinner the programme of the contemplated voyage was
laid before the meeting, almost in the form in which it after-
wards appeared in print in several languages. There then arose
a lively discussion, in the course of which reasons were advanced
for and against the practicability of the plan. In particular the
question concerning the state of the ice and the marine currents
at Cape Chelyuskin gave occasion to an exhaustive discussion.
It ended by His Majesty first of all declarmg himself convinced
of the practicability of the plan of the voyage, and prepared
not only as king, but also as a private individual, to give sub-
stantial support to the enterprise. Dr. Oscar Dickson shared
His Majesty’s views, and promised to contribute to the not

INTRODUCTION. 5)

inconsiderable expenditure which the new voyage of exploration
would render necessary. This is the sixth expedition to the
high north, the expenses of which have been defrayed to
a greater or less extent by Dr. O. Dickson.1 He became
the banker of the Vega Expedition, inasmuch as to a con-
siderable extent he advanced the necessary funds, but after
our return the expenses were equally divided between His
Majesty the King of Sweden and Norway, Dr. Dickson, and
Mr. Sibiniakoff.

I very soon had the satisfaction of appointing, as superin-
tendents of the botanical and zoological work of the expedition
in this new Polar voyage, my old and tried friends from previous
expeditions, Docents Dr. Kjellman and Dr. Stuxberg, observers
so well known in Arctic literature. At a later period, another
member of the expedition that wintered on Spitzbergen in
1872-73, Lieutenant (now Captain in the Swedish Navy) L.
PALANDER, offered to accompany the new expedition as com-
' mander of the vessel—an offer which I gladly accepted, well
knowing, as I did from previous voyages, Captain Palander’s
distmguished ability both as a seaman and an Arctic explorer.
Further there joined the expedition Lieutenant G1Acomo BovE,
of the Italian Navy ; Lieutenant A. HovGaarp, of the Danish
Navy; Medical candidate E. ALMQUIST, as medical officer ;
Lieutenant O. NorpqQuistT, of the Russian Guards; Lieutenant
. E. Brusewirz, of the Swedish Navy ; together with twenty-one
men—petty officers and crew, according to a list which will be
found further on.

An expedition of such extent as that now projected, intended
possibly to last two years, with a vessel of its own, a numerous
well-paid personnel, and a considerable scientific staff, must of
course be very costly. In order somewhat to diminish the
expenses, I gave in, on the 25th August, 1877, a memorial to
the Swedish Government with the prayer that the steamer Vega,
which in the meantime had been purchased for the expedition,
should be thoroughly overhauled and made completely sea-
worthy at the naval dockyard at Karlskrona; and that, as had
been done in the case of the Arctic Expeditions of 1868 and
1872-73, certain grants of public money should be given to the
officers and men of the Royal Swedish Navy, who might take
part as volunteers in the projected expedition. With reference
to this petition the Swedish Government was pleased, in terms
of a letter of the Minister of Marine, dated the 31st December,
1877, both to grant sea-pay, &c., to the officer and eighteen men _
of the Royal Navy, who might take part in the expedition in

1 The expeditions to Spitzbergen in 1868, to Greenland in 1870, to
Spitzbergen in 1872-73, and to the Yenisej in 1875 and 1876 p
B 4

Marsa Se ao off

39

LN

THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA,

THE VEGA.

Longitudinal section.

Le

30 Meter

17

. Hatch to room set apart for |

2. Bunks for the crew —double

. Cable-tier and provision store.

. Hatchto room fordaily giving

. Storeroom for water and coal.

- Descent to the ate a
. Descent to the engine

1. Powder magazine. 15. Cabin for Prof. Nordenskiéld. 29. Hatch to the cable-tier.
2. Instrument room. 16. Corridor (descent to gunroom). 30 -h to
3. Sofa in gunroom. 17. Coal bunkers. scientific purposes.
4, Cabin for Lieut. Brusewitz. 18. Boiler. 31. Galley.
5. Cabin for Lieuts. Bove and 19. Storeroom ’tween decks. 32
Hovgaard. 20. Pilot’s cabin. ( built in rows.
6. Pantry during winter. 21. Cabin for Lieut. Bove(Japan. 33
7. Corridor. 22. Cabin for two petty officers. 34. Hatch to store-room.
§. Cabin for Dr. Stuxberg and 23. Petty officers’ mess. : 35 if
Lieut. Nordquist. 24. Cabin for carpenter’s ) built out of provisions.
9. Gunroom. effects. in 36. Hatch to rope-room.
10. Table in gunroom. 25. Cabin for collections. J Japan 37. Sail-room.
11. Cabin for Dr. Almquist. 26. Cabin for library. 38 ‘
12. Cabin for Dr. Kjellman. 27. Gunroom pantry. 39. Engine-room. a
13. Stove. 28. Hatch to provision room. 40. Cellar.
14. Cabin for Capt. Palander.

. Thermometer ease.
. The rudder.

Binnacle with compass

i } Skylights to the gunroom.

Mizenmast.
companion common
to both.
Bridge.
Funnel,
Boats lying on gallows.
n mast,

Regeesesre2xreasosg

. Booms (for reserve masts, yards, &.).
. Main hatch. ‘

. Steam launch.

. Fore hatch.

Hencoops.
Water closet.
Foremast.

. Smoke-cowl.

Descent to lower deck (companion).

. Windlass.
. Capstan on the forecastle.

Catheads.

ae
a

INTRODUCTION. 5

- THE LENA.

Longitudinal section.

Engine-room.
B. Hold.
Cable.
Water ballast tank.
Forecastle.

F. Coal bunkers.
Fireman’s cabin.
Engineer’s cabin.
Provision-room.

L. Captain’s cabin.

M. Mate’s cabin.

N. Kitchen.

O. Pantry.

P. Saloon.

Q.Q. Presses.

Kt. Engine-room companion.

8S. Bridge.

T. Hatch to hold.

U. Descent to provision-room.

Vv. Winch.

ES Descent to engine-room.

Z

AROm BCD

Descent to forecastle and engineer’s cabin.
Descent to captain’s cabin, saloon, &c.

6 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA.

question, and at the same time to resolve on making a proposal
to the Diet in which additional grants were to be asked for it.

The proposal to the Diet of 1878 was agreed to with that
liberality which has always distinguished the representatives
of the Swedish people when grants for scientific purposes have
been asked for; which was also the case with a private motion
made in the same Diet by the President, C. F. Warn, member
of the Academy of Sciences, whereby it was proposed to
confer some further privileges on the undertaking.

It is impossible here to give at length the decision of the
Diet, and the correspondence which was exchanged with the
authorities with reference to it. But I am under an obligation
of gratitude to refer to the exceedingly pleasant reception I
met with everywhere, in the course of these negotiations, ,
from officials of all ranks, and to give a brief account of
the privileges which the expedition finally came to enjoy,
mainly owing to the letter of the Government to the Marine
Department, dated the 14th June, 1878.

Two officers and seventeen men of the Royal Swedish
Navy having obtaimed permission to take part in the ex-
pedition as volunteers, I was authorised to receive on account
of the expedition from the treasury of the Navy, at Karls-
krona—with the obligation of returning that portion of the
funds which might not be required, and on giving approved
security—full sea pay for two years for the officers, petty
officers, and men taking part in the expedition; pay for the
medical officer, at the rate of 3,500 Swedish crowns a year,
for the same time ; and subsistence money for the men belong-
ing to the Navy, at the rate of one and a half Swedish crowns
per man per day. The sum, by which the cost of provisions
exceeded the amount calculated at this rate, was defrayed by
the expedition, which likewise gave a considerable addition
to the pay of the sailors belonging to the Navy. I further
obtained permission to receive, on account of the expedition,
from the Navy stores at Karlskrona, provisions, medicines,
coal, oil, and other necessary equipment, under obligation to
pay for any excess of value over 10,000 Swedish crowns (about
550/.); and finally the vessel of the expedition was permitted
to be equipped and made completely seaworthy at the naval
dockyard at Karlskrona, on condition, however, that the excess
of expenditure on repairs over 25,000 crowns (about 1,875/.)
should be defrayed by the expedition.

On the other hand my request that the Vega, the steamer
purchased for the voyage, might be permitted to carry the
man-of-war flag, was refused by the Minister of Marine in
a letter of the 2nd February 1878. The Vega was therefore
inscribed in the following month of March in the Swedish

Sa 1 °
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INTRODUCTION. me

Yacht Club. It was thus under its flag, the Swedish man-
of-war flag with a crowned O in the middle, that the first
circumnavigation of Asia and Europe was carried into effect.

The Vega, as will be seen from the description quoted further
on, is a pretty large vessel, which during the first part of
the voyage was to be heavily laden with provisions and coal.
It would therefore be a work of some difficulty to get it afloat,
if, in sailing forward along the coast in new, unsurveyed waters,
it should run upon a bank of clay or sand. I therefore gladly
availed myself of Mr. Sibiriakofi’s offer to provide for the
greater safety of the expedition, by placing at my disposal
funds for building another steamer of a smaller size, the Lena,
which should have the river Lena as its main destination, but,
during the first part of the expedition, should act as tender to
the Vega, being sent before to examine the state of the ice
and the navigable waters, when such service might be useful.
Thad the Zena built at Motala, of Swedish Bessemer steel,
mainly after a drawing of Engineer R. Runeberg of Finland.
The steamer answered the purpose for which it was intended
particularly well.

An unexpected opportunity of providing the steamers with
coal during the course of the voyage besides arose by my
receiving a commission, while preparations were making for
the expedition of the Vega, to fit out, also on Mr. Sibiriakoff’s
account, two other vessels, the steamer Fraser, and the sailing
vessel Hxpress, in order to bring to Europe from the mouth
of the Yenise} a cargo of grain, and to carry thither a quantity
of European goods. This was so much the more advantageous,
as, according to the plan of the expedition, the Vega and the
Lena were first to separate from the Fraser and the Hxpress at
the mouth of the Yenisej. The first-named vessels had thus
an opportunity of taking on board at that place as much coal
as there was room for.

I intend further on to give an account of the voyages of
the other three vessels, each of which deserves a place in
the history of navigation. To avoid details I shall only
mention here that, at the beginning of the voyage which
is to be described here, the following four vessels were at my
disposal :—

1. The Vega, commanded by Lieutenant L. Palander, of the
Swedish Navy; circumnavigated Asia and Europe.

2. The Lena, commanded by the walrus-hunting captain,
Christian Johannesen ; the first vessel that reached the river
Lena from the Atlantic.

3. The Fraser, commanded by the merchant captain, Emil
Nilsson.

4. The Zxzpress, commanded by the merchant captain,

8 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA.

Gundersen, the first which brought cargoes of grain from tie
Yenisej to Europe.!

When the Vega was bought for the expedition it was de-
scribed by the sellers as follows :—

“The steamer Vega was built at Bremerhaven in 1872-73,
of the best oak, for the share-company ‘Ishafvet,’ and under
special inspection. It has twelve years’ first class 3/, I.I. Veritas,
measures 357 register tons gross, or 299 net. It was built and
used for whale-fishing in the North Polar Sea, and strengthened
in every way necessary and commonly used for that purpose.
Besides the usual timbering of oak, the vessel has an ice-skin
of greenheart, wherever the ice may be expected to come at
the vessel. The ice-skin extends from the neighbourhood of
the under chain bolts to within from 1:2 to 15 metres of the
keel. The dimensions are :—

Lensth of keel ... .:. ... 376 metres.
Do. over deck...) ..., i cea

Beam extreme vnkt bale St AoC

Depth of hold S22 noe) 9 er a

“The engine, of sixty horse-power, is on Wolff’s plan, with
excellent surface condensers, It requires about ten cubic feet
of coal per hour. The vessel is fully rigged as a barque, and
has pitch pine masts, iron wire rigging, and patent reefing
topsails. It sails and manceuvres uncommonly well, and under
sail alone attains a speed of nine to ten knots. During the
trial trip the steamer made seven and a half knots, but six
to seven knots per hour may be considered the speed under
steam. Further, there are on the vessel a powerful steam-
winch, a reserve rudder, and a reserve propeller. The vessel
is besides provided in the whole of the under hold with iron
tanks, so built that they lie close to the vessel’s bottom and
sides, the tanks thus being capable of offering a powerful
resistance in case of ice pressure. They are also serviceable
for holding provisions, water, and coal.” 2

We had no reason to take exception to this description,?
but, in any case, it was necessary for an Arctic campaign, such
as that now in question, to make a further inspection of the

' The first cargo of goods from Europe to the Yenisej was taken thither

by me in the Ymer in 1876. The first vessel that sailed from the Yenisej

to the Atlantic was a sloop, The Dawn, built at Yeniseisk, commanded by we

the Russian merchant captain, Schwanenberg, in 1877.

* In order to obtain sufficient room for coal and provisions most of these
tanks were taken out at Karlskrona.

* The consumption of coal, however, was reckoned by Captain Palander
st twelve cubic feet or 0°3 cubic metre an hour, with a speed of seven
knots.

\

INTRODUCTION. 9

vessel, to assure ourselves that all its parts were in complete

order, to make the alterations in rig, &c., which the altered

requirements would render necessary, and finally to arrange
the vessel, so that it might house a scientific staff, which,
together with the officers, numbered nine persons. This work
was done at the Karlskrona naval dockyard, under the direction
of Captain Palander. At the same time attention was given
to the scientific equipment, principally in Stockholm, where a
large number of instruments for physical, astronomical, and
geological researches was obtained from the Royal Academy
of Sciences.

The dietary during the expedition was fixed upon, partly
on the ground of our experience from the wintering of 1872-
73, partly under the guidance of a special opinion given with
reference to the subject by the distinguished physician who
took part in that expedition, Dr. A. Envall. Preserved pro-
visions,! butter, flour, &c., were purchased, part at Karlskrona,
part in Stockholm and Copenhagen; a portion of pemmican
was prepared m Stockholm by Z. Wikstrom; another portion
was purchased in England ; fresh ripe potatoes? were procured
from the Mediterranean, a large quantity of cranberry juice
from Finland ; preserved cloudberries and clothes of reindeer
skins, &c., from Norway, through our agent Ebeltoft, and so on
—in a word, nothing was neglected to make the vessel as well
equipped as possible for the attainment of the great object
in view.

What this was may be seen from the following

PLAN OF THE EXPEDITION,

PRESENTED TO HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF SWEDEN AND
NORWAY, July 1877.

_ THE exploring expeditions, which, during the recent decades,
have gone out from Sweden towards the north, have long ago
acquired a truly national importance, through the lively interest
that has been taken in them everywhere, beyond, as well as
within, the fatherland ; through the considerable sums of money
that have been spent on them by the State, and above all by
_ private persons ; through the practical school they have formed
_ for more than thirty Swedish naturalists ; through the important

_ 1 The preserved provisions were purchased part from Z. Wikstrém of
- Stockholm, part from J. D. Beauyois of Copenhagen.

2 The potatoes were to be delivered at Gothenburg on the Ist July. In
order to keep, they had to be newly taken up and yet ripe. They were
therefore procured from the south through Mr. Carl W. Boman of Stock-
holm. Of these, certainly one of the best of all anti-scorbutics, we had
still some remaining on our arrival at Japan.

10 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA.

scientific and geographical results they have yielded; and through
the material for scientific research, which by them has been
collected for the Swedish Riks-Museum, and which has made it,

in respect of Arctic natural objects, the richest in the world.

To this there come to be added discoveries and investigations
which already are, or promise in the future to become, of
practical importance ; for example, the meteorological and hydro-
eraphical work of the expeditions ; their comprehensive inquiries
regarding the Seal and Whale Fisheries in the Polar Seas; the
pointing out of the previously unsuspected richness in fish, of
the coasts of Spitzbergen; the discoveries, on Bear Island and
Spitzbergen, of considerable strata of coal and phosphatic
minerals which are likely to be of great economic importance
to neighbouring countries ; and, above all, the success of the two
rast expeditions i in reaching the mouths of the large Siberian
rivers, navigable to the confines of China—the Obi and Yenisej

—w hereby a problem in navigation, many centuries old, has at_

last been solved.

But the very results that have been obtained incite to a
continuation, especially as the two last expeditions have opened
a new field of inquiry, exceedingly promising in a scientific, and
I venture also to say in a practical, point of view, namely, the
part of the Polar Sea lying east of the mouth of the Yenisej.
Still, even in our days, in the era of steam and the telegraph, there
meets us here a territory to be explored, which is new to science,
and hitherto untouched. Indeed, the whole of the immense
expanse of ocean which stretches over 90 degrees of longitude
from the mouth of the Yenisej past Cape Chelyuskin—the
Promontorium Tabin of the old geographers—has, if we except
voyages in large or small boats along the coast, never yet been
ploughed by the keel of any vessel, and never seen the funnel
of a steamer.

It was this state of things which led me to attempt to procure
funds for an expedition, equipped as completely as possible,
both in a scientific and a nautical respect, with a view to
investigate the geography, hydrography, and natural history
of the North Polar Sea beyond the mouth of the Yenisej, if
possible as far as Behring’s Straits. It may be affirmed without
any danger of exaggeration, that since Cook’s famous voyages
in the Pacific Ocean, no more promising field of research has
lain before any explormg expedition, if only the state of the
ice permit a suitable steamer to force a passage in that sea. In
order to form a judgment on this point, it may perhaps be
necessary to cast a brief glance backwards over the attempts
which have been made to penetrate in the hese which the
projected expedition is intended to take.

The Swedish port from which the expedition is to start will

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: INTRODUCTION. 11

probably be Gothenburg. The time of departure is fixed for

the beginning of July, 1878. The course will be shaped at first
along the west coast of Norway, past North Cape and the
entrance to the White Sea, to Matotschkin Sound in Novaya
Zemlya.

The opening of a communication by sea between the rest
of Europe and these regions, by Sir Hugh Willoughby and
Richard Chancelor in 1553, was the fruit of the first exploring
expedition sent out from England by sea. Their voyage also
forms the first attempt to discover a north-east passage to
China. The object aimed at was not indeed accomplished ; but
on the other hand, there was opened by the voyage in question
the sea communication between England and the White Sea;
the voyage thus forming a turning-point not only in the
navigation of England and Russia, but also in the com-
merce of the world. It also demanded its sacrifice, Sir Hugh
Willoughby himself, with all the men in the vessels under
his command, having perished while wintering on the Kola
peninsula. In our days thousands of vessels sail safely along

this route.

With the knowledge we now possess of the state of the ice
in the Murman Sea—so the sea between Kola and Novaya
Zemlya is called on the old maps—it is possible to sail during
the latter part of summer from the White Sea to Matotschkin
without needing to fear the least hindrance from ice. For
several decades back, however, in consequence of want of
knowledge of the proper season and the proper course, the
case has been quite different—as is sufficiently evident from
the account of the difficulties and dangers which the renowned
Russian navigator, Count Liitke, met with during his repeated
voyages four summers in succession (1821-1824) along the west
coast of Novaya Zemlya. A skilful walrus-hunter can now, with a
common walrus-hunting vessel, in a single summer, sail further
in this sea than formerly could an expedition, fitted out with
all the resources of a naval yard, in four times as long time.

There are four ways of passing from the Murman Sea to
the Kara Sea, viz :—

a. Yugor Sound—the Fretum Nassovicum of the old Dutch-
men—between Vaygats Island and the mainland.

b. The Kara Port, between Vaygats Island and Novaya
Zemlya.

c. Matotschkin Sound, which between 73° and 74° N. Lat.
divides Novaya Zemlya into two parts, and finally,

d. The course north of the double island. The course past
the northernmost point of Novaya Zemlya is not commonly
clear of ice till the beginning of the month of September,
and perhaps ought, therefore, not to be chosen for an expedition

12 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA.

having for its object to penetrate far to the eastward in this
sea. Yugor Sound and the Kara Port are early free of fast
ice, but instead, are long rendered difficult to navigate by con-
siderable masses of drift ice, which are carried backwards and
forwards in the bays on both sides of the sound by the cur-
rents which here alternate with the ebb and flow of the tide.
Besides, at least in Yugor Sound, there are no good harbours,
in consequence of which the drifting masses of ice may greatly
inconvenience the vessels, which by these routes attempt to
enter the Kara Sea. Matotschkin Sound, again, forms a
channel nearly 100 kilometres long, deep and clear. with the
exception of a couple of shoals, the position of which is known,
which indeed is not usually free from fast ice until the latter
half of July, but, on the other hand, in consequence of the
configuration of the coast, is less subject to be obstructed by
drift ice than the southern straits. There are good harbours
at the eastern mouth of the sound. In 1875 and 1876 both
the sound and the sea lying off it were completely open in
the end of August, but the ice was much earlier broken up
also on the eastern side, so that a vessel could without
danger make its way among the scattered pieces of drift ice.
The part of Novaya Zemlya which is first visited by the
walrus-hunters in spring is usually just the west coast off
Matotschkin.

In case unusual weather does not prevail m the regions
in question during the course of early and mid-summer, 1878—
for instance, very steady southerly winds, which would early
drive the drift ice away from the coast of the mainland—I
consider, on the grounds which I have stated above, that it
will be safest for. the expedition to choose the course by
Matotschkin Sound.

We cannot, however, reckon on having, so early as the begin-
ning of August, open water direct to Port Dickson at the
mouth of the Yenisej, but must be prepared to make a con-
siderable detour towards the south in order to avoid the masses
of drift ice, which are to be met with in the Kara Sea up to the
beginning of September. The few days’ delay which may be
caused by the state of the ice here, will afford, besides, to the
expedition an opportunity for valuable work in examining the
natural history and hydrography of the channel, about 200
fathoms deep, which runs along the east coast of Novaya
Zemlya. The Kara Sea is, in the other parts of it, not deep, but
evenly shallow (ten to thirty fathoms), yet without being fouled
by shoals or rocks. The most abundant animal life is found in
the before-mentioned deep channel along the east coast, and
it was from it that our two foregoing expeditions brought
home several animal types, very peculiar and interesting in a

ei Ae tie OM,

INTRODUCTION. 13

systematic pomt of view. Near the coast the alge, too, are
rich and luxuriant. The coming expedition ought, therefore,
to endeavour to reach Matotschkin Sound so early that
at least seven days’ scientific work may be done in those
regions.

The voyage from the Kara Sea to Port Dickson is not at-
tended, according to recent experience, with any difficulty.
Yet we cannot reckon on arriving at Port Dickson sooner than
from the 10th to the 15th August. In 1875 I reached this
harbour with a sailing-vessel on the 15th August, after having
been much delayed by calms in the Kara Sea. With a steamer
it would have been possible to have reached the harbour, that
year, in the beginning of the month. In 1876 the state of the
ice was less favourable, in consequence of a cold summer and a
prevalence of north-east winds, but even then I arrived at
the mouth of the Yenisej on the 15th August.

It is my intention to lie to at Port Dickson, at least for some
hours, in order to deposit letters on one of the neighbouring
islands, in case, as is probable, I have no opportunity of meeting
there some vessel sent out from Yeniseisk, by which accounts
of the expedition may be sent home.

Actual observations regarding the hydrography of the coast
between the mouth of the Yenise] and Cape Chelyuskin are
for the present nearly wholly wanting, seeing that, as I have
already stated, no large vessel has ever sailed from this neigh-
bourhood. Even about the boat voyages of the Russians along
the coast we know exceedingly little, and from their unsuccessful
attempts to force a passage here we may by no means draw any
unfavourable conclusion as to the navigability of the sea during
certain seasons of the year. If, with a knowledge of the resources
for the equipment of naval expeditions which Siberia now
possesses, we seek to form an idea of the equipment of the
Russian expeditions’ sent out with extraordinary perseverance
during the years 1734-1743 by different routes to the north
coast of Siberia, the correctness of this assertion ought to be
easily perceived. There is good reason to expect that a well-
equipped steamer will be able to penetrate far beyond the point
where they were compelled to return with their small but
numerously manned craft, too fragile to encounter ice, and un-
suitable for the open sea, being generally held together with
willows.

1 A carefully written account of these voyages will be found in Retse
des Kaiserlich-russischen Flotten- Lieutenants Ferdinand von Wrangel ldngs
der Nordkiiste von Siberien und auf dem Eismeere, 1820-1824, bearbeitet
von G. Engelhardt, Berlin, 1839; and G. P. Miller, Voyages et Découvertes
faites par les Russes le long des Cotes de la Mer Glaciale, &e. Amsterdam :
1766.

14 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA.

There are, besides these, only three sea voyages, or perhaps
more correctly coast journeys, known in this part of the Kara
Sea, all under the leadership of the mates Minin and Sterlegoff.
The first attempt was made in 1738 in a “double sloop,” 70 feet
long, 17 broad, and 7} deep, built at Tobolsk and transported
thence to the Yenisej by Lieutenant Owzyn. With this vessel
Minin penetrated off the Yenisej to 72° 53' N.L. Hence a jolly
boat was sent further towards the north, but it too was com-
pelled, by want of provisions, to return before the point named
by me, Port Dickson, was reached. The following year a new
attempt was made, without a greater distance being traversed
than the summer before. Finally in the year 1740 the Russians
succeeded in reaching, with the double sloop already mentioned,
75° 15’ N. L,, after having survived great dangers from a heavy
sea at the river mouth. On the 2nd September, just as the
most advantageous season for navigation in these waters had
begun, they returned, principally on account of the lateness of
the season.

There are, besides, two statements founded on actual observa-
tions regarding the state of the ice on this coast. For Midden-
dorff, the Academician, during his famous journey of exploration
in North Siberia, reached from land the sea coast at Tajmur Bay
(75° 40’ N. L.), and found the sea on the 25th August, 1843, free
of ice as far as the eye could reach from the chain of heights along
the coast.1_ Middendorff, besides, states that the Yakoot Fomin,
the only person who had passed a winter at Tajmur Bay, declared
that the ice loosens in the sea lying off it in the first half of
August, and that it is driven away from the beach by southerly
winds, yet not further than that the edge of the ice can be
seen from the heights along the coast.

The land between the Tajmur and Cape Chelyuskin was
mapped by means of s/edge journeys along the coast by mate
Chelyuskin in the year 1742. It is now completely established
that the northernmost promontory of Asia was discovered by
him in the month of May in the year already mentioned,
and at that time the sea in its neighbourhood was of course
covered with ice. We have no observation as to the state of
the ice during summer or autumn in the sea lying imme-
diately to the west of Cape Chelyuskin ; but, as the question
relates to the possibility of navigating this sea, this is the
place to draw attention to the fact that Prontschischev, on
the Ist September, 1736, in an open sea, with coasting craft
from the east, very nearly reached the north point of Asia,
which is supposed to be situated in 77° 34’ N. Lat. and

1 Th, von Middendorff, Retse indem dussersten Norden und Osten Siberiens,
vol. iy. I., pages 21 and 508 (1867).

Pte es

SS ae ee ee ee
Coe =

INTRODUCTION. 15

105° E. Long., and that the Norwegian walrus-hunters during
late autumn have repeatedly sailed far to the eastward from
the north point of Novaya Zemlya (77° N. Lat., and 68° E.
Long.), without meeting with any ice.

From what has been already stated, it is evident that for the
present we do not possess any complete knowledge, founded on
actual observations, of the hydrography of the stretch of coast
between the Yenisej] and Cape Chelyuskin. I, however, consider
that during September, and possibly the latter half of August,
we ought to be able to reckon with complete certainty on having
here ice-free water, or at least a broad, open channel along the
coast, from the enormous masses of warm water, which the rivers
Obi, Irtisch, and Yenisej, running up through the steppes of High
Asia, here pour into the ocean, after having received water from
a river territory, everywhere strongly heated during the month
of August, and more extensive than that of all the rivers put
together, which fall mto the Mediterranean and the Black
Seas.

Between Port Dickson and White Island, there runs therefore
a strong fresh-water current, at first in a northerly direction.
The influence which the rotation of the earth exercises, in these
high latitudes, on streams which run approximately in the
direction of the meridian, is, however, very considerable, and
gives to those coming from the south an easterly bend. In
consequence of this, the river water of the Obi and Yenise}j
must be confined as in a proper river channel, at first along
the coast of the Tajmur country, until the current is allowed
beyond Cape Chelyuskin to flow unhindered towards the
north-east or east. Near the mouths of the large rivers I
have, during calm weather in this current, in about 74°
N. L., observed the temperature rising off the Yenisej to
+94° C. (17th August, 1875), and off the Obi to +8°C.
(10th August of the same year). As is usually the case, this
current coming from the south produces both a cold under-
current, which in stormy weather readily mixes with the surface
water and cools it, and on the surface a northerly cold ice-
bestrewn counter-current, which, in consequence of the earth’s

rotation, takes a bend to the west, and which evidently runs

from the opening between Cape Chelyuskin and the northern
extremity of Novaya Zemlya, towards the east side of this
island, and perhaps may be the cause why the large masses of
drift ice are pressed during summer against the east coast of
Novaya Zemlya. According to my own experience and the
uniform testimony of the walrus-hunters, this ice melts away
almost completely during autumn.

In order to judge of the distance at which the current coming
from the Obi and the Yenisej can drive away the drift ice, we

16 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA.

ought to remember that even a very weak current exerts an
influence on the position of the ice, and that, for instance, the
current from the Plata River, whose volume of water, however,
is not perhaps so great as that of the Obi and Yenisej, is still
clearly perceptible at a distance of 1,500 kilometres from the
river mouth, that is to say, about three times as far as from
Port Dickson to Cape Chelyuskin. The only bay which can be
compared to the Kara Sea in respect of the area, which is
intersected by the rivers running into it, 1s the Gulf of Mexico.1
The river currents from this bay appear to contribute greatly
to the Gulf Stream.

The winds which, during the autumn months, often blow in
these regions from the north-east, perhaps also, in some degree,
contribute to keep a broad channel, along the coast in question,
nearly ice-free.

The knowledge we possess regarding the navigable water
to the east of Cape Chelyuskin towards the Lena, is mainly
founded on the observations of the expeditions which were sent
out by the Russian Government, before the middle of last
century, to survey the northern part of Asia. In order to form
a correct judgment of the results obtamed, we must, while
fully recognising the great courage, the extraordinary per-
severance, and the power of bearing sufferings and overcoming
difficulties of all kinds, which have always distinguished the
Russian Polar explorers, always keep in mind that the voyages
were carried out with small sailing-vessels of a build, which,
according to modern requirements, is quite unsuitable for vessels
intended for the open sea, and altogether too weak to stand
collision with ice. They wanted, besides, not only the powerful
auxiliary of our time, steam, but also a proper sail rig, fitted
for actual manceuvring, and were for the most part manned
with crews from the banks of the Siberian rivers, who never
before had seen the water of the ocean, experienced a high
sea, or tried sailing among sea ice. When the requisite
attention is given to these circumstances, it appears to me
that the voyages referred to below show positively that even
here we ought to be able during autumn to reckon upon a
navigable sea.

The expeditions along the coast, east of Cape Chelyuskin,
started from the town Yakoutsk, on the bank of the Lena, in
62° N. L., upwards of 900 miles from the mouth of the river.
Here also were built the vessels which were used for these
voyages.

1 Compare von Middendorff, Reise im Norden u. Osten Siberiens (1848),
part i., page 59, and a paper by von Baer, Ueber das Klima des Tajmur-
landes.

INTRODUCTION. ay

The first started in 1735, under the command of Marine-
Lieutenant Prontschischev. After having sailed down the river,
and passed, on the 14th August, the eastern mouth-arm of the
Lena, he sailed round the large delta of the river. On the 7th
September he had not got farther than to the mouth of the
Olonek. Three weeks had thus been spent in sailing a distance
which an ordinary steamer ought now to be able to traverse in
one day. Ice was seen, but not encountered. On the other
hand, the voyage was delayed by contrary winds, probably blow-
ing on land, whereby Prontschischev’s vessel, if it had in-
cautiously ventured out, would probably have been cast on
the beach. The late season of the year induced Pyontschischev
to lay up his vessel for the winter here, at some summer yourts
built by fur-hunters in 72° 54° N. L. The winter passed
happily, and the following year (1736) Prontschischev again
broke up, as soon as the state of the ice in Olonek Bay per-
mitted, which, however, was not until the 15th August. The
course was shaped along the coast toward the north-west. Here
drift ice was met with, but he nevertheless made rapid pro-
gress, so that on the Ist September he reached 77° 29’ N. L.,
as we now know, in the neighbourhood of Cape Chelyuskin.
Compact masses of ice compelled him to turn here, and the
Russians sailed back to the mouth of the Olonek, which was
reached on the 15th September. The distinguished commander
of the vessel had died shortly before of scurvy, and, some days
after, his young wife, who had accompanied him on his difficult
voyage, also died. As these attacks of scurvy did not happen
during winter, but immediately after the close of summer, they
form very remarkable contributions to a judgment of the way in
which the Arctic expeditions of that period were fitted out.

A new expedition, under Marine-Lieutenant Chariton Laptev,
sailed along the same coast in 1739. The Lena was left on the
Ist August, and Cape Thaddeus (76° 47’ N. L.) reached on the
2nd September, the navigation having been obstructed by drift
ice only off Chatanga Bay. Cape Thaddeus is situated only
fifty or sixty English miles from Cape Chelyuskin. They turned
here, partly on account of the masses of drift ice which barred
the way, partly on account of the late season of the year, and
wintered at the head of Chatanga Bay, which was reached on the
8th September. Next year Laptev attempted to return along
the coast to the Lena, but his vessel was nipped by drift ice
off the mouth of the Olonek. After many difficulties and
dangers, all the men succeeded in reaching safely the winter
quarters of the former year. Both from this point and from
the Yenisej, Laptev himself and his second in command, Chel-
yuskin, and the surveyor, Tschekin, the following year made a
number of sledge journeys, in order to survey the peninsula which
projects farthest to the north-west from the mainland of Asia.

18 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA.

With this ended the voyages west of the Lena. The northern-
most point of Asia, which was reached from land in 1742 by
Chelyuskin, one of the most energetic members of most of the
expeditions which we have enumerated, could not be reached
by sea, and still less had any one succeeded in forcing his way
with a vessel from the Lena to the Yenisej. Prontschischev had,
however, turned on the Ist September, 1736, only some few
minutes, and Laptev on the 2nd September, 1739, only about 50’
from the point named, after voyages in vessels, which clearly
were altogether unsuitable for the purpose in view. Among _
the difficulties and obstacles which were met with during
these voyages, not only ice, but also unfavourable and stormy
winds played a prominent part. From fear of not being able to
reach any winter station visited by natives, the explorers often
turned at that season of the year when the Polar Sea is most
open. With proper allowance for these circumstances, we may
safely affirm that no serious obstacles to sailing round Cape
Chelyuskin would probably have been met with in the years
named, by any steamer properly fitted out for sailing among ice.

From the sea between the Lena and Behring’s Straits there
are much more numerous and complete observations than from
that further west. The hope of obtaining tribute and commercial
profit from the wild races living along the coast tempted the
adventurous Russian hunters, even before the middle of the 17th
century, to undertake a number of voyages along the coast. On
a map which is annexed to the previously quoted work of Miiller,
founded mainly on researches in the Siberian archives, there
is to be found a sea route pricked out with the inscription, “ Route
anciennement fort fréquentée. Voyage fait par mer en 1648 par
trois vaisseaux russes, dont un est parvenu jusqu a la Kamschatka.”

Unfortunately the details of most of these voyages have been
completely forgotten; and, that we have obtained some scanty
accounts of one or other of them, has nearly always depended
on some remarkable catastrophe, on lawsuits or other circum-
stances which led to the interference of the authorities. This
is even the case with the most famous of these voyages, that
of the Cossack, Deschnev, of which several accounts have been
preserved, only through a dispute which arese between him and
one of his companions, concerning the right of discovery to a
walrus bank on the east coast of Kamschatka. This voyage,
however, was a veritable exploring expedition undertaken with
the approval of the Government, partly for the discovery of some
large islands in the Polar Sea, about which a number of reports

1 The map bears the title, “ Nouvelle carte des découvertes faites par des
vaisseaux Russiens, etc., dressée sur des mémoires authentiques de ceux
qui ont assisté 4 ces découvertes, et surd’autres connaissances dont on rend
raison dins un mémoire séparé. St. Pétersbourg a l’Académie Impériale
des Sciences, 1758.”

INTRODUCTION. 19

were current among the hunters and natives, partly for extend-
ing the territory yielding tribute to the Russians, over the yet
unknown regions in the north-east.

Deschnevy started on the Ist July, 1648, from the Kolyma in
command of one of the seven vessels (Kotscher),! manned with
thirty men, of which the expedition consisted. Concerning the
fate of four of these vessels we have no information. It is
probable that they turned back, and were not lost, as several
writers have supposed; three, under the command of the
Cossacks, Deschnev and Ankudinov, and the fur-hunter, Kolmo-
gorsov, succeeding in reaching Chutskojnos through what appears
to have been open water. Here Ankudinov’s vessel was ship-
wrecked; the men, however, were saved and divided among
the other two, which were speedily separated. Deschnev con-
tinued his voyage along the east coast of Kamschatka to the
Anadir, which was reached in October. Ankudinov is also
supposed to have reached the mouth of the Kamschatka River,
where he settled among the natives and finally died of scurvy.

The year following (1649) Staduchin sailed again, for seven
days, eastward from the Kolyma to the neighbourhood of
Chutskojnos, in an open sea, so far as we can gather from the
defective account. Deschnev’s own opinion of the possibility
of navigating this sea may be seen from the fact; that, after
his own vessel was lost, he had timber collected at the Anadir
for the purpose of building new ones. With these he intended
to send to Yakoutsk the tribute of furs which he had received
from the natives. He was, however, obliged to desist from his
project by an easily understood want of materials for the build-
ing of the new vessels ; he remarks also in connection with this
that the sea round Chutskojnos is not free of ice every year.

A number of voyages from the Siberian rivers northward, were

also made after the founding of Nischni Kolymsk, by Michael

Staduschin in 1644, in consequence of the reports which were
current among the natives at the coast, of the existence of large
inhabited islands, rich in walrus tusks and mammoth bones,
in the Siberian Polar Sea. Often disputed, but persistently taken
up by the hunting races, these reports have finally been verified
by the discovery of the islands of New Siberia, of Wrangel’s
Land, and of the part of North America east of Behring’s Straits,
whose natural state gave occasion to the golden glamour of
tradition with which the belief of the common people in-
correctly adorned the bleak, treeless islands in the Polar Sea.
All these attempts to force a passage in the open sea from the
Siberian coasts northwards, failed, for the single reason, that an

1 Pretty broad, flat-bottomed, keelless vessels, 12 fathoms long, gene-
rall moved forward by rowing; sail only used with fair wind (Wrangels
Reise, p. 4).

c 2

20 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA.

open sea with a fresh breeze was as destructive to the craft
which were at the disposal of the adventurous, but ill-equipped
Siberian polar explorer as anice-filled sea; indeed, more dangerous,
for in the latter case the crew, if the vessel was nipped, generally
saved themselves on the ice, and had only to contend with
hunger, snow, cold, and other difficulties to which the most
of them had been accustomed from their childhood ; but in the
open sea the ill-built, weak vessel, caulked with moss mixed
with clay, and held together with willows, leaked already with
a moderate sea, and with a heavier, was helplessly lost, if a
harbour could not be reached in time of need.

The explorers soon preferred to reach the islands by sledge
journeys on the ice, and thus at last discovered the whole of the
large group of islands which is named New Siberia. The islands
were often visited by hunters for the purpose of collecting mam-
moth tusks, of which great masses, together with the bones
of the mammoth, rhinoceros, sheep, ox, horse, etc., are found
imbedded in the beds of clay and sand here. Afterwards they
were completely surveyed during Hedenstrom’s expeditions, fitted
out by Count Ruminzov, Chancellor of the Russian Empire, in
the years 1809-1811, and during Lieutenant Anjou’s in 1823.
Hedenstrom’s expeditions were carried out by travelling with
dog-sledges on the ice, before it broke, to the islands, passing
the summer there, and returning in autumn, when the sea was
again covered withice. As the question relates to the possibility
of navigating this sea, these expeditions, carried out im a very
praiseworthy way, might be expected to have great interest,
especially through observations from land, concerning the state
of the ice in autumn; but in the short account of Hedenstrom’s
expeditions which is inserted in Wrangel’s 7’ravels, pp. 99-119, the
only source accessible to me in this respect, there is not a single
word on this point.' Information on this subject, so important
for our expedition, has, however, by Mr. Sibiriakoff’s care, been
received from inhabitants of North Siberia, who earn their living
by collecting mammoths’ tusks on the group of islands in question.
By these accounts the sea between the north coast of Asia and
the islands of New Siberia, is every year pretty free of ice.

A very remarkable discovery was made in 1811 by a member
of Hedenstrém’s expedition, the Yakoutsk townsman Sannikov ;
for he found, on the west coast of the island Katelnoj, remains
of a roughly-timbered winter habitation, in the neighbourhood
of the wreck of a vessel, differimg completely in build from those
which are common in Siberia. Partly from this, partly from a

1 Wrangel’s own journeys were carried out during winter, with dog
sledges on the ice, and, however interesting in many other respects, do not
yield any other direct contribution to our knowledge of the state of the
ice in summer and autumn.

INTRODUCTION. o1

number of tools which lay scattered on the beach, Sannikov drew
the conclusion, that a hunter from Spitzbergen or Novaya Zemlya
had been driven thither by the wind, and had lived there for a
season with his crew. Unfortunately the inscription on a monu-
mental cross in the neighbourhood of the hut was not translated.

During the great northern expeditions,! several attempts were
also made to force a passage eastwards from the Lena. The first
was under the command of Lieutenant Lassinius in 1735. He
left the most easterly mouth-arm of the Lena on the 21st of
August, and sailed 120 versts eastward, and there encountered
drift ice which compelled him to seek a harbour at the coast.
Here the winter was passed, with the unfortunate result, that
the chief himself, and most of the fifty-two men belonging
to the expedition, perished of scurvy.

The following year, 1736, there was sent out, in the same
direction, a new expedition under Lieutenant Dmitri Laptev.
With the vessel of Lassinius he attempted, in the middle of
August, to sail eastward, but he soon fell in with a great deal of
drift ice. So soon as the end of the month—the time when navi-
gation ought properly to begin-——he turned towards the Lena on
account of ice.

In 1739 Laptev undertook his third voyage. He penetrated
to the mouth of the Indigirka, which was frozen over on
the 21st September, and wintered there. The following year
the voyage was continued somewhat beyond the mouth of the
Kolyma to Cape Great Baranov, where further advance was pre-
vented by drift ice on the 26th September. After having
returned to the Kolyma, and wintered at Nischni Kolymsk, he
attempted, the following year, again to make his way eastwards
in some large boats built during winter, but, on account of
fog, contrary winds, and ice, without success. In judging of the
results these voyages yielded, we must take into consideration
the utterly unsuitable vessels in which they were undertaken—
at first in a double sloop, built at Yakoutsk, in 1735, afterwards
in two large boats built at Nischni Kolymsk. Ifwe may judge
of the nature of these craft from those now used on the Siberian
rivers, we ought rather to be surprised that any of them could
venture out on a real sea, than consider the unsuccessful
voyages just described as proofs that there is no probability of
being able to force a passage here with a vessel of modern build,
and provided with steam power.

It remains, finally, for me to give an account of the at-
tempts that have been made to penetrate westward from
Behring’s Straits.

1 This is a common name for the many Russian expeditions which,

during the years 1734-1743, were sent into the North Polar Sea from the
Dwina, Obi, Yenisej, Lena, and Kamschatka,

22 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA.

Deschnev’s voyage, from the Lena, through Behring’s Straits
to the mouth of the Anadir, in 1648, became completely forgotten
in the course of about a century, until Miiller, by searches in
the Siberian archives, recovered the details of these and various
other voyages along the north coast of Siberia. That the
memory of these remarkable voyages has been preserved to
after-times, however, depends, as has been already stated, upon
accidental circumstances, lawsuits, and such like, which led to
correspondence with the authorities. Of other similar under-
takings we have certainly no knowledge, although now and then
we find it noted that the Polar Sea had in former times often
been traversed. In accounts of the expeditions fitted out by
the authorities, it, for instance, often happens that mention 1s
made of meeting with hunters and traders, who were sailing
along the coast in the prosecution of private enterprise. Little
attention was, however, given to these voyages, and, eighty-one
years after Deschnev’s voyage, the existence of straits between
the north-eastern extremity of Asia and the north-western ex-
tremity of America was quite unknown, or at least doubted.
Finally, in 1729, Behring anew sailed through the Sound, and
attached his name to it. He did not sail, however, very far (to
172° W. Long.) along the north coast of Asia, although he does
not appear to have met with any obstacle from ice. Nearly fifty
years afterwards Cook concluded in these waters the series of
splendid discoveries with which he enriched geographical
science. After having, in 1778, sailed a good way eastwards
along the north coast of America, he turned towards the west,
and reached the 180th degree of longitude on the 29th August :
the fear of meeting with ice deterred him from sailing further
westward, and his vessel appears to have scarcely been equipped
or fitted for sailmg among ice.

After Cook’s time we know of only three expeditions which
have sailed westwards from Behring’s Straits. The first was an
American expedition, under Captain Rodgers, in 1855. He
reached, through what appears to have been open water, the
longitude of Cape Yakan (176° E. from Greenwich). The second
was that of the English steam-whaler Long, who, in 1867, in search
of a new profitable whale-fishing ground, sailed further west than
any before him. By the 10th August he had reached the
longitude of Tschaun Bay (170° KE. from Greenwich). He was
engaged in whale-fishing, not in an exploring expedition, and
turned here; but, in the short account he has given of his
voyage, he expresses the decided conviction that a voyage from
Behring’s Straits to the Atlantic belongs to the region of possi-
bilities, and adds that, even if this sea-route does not come to
be of any commercial importance, that between the Lena and
Behring’s Straits ought to be useful for turning to account the

INTRODUCTION. 23

products of Northern Siberia.t Finally, last year a Russian
expedition was sent out to endeavour to reach Wrangel’s Land
from Behring’s Straits. According to communications in the
newspapers, it was prevented by ice from sailing thence, as
well as from sailing far to the west.

Information has been obtained through Mr. Sibiriakoff, from
North Siberia, regarding the state of the ice in the neighbour-
ing sea. The hunting in these regions appears to have now
fallen off so seriously, that only few persons were found who
could give any answers to the questions put.

Thus in Yakoutsk there was only one man (a priest) who
had been at the coast of the Polar Sea. He states that when
the wind blows off the land the sea becomes free of ice, but
that the ice comes back when the wind blows on to the land,
and thereby exposes the vessels which cannot reach a safe
harbour to great danger.

Another correspondent states, on the ground of observa-
tions made during Tschikanovski’s expedition, that in 1875 the
sea off the Olonek was conipletely free of ice, but adds at the
same time that the year in this respect was an exceptional one.
The Arctic Ocean, not only in summer, but also during winter,
is occasionally free of ice, and at a distance of 200 versts from the
coast, the sea is open even in winter, in what direction, however,
is uncertain. The latter fact is also confirmed by Wrangel’s
journeys with dog-sledges on the ice in 1821-1823.

A third person says, ‘‘ According to the information which I
have received, the north coast, from the mouth of the Lena to
that of the Indigirka, is free from ice from July to September.
The north wind drives the ice towards the coast, but not in
large masses. According to the observations of the men who
search for mammoth tusks, the sea is open as far as the
southern part of the New Siberia Islands. It is probable that
these islands form a protection against the ice in the Werchnojan
region. It is otherwise on the Kolyma coast; and if the
Kolyma can be reached from Behring’s Straits, so certainly can
the Lena.”

The circumstance that the ice during summer is driven from
the coast by southerly winds, yet not so far but that it returns,
in larger or smaller quantity, with northerly winds, is further
confirmed by other correspondents, and appears to me to
show that the New Siberian Islands and Wrangel’s Land only
form links in an extensive group of islands, running parallel with
the north coast of Siberia, which, on the one hand, keeps the
ice from the intermediate sea from drifting away altogether, and
favours the formation of ice during winter, but, on the other

1 Petermann’s Mittheilungen, 1868, p. 1, and 1869, p. 32.

24 i THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA.

hand, protects the coast from the Polar ice proper, formed to the
north of the islands. The information I have received besides,
refers principally to the summer months. As in the Kara
Sea, which formerly had a yet worse reputation, the ice here,
too, perhaps, melts away for the most part during autumn, so
that at this season we may reckon on a pretty open sea.

Most of the correspondeats, who have given information
about the state of the ice in the Siberian Polar Sea, concern
themselves further with the reports current in Siberia, that
American whalers have been seen from the coast far to the
westward. The correctness of these reports was always denied
in the most decided way; yet they rest, at least to some
extent, on a basis of fact. For I have myself met with a
whaler, who for three years in a steamer carried on trade with
the inhabitants of the coast from Cape Yakan to Behring’s
Straits. He was quite convinced that some years at least it
would be possible to sail from Behring’s Straits to the Atlantic.
On one occasion he had returned through Behring’s Straits as
late as the 17th October.

From what I have thus stated, it follows,—

That the ocean lying north of the north coast of Siberia,
between the mouth of the Yenise] and Tschaun Bay, has never
been ploughed by the keel of any proper sea-going vessel, still
less been traversed by any steamer specially fitted out for
navigation among ice:

That the small vessels with which it has been attempted
to traverse this part of the ocean never ventured very far
from the coast :

That an open sea, with a fresh breeze, was as destructive for
them, indeed more destructive, than a sea covered with drift
ice :

That they almost always sought some convenient winter har-
bour, just at that season of the year when the sea is freest of
ice, namely, late summer or autumn :

That, notwithstanding the sea from Cape Chelyuskin to
Behring’s Straits has been repeatedly traversed, no one has yet
succeeded in sailing over the whole extent at once:

That the covering of ice formed during winter along the coast,
but probably not m the open sea, is every summer broken up,
giving origin to extensive fields of drift ice, which are driven,
now by a northerly wind towards the coast, now by a south
wind out to sea, yet not so far but that it comes back to the
coast after some days’ northerly wind; whence it appears
probable that the Siberian Sea is, so to say, shut off from
the Polar Sea proper, by a series of islands, of which, for the
present, we know only Wrangel’s Land and the islands which
form New Siberia.

INTRODUCTION. 25

In this connection it seems to me probable that a well-
equipped steamer would be able without meeting too many
difficulties, at least obstacles from ice, to force a passage this
way during autumn in a few days, and thus not only solve a
geographical problem of several centuries’ standing, but also, with
all the means that are now at the disposal of the man of science
in researches in geography, hydrography, geology, and natural
history, survey a hitherto almost unknown sea of enormous extent.

The sea north of Behring’s Straits is now visited by hundreds
of whaling steamers, and the way thence to American and
European harbours therefore forms a much-frequented route.
Some few decades back, this was, however, by no means the case.
The voyages of Behring, Cook, Kotzebue, Beechey, and others
were then considered as adventurous, fortunate exploring ex-
peditions of great value and importance in respect of science,
but without any direct practical utility. For nearly a hundred
and fifty years the same was the case with Spangberg’s voyage
from Kamschatka to Japan in the year 1739, by which the
exploring expeditions of the Russians, in the northernmost part
of the Pacific Ocean, were connected with those of the Dutch
and the Portuguese to India and Japan ; and in case our expedition
succeeds in reaching the Suez Canal, after having circumnavi-
gated Asia, there will meet us there a splendid work, which, more
than any other, reminds us, that what to-day is declared by ex-
perts to be impossible, is often carried mto execution to-morrow.

I am also fully convinced that it is not only possible to sail
along the north coast of Asia, provided circumstances are not too
unfavourable, but that such an enterprise will be of incalculable
practical importance, by no means directly, as opening a new
commercial route, but indirectly, by the impression which would
thereby be communicated of the practical utility of a com-
munication by sea between the ports of North Scandinavia and
the Obi and Yenisej, on the one hand, and between the Pacific
Ocean and the Lena on the other.

Should the expedition, contrary to expectation, not succeed
in carrying out the programme which has been arranged in its
entirety, it ought not to be looked upon as having failed. In
such a case the expedition will remain for a considerable time
at places on the north coast of Siberia, suitable for scientific
research. Every mile beyond the mouth of the Yenisej is a step
forward to a complete knowledge of our globe—an object which
sometime or other must be attained, and towards which it is
a point of honour for every civilised nation to contribute in its
proportion.

Men of science will have an opportunity, in these hitherto
unvisited waters, of answering a number of questions regarding
the former and present state of the Polar countries, of which

26 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA.

more than one is of sufficient weight and importance to lead to
such an expedition as the present. I may be permitted here
to refer to only a few of these.

If we except that part of the Kara Sea which, has been
surveyed by the two last Swedish expeditions, we have for the
present no knowledge of the vegetable and animal life in the
sea which washes the north coast of Siberia. Quite certainly we
shall here, in opposition to what has been hitherto supposed,
meet with the same abundance of animals and plants as in the
sea round Spitzbergen. In the Siberian Polar sea, the animal
and vegetable types, so far as we can judge beforehand, exclusively
consist of survivals from the glacial period, which next preceded
the present, which is. not the case in the Polar Sea, where the
Gulf Stream distributes its waters, and whither it thus carries
types from more southerly regions. But a complete and exact
knowledge of which animal types are of glacial, and which of
Atlantic origin, is of the greatest importance, not only for zoology
and the geography of animals, but also for the geology of Scan-
dinavia, and especially for the knowledge of our loose earthy layers.

Few scientific discoveries have so powerfully captivated the
interest, both of the learned and unlearned, as that of the colossal
remains of elephants, sometimes well preserved, with flesh and
hair, in the frozen soil of Siberia. Such discoveries have more
than once formed the object of scientific expeditions, and care-
ful researches by eminent men; but there is still much that is
enigmatical with respect to a number of circumstances connected
with the mammoth period of Siberia, which perhaps was con-
temporaneous with our glacial period. Specially is our know-
ledge of the animal and vegetable types, which lived contem-
poraneously with the mammoth, exceedingly incomplete, although
we know that in the northernmost parts of Siberia, which are
also most inaccessible from land, there are small hills covered
with the bones of the mammoth and other contemporaneous
animals, and that there is found everywhere in that region so-
called Noah’s wood, that is to say, half-petrified or carbonised
vegetable remains from several different geological periods.

Taking a general view of the subject, we see that an
investigation, as complete as possible, of the geology of the
Polar countries, so difficult of access, is a condition indis-
pensable to a knowledge of the former history of our globe. In
order to prove this I need only point to the epoch-making
influence which has been exerted on geological theories by the
discovery, in the rocks and earthy layers of the Polar countries,
of beautiful fossil plants from widely separated geological
periods. In this field too our expedition to the north coast of
Siberia ought to expect to reap abundant harvests. There are
besides to be found in Siberia, strata which have been deposited

INTRODUCTION. © 27

almost contemporaneously with the coal-bearing formations of
South Sweden, and which therefore contain animal and vegetable
petrifications which just now are of very special interest. for
geological science in our own country, with reference to the dis-
coveries of splendid fossil plants which of late years have been
made at several places among us, and give us so lively an idea
of the sub-tropical vegetation which in former times covered the
Scandinavian peninsula.

Few sciences perhaps will yield so important practical results
as meteorology is likely to do at some future date—a fact, or
rather an already partly realised expectation, which has won
general recognition, as is shown by the large sums which in
all civilised countries have been set apart for establishing
meteorological offices and for encouraging meteorological re-
search. But the state of the weather in a country is so
dependent on the temperature, wind, pressure of the air, etc.,
in very remote regions that the laws of the meteorology of a
country can only be ascertained by comparing observations from
the most distant regions. Several international meteorological
enterprises have already been started, and we may almost con-
sider the meteorological institutions of the different countries as
separate departments of one and the same office, distributed over
the whole world, through whose harmonious co-operation the
object in view shall one day be reached. But, beyond the places
for which daily series of observations may be obtained, there are
regions hundreds of square miles in extent from which no
observations, or only scattered ones, are yet to be had, and here
notwithstanding we have just the key to many meteorological
phenomena, otherwise difficult of explanation, within the civilised
countries of Europe. Such a meteorological territory, unknown,
but of the greatest importance, is formed by the Polar Sea lying
to the north of Siberia, and the land and islands there situated.
It is of great importance for the meteorology of Europe and of
Sweden to obtain trustworthy accounts of the distribution of the
land, of the state of the ice, the pressure of the air, and the
temperature in that in these respects little-known part of the
globe, and the Swedish expedition will here have a subject for
investigation of direct importance for our own country.

To acertain extent the same may be said of the contributions
which may be obtained from those regions to our knowledge
of terrestrial magnetism, of the aurora, etc. There are, besides,
the examination of the flora and fauna in those countries,
hitherto unknown in this respect, ethnographical researches,
hydrographical work, ete.

I have of course only been able to notice shortly the scientific
questions which will meet the expedition during a stay of some
length on the north coast of Siberia, but what has been said

28 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA.

may perhaps be sufficient to show that the expedition, even
if its geographical objects were not attained, ought to be a
worthy continuation of similar enterprises which have been set
on foot in this country, and which have brought gain to science
and honour to Sweden.

Should the expedition again, as I hope, be able to reach
Behring’s Straits with little bindrance, and thus in a com-
paratively short time—in that case indeed the time, which on
the way can be devoted to researches in natural history, will be
quite too short for solving many of the scientific questions I
have mentioned. But without reckoning the world-historical -
navigation problem which will then be solved, extensive con-
tributions of immense importance ought also to be obtainable
regarding the geography, hydrography, zoology, and botany
of the Siberian Polar Sea, and, beyond Behring’s Straits, the
expedition will meet with other countries having a more
luxuriant and varied nature, where other questions which
perhaps concern us less, but are not on that account of less
importance for science as a whole, will claim the attention
of the observer and yield him a rich reward for his labour
and pains. These are the considerations which formed the
grounds for the arrangement of the plan of the expedition which
is NOW in question.

It is my intention to leave Sweden in the beginning of
July, 1878, in a steamer, specially built for navigation among
ice, which will be provisioned for two years at most, and
which, besides a scientific staff of four or five persons, will
have on board a naval officer, a physician, and at most eighteen
men—petty officers and crew, preferably volunteers, from your
Royal Majesty’s navy. Four walrus-hunters will also be hired
in Norway. The course will be shaped at first to Matotschkin
Sound, in Novaya Zemlya, where a favourable opportunity
will be awaited for the passage of the Kara Sea. Afterwards
the voyage will be continued to Port Dickson, at the mouth
of the Yenisej, which I hope to be able to reach in the first
half of August. As soon as circumstances permit, the
expedition will continue its voyage from this point in the open
channel which the river-water of the Obi and the Yenise} must
indisputably form along the coast to Cape Chelyuskin, possibly
with some short excursions towards the north-west in order
to see whether any large island is to be found between the
northern part of Novaya Zemlya and New Siberia.

At Cape Chelyuskin the expedition will reach the only
part of the proposed route which has. not been traversed by
some small vessel, and this place is perhaps rightly considered
as that which it will be most difficult for a vessel to double
during the whole north-east passage. As Prontschischev, im

INTRODUCTION. 29

1736, in small river craft built with insufficient means reached
within a few minutes of this north-westernmost promontory of
Asia, our vessel, equipped with all modern appliances, ought
not to find insuperable difficulties in doubling this point, and
if that be accomplished, we will probably have pretty open
water towards Behring’s Straits, which ought to be reached
before the end of September.

If time, and the state of the ice permit, it would be desirable
that the expedition during this voyage should make some ex-
cursions towards the north, in order to ascertain whether land
is not to be found between Cape Chelyuskin and the New
Siberian group of islands, and between it and Wrangel’s Land.
From Behring’s Straits the course will be shaped, with such
stoppages as circumstances give rise to, for some Asiatic port,
from which accounts may be sent home, and then onwards round
Asia to Suez. Should the expedition be prevented from
forcing a passage east of Cape Chelyuskin, it will depend on
circumstances which it is difficult to foresee, whether it will
immediately return to Europe, in which case the vessel with its
equipment and crew may be immediately available for some
other purpose, or whether it ought not to winter in some suit-
able harbour in the bays at the mouths of the Tajmur,
Pjisina, or Yenisej. Again, in case obstacles from ice occur east
of Cape’ Chelyuskin, a harbour ought to be sought for at
some convenient place on the north coast of Siberia, from
which, during the followimg summer, opportunities would be
found for important surveys in the Polar Sea, and during the
course of the summer some favourable opening will also cer-
tainly occur, when southerly winds have driven the ice from
the coast, for reaching Behring’s Straits. Probably also, if
it be necessary to winter, there will be opportunities of sending
home letters from the winter station.

~

30 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. 1.

CHAPTER I.

Departure—Tromsoe—Members of the Expedition—Stay at Maosoe—Limit
of Trees—Climate—Scurvy and Antiscorbutics—The first doubling of
North Cape—Othere’s account of his Travels—Ideas concerning the
Geography of Scandinavia current during the first half of the sixteenth
century—The oldest Maps of the North—Herbertstein’s account of
Istoma’s voyage — Gustaf Vasa and the North-east Passage —
Willoughby and Chancelor’s voyages,

THE Vega left the harbour of Karlskrona on the 22nd
June, 1878. Including Lieutenants Palander and Brusewitz,
there were then on board nineteen men belonging to the
Swedish navy, and two foreign naval officers, who were to
take part in the expedition—Lientenants Hovgaard and
Bove. _ The two latter had lived some time at Karlskrona
in order to be present at the fitting out and repairing of
the vessel.

On the 24th June the Vega called at Copenhagen in order to
take on board the large quantity of provisions which had been
purchased there. On the 26th June the voyage was resumed to
Gothenburg, where the Vega anchored on the 27th. During the
passage there was on board the famous Italian geographer, Com-
mendatore CHRISTOFORO NEGRI, who, for several years back,
had followed with special interest all Arctic voyages, and now
had received a commission from the Government of his native
country to be present at the departure of the Vega from
Sweden, and to make himself acquainted with its equip-
ment, &c. At Gothenburg there embarked Docent Kjell-
man, Dr. Almquist, Dr. Stuxberg, Lieutenant Nordquist,
and an assistant to the naturalists, who had been hired in
Stockholm ; and here were taken on board the greater part
of the scientific equipment of the expedition, and various
stocks of provisions, clothes, &e., that had been purchased
in Sweden.

On the 4th July the Vega left the harbour of Gothenburg.
While sailing along the west coast of Norway there blew a
fresh head wind, by which the arrival of the vessel at Tromsoe
was delayed till the 17th July. Here I went on board. Coal,
water, reindeer furs’ for all our men, and a large quantity of

1 In many Polar expeditions, sealskin has been used as clothing instead
of reindeer skin. The reindeer skin, however, is lighter and warmer, and
ought therefore to have an unconditional preference as a means of pro-
tection against severe cold. In mild weather, clothing made of reindeer
skin in the common way has indeed the defect that it is drenched
through with water, and thereby becomes useless, but in such weather it

‘-Bruvysiyp ‘ueaspnuy snue[gQ Aq ydvasoqzoyd v 10yy

“HOSWOUL

|

|, Foe

32 ' THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cuap.

other stores, bought in Finmark for the expedition, were taken
in here; and three walrus-hunters, hired for the voyage,
embarked.

On the 21st July the whole equipment of the Vega was on
board, the number of its crew complete, all clear for departure,
and the same day at 2.15 P.M. we weighed anchor, with lively
hurrahs from a numerous crowd assembled at the beach, to
enter in earnest on our Arctic voyage.

The members of the expedition on board the Vega were—

A. E. Nordenskiold, Professor, in com-

mand of the expedition ie . born 18th Nov. 1832
A. A. L. Palander, Lieutenant, now w Cap-

tain in the Royal Swedish Navy, chief

of the steamer Vega . ° , 2nd Oct. 1840
F. R. Kjellman, Ph.D. , Docent i in Botany

in the University of Upsala, superin-

tendent of the botanical work of the

CXMEGUEOMS ot Sy des i LNs ere ,» Ath Nov. 1846
A. J. Stuxberg, Ph.D., superintendent
of the zoological work. ,, 18th April 1849

E. : Almquist, “Candidate of Medicine,

medical officer of the expedition,

lichenologist : , Sth Aug. 1852
E. C. Brusewitz, Lieutenant in the Roy al

Swedish Navy, second in command of

the vessel : » Ist Dee. 1844
G. Bove, Lieutenant in the Royal Ttalian

_ Navy, superintendent of the hydrogra-

phical work of the expedition .. » ord Oct. 1853
A. -Hovgaard, Lieutenant in the Roy al

Danish Navy, superintendent of the

magnetical and meteorological work

of the expedition . . » Ast Nov. 1853
O. Nordquist, Lieutenant in the Im-

perial Russian Regiment of Guards,

interpreter, assistant BOOOCISH .s° 5h . » 20th May 1858
R: Nilsson, sailling-master .9.. 4). . > oth, Janskoom

is in general unnecessary to use furs. The coast Chukchis, who catch
great numbers of seals, but can only obtain reindeer skins by purchase,
yet consider clothing made of the latter material indispensable in winter.
During this season they wear an overcoat of the same form as the Lapps’
pesk, the suitableness of whose cut thus appears to be well proved. On
this account I prefer the old-world Polar dress to that of the new, which
consists of more closely fitting clothes. ‘The Lapp shoes of reindeer skin
(renskallar, komager) are, on the other hand, if one has not opportunity
to change them frequently, nor time to take sufficient care of them, quite
unserviceable for Arctic journeys.

“
|

HDWHATQAOVSONSOOQS#

MEMBERS OF THE EXPEDITION.

A. Pettersson, first engineer
Nordstrom, second engineer
Carlstrom, fireman
Ingelsson, fireman

Oeman, seaman

Carlsson, seaman
Lundgren, seaman .
Hansson, seaman ..

. Asplund, boatswain, cook

J. Smaolaenning, boatswain
Levin, boatswain, steward
M. Lustig, boatswain

. Ljungstrom, boatswain

Lind, boatswain

. O. Faeste, boatswain
. Andersson, ‘carpenter .

Haugan, walrus-hunter? .

33

born 3rd July 1835

24th Feb. 1855
14th Dec. 1845
2nd Feb. 1849
23rd April 1843
22nd Sep. 1843
Sth July 1851
6th April 1856
28th Jan. 1827
27th Sep. 1839
24th Jan. 1844
22nd April1845
12th Oct. 1845
15th Sep. 1856
23rd Sep. 1856
3rd Sep. 1847
23rd Jan. 1825

15th May 1845

P. Johnsen, walrus-hunter . .
2nd Jan. 1853

P. Sivertsen, walrus-hunter er Shey
Th. A. Bostrom, assistant to the scientific
5 OLE SO BS ats ade NR *

21st Sep. 1857

There was also on board the Vega during the voyage from
Tromsoe to Port Dickson, as commissioner for Mr. Sibiriakoff,
Mr. S. J. Serebrenikoff, who had it in charge to oversee the
taking on board and the landing of the goods that were to be
carried to and from Siberia in the Fraser and Express. These
vessels had sailed several days before from Vardoe to Chaborova
in Yugor Schar, where they had orders to wait for the Vega.
The Lena, again, the fourth vessel that was placed at my
disposal, had, in obedience to orders, awaited the Vega in
the harbour of Tromsoe, from which port these two steamers
were now to proceed eastwards in company.

After leaving Tromsoe, the course was shaped at first within
the archipelago to Maosoe, in whose harbour the Vega was to
make some hours’ stay, for the purpose of posting letters in
the post-office there, probably the most northerly in the world.
But during this time so violent a north-west wind began to
blow, that we were detained there three days.

Maosoe is a little rocky island situated in 71° N. L., thirty-two
kilometres south-west from North Cape, in a region abounding
in fish, about halfway between Bred Sound and Mageroe Sound.
The eastern coast of the island is indented by a bay, which

? Haugan had formerly for a long series of years carried his own vessel
to Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, and was known as one of the most
fortunate walrus-hunters of the Norwegian Polar Sea fleet.

D

34 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

forms a well protected harbour. Here, only a few kilometres
south of the northernmost promontory of Europe, are to be
found, besides a large number of fishermen’s huts, a church,
shop, post-office, hospital, &c.; and I need scarcely add, at
least for the benefit of those who have travelled in the north
of Norway, several friendly, hospitable families in whose society
we talked away many hours of our involuntary stay in the
neighbourhood. The inhabitants of course live on fish. All

OLD-WORLD POLAR DRESS.

Lapp, after original in the Northern Museum, Stockholm.

agriculture is impossible here. Potatoes have indeed some-
times yielded an abundant crop on the neighbouring Ingoe
(71° 5’ N. L.), but their cultivation commonly fails, in conse-
quence of the shortness of the summer; on the other hand,
radishes and a number of other vegetables are grown with
success in the garden-beds. Of wild berries there is found here
the red whortleberry, yet in so small quantity that one can
seldom collect a quart or two: the bilberry is somewhat more
plentiful ; but the grapes of the north, the cloudberry (multer),

1.] MAOSOE. 35

grow in profuse abundance. From an area of several square
fathoms one can often gather a couple of quarts. There is no
wood here—only bushes.

In the neighbourhood of North Cape, the wood, for the
present, does not go quite to the coast of the Polar Sea, but at
sheltered places, situated at a little distance from the beach,
birches,' three to four metres high, are already to be met with.

PZKORNERUT ———

NEW-WORLD POLAR DRESS.
Greenlanders, after an old painting in the Ethnographical Museum, Copenhagen.2

1 The birch which grows here is the sweet-scented birch (Betula
odorata, Bechst.), not the dwarf birch (Betula nana, L.), which is found
as far north as Ice Fjord in Spitzbergen (78° 7’ N. L.), though there it
only rises a few inches above ground.

* The original of this drawing, for which I am indebted to Councillor
of Justice H. Rink, of Copenhagen, was painted by a German painter at
Bergen, in 1654. The painting has the following inscription :—

Mit Ledern Schifflein anff dem Meer

De gronleinder jein hein undt her

Bon Thieren undt VBigelen haben see Sre Tract
Das falte Lands von Winter nadt.

36 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 3 [oHar.

In former times, however, the outer archipelago itself was
covered with trees, which is proved by the tree-stems, found
imbedded in the mosses on the outer islands on the coast of
Finmark, for instance, upon Renoe. In Siberia the limit of
trees runs to the beginning of the estuary delta, 7.¢., to about
72°? N.L2 As the latitude of North Cape is 71° 10’, the wood
in Siberia at several places, viz., along the great rivers, goes
considerably farther north than in Europe. This depends partly
on the large quantity of warm water which these rivers, in
summer, carry down from the south, partly on the transport of

LIMIT OF TREES IN NORWAY.

At Preestevandet, on Tromsoen, after a photograph.

seeds with the river water, and on the more favourable soil,
which consists of a rich mould, yearly renewed by inundations,
but in Norway again for the most part of rocks of granite and
gneiss or of barren beds of sand. Besides, the limit of trees
has a quite dissimilar appearance in Siberia and Scandinavia :

1 According to Latkin, Die Lena und ihr Flussgebiet (Petermann’s
Mittheilungen, 1879, p. 91). On the map which accompanies Engehardt’s
reproduction of Wrangel’s Journey (Berlin, 1839), the limit of trees at the
Lena is placed at 71° N. L.

y
Br] THE LIMIT OF TREES. 37

in the latter country, the farthest outposts of the forests towards
the north consist of scraggy birches, which, notwithstanding
their stunted stems, clothe the mountain sides with a very
lively and close green; while in Siberia the outermost trees are
gnarled and _ half-withered larches (Larix dahurica, Turcz.),
which stick up over the tops of the hills like a thin grey
brush.t. North of this limit there are to be seen on the Yenise}
luxuriant bushes of willow and alder. That in Siberia too, the
large wood, some hundreds or thousands of years ago, went
farther north than now, is shown by colossal tree-stumps found
still standing in the ¢wndra, nor is it necessary now to go far

piel, ae ae

_—

I]
I)
AN
\

LIMIT OF TREES IN SIBERIA.
At Boganida, after Middendorf.

south of the extreme limit, before the river banks are to be
- seen crowned with high, flourishing, luxuriant trees.

The climate at Maosoe is not distinguished by any severe

winter cold,? but the air is moist and raw nearly all the year

3 On the Kola Peninsula, and in the neighbourhood of the White Sea,
as far as to Ural, the limit of trees consists of a species of pine (Picea
obovata, Ledeb.), but farther east in Kamschatka again of birch.—Th.
von Middendorff, Reise in dem dussersten Norden und Osten Sibiriens,
vol. iv. p. 582.

* An idea of the influence exerted by the immediate neighbourhood of a
warm ocean-current in making the climate milder may be obtained from
the following table of the mean temperatures of the different months at
1. Tromsoe (69° 30’ N. L.); 2. Fruholm, near North Cape (71° 6’ N. L.) ;

38 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [OHAP.

round. The region would however be very healthy, did not
scurvy, especially in humid winters, attack the population,

THE CLOUDBERRY (RUBUS CHAMMMORUS, L.).
Fruit of the natural size. Flowering stalks diminished.

3. Vardoe (70° 22’ N. L.); 4. Enontekis and Karesuando, on the river
Muonio, in the interior of Lapland (68° 26’ N. L.).

Tromsoe. Fruholm. Vardoe. Enonltekis,
Samuaty wee. ane Yea — 4:2° =) 7 = 150" = BP7
Be bruainy senses: — 40 —4°7 —64 -1771
MiaveCli eres aa sonee st — 38 uD — 5-1 Silt
TATA EA se abe inetcnnssiaeats ac — 01 == (0) = 117 — 6:0
INVaiyaiee st, Sheer cc ceisasice + 32 +2°7 +1°8 + 09 v
SIMIC a eteee socom: + 87 +7°5 +5:9 + 8-0
aliy ati. k pee meant +11°5 +9°3 +8°8 +11°6 ;
AUD USE Mente sees +104 +9°9 +9°8 +12:0 r
September ......... + 7:0 +5:8 +64 + 4:5 “a
October se eseeeees + 20 +2°5 +1:3 — 40 b:
INowemben-pe meee = 1197 = fer ll — 99 ie
Decembere....)sss: = 3% — I) —4:0 2111953 54

The figures are taken from H. Mohn’s Norges Klima (reprinted from C. F.
Schubeler’s Vextlivet i Norge, Christiania, 1879), and A. J. Angstrém, Om
lufitemperaturen i Enontekis (Ofvers. af Vet. Akad. Férhandl., 1860).

i.] EARLY EXPLORERS. 39

educated and uneducated, rich and poor, old and young.
According to a statement made by a lady resident on the spot,
very severe attacks of scurvy are cured without fail by preserved
cloudberries and rum. Several spoonfuls are given to the
patient daily, and a couple of quarts of the medicine is said
to be sufficient for the complete cure of children severely
attacked by the disease. I mention this new method of using
the cloudberry, the old well-known antidote to scurvy, because
T am convinced that future Polar expeditions, if they will avail
themselves of the knowledge of this cure, will find that it
conduces to the health and comfort of all on board, and that
the medicine is seldom refused, unless it be by too obstinate
abstainers from spirituous liquors.

It enters into the plan of this work, as the Vega sails along,
to give a brief account of the voyages of the men who first
opened the route along which she advances, and who thus, each
in his measure, contributed to prepare the way for the voyage
whereby the passage round Asia and Europe has now at last
been accomplished. On this account it is mcumbent on me
to begin by giving a narrative of the voyage of discovery during
which the northernmost point of Europe was first doubled, the
rather because this narrative has besides great interest for
us, as containing much remarkable information regarding the
condition of the former population in the north of Scandinavia.

This voyage was accomplished about a thousand years ago
by a Norwegian, OTHERE, from Halogaland or Helgeland, that
part of the Norwegian coast which lies between 65° and 66°
N. L. Othere, who appears to have travelled far and wide, came
in one of his excursions to the court of the famous English
king, Alfred the Great. In presence of this king he gave, in a
simple, graphic style, a sketch of a voyage which he had under-
taken from his home in Norway towards the north and east. The
narrative has been preserved by its having been incorporated,
along with an account of the travels of another Norseman,
Wultstan, to the southern part of the Baltic, in the first chapter
of Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon reproduction of the history of PAULUS
Orosius: De Miseria Mundi.t This work has since been

1 Orosius was born in Spain in the fourth century after Christ, and
died in the beginning of the fifth, He was a Christian, and wrote his
work to show that the world, in opposition to the statements of several
heathen writers, had been visited during the heathen period by quite as
great calamities as during the Christian. This is probably the reason
why his monotonous sketch of all the misfortunes and calamities which be-
fell the heathen world was long so highly valued, was spread in many copies
and printed in innumerable editions, the oldest at Vienna in 1471. In
the Anglo-Saxon translation now in question, Othere’s account of his
journey is inserted in the first chapter, which properly forms a geogra-

4) THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. : [cmar.

the subject of translation and exposition by a great number
of learned men, among whom may be named here the

Seandinavians, H. G. PortHAN of Abo, Rasmus Rask and C.
Cur. RAFn of Copenhagen.

Regarding Othere’s relations to King Alfred statements differ.
Some inquirers suppose that he was only on a visit at the court
of the king, others that he had been sent out by King Alfred
on voyages of discovery, and finally, others say that he was
a prisoner of war, who incidentally narrated his experience
of foreign lands. Othere’s account of his travels runs as
follows :—

“Othere told his lord, King Alfred, that he dwelt northmost
of all the Northmen. He said that he dwelt in the land to the
northward, along the West-Sea; he said, however, that that
land is very long north from thence, but it is all waste, except
in a few places where the Fins at times dwell, hunting in the
winter, and in the summer fishing in that sea. He said that he
was desirous to try, once on a time, how far that country extended
due north, or whether any one lived to the north of the waste.
He then went due north along the country, leaving all the way
the waste land on the right, and the wide sea on the left. After
three days he was as far north as the whale-hunters go at the
farthest. Then he proceeded in his course due north, as far as he
could sail within another three days; then the land there in-
clined due east, or the sea into the land, he knew not which; but
he knew that he waited there for a west wind or a littie north,
and sailed thence eastward along that land as far as he could
sail in four days. Then he had to wait for a due north wind
because the land inclined there due south, or the sea in on that
land, he knew not which. He then sailed along the coast due
south, as far as he could sail in five days. There lay a great river
up in that land; they then turned in that river, because they
durst not sail on up the river on account of hostility; because
all that country was inhabited on the other side of the river.
He had not before met with any land that was inhabited since
he left his own home; but all the way he had waste land on his
right, except some fishermen, fowlers, and hunters, all of whom
were Fins: and he had constantly a wide sea to the left. The

phical introduction to the work written by King Alfred. This old
Anglo-Saxon work is preserved in England in two beautiful manuscripts
from the ninth and tenth centuries. Orosius’ history itself is now for-
gotten, but King Alfred’s introduction, and especially his account of
Othere’s and Wulfstan’s travels, have attracted much attention from in-
quirers, as appears from the list of translations of this part of King
Alfred’s Orosius, given by Joseph Bosworth in his King Alfred’s Anglo-
Saxon version of the .Compendious History of the World by Orosius.
London, 1859.

:
-
_
-
5
3
7)
p
ee,
=
,

1.] OTHERE’S ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 41

Beormas had well cultivated their country, but they (Othere
and his companions) did not dare to enter it. And the Ter-
finna' land was all waste, except where hunters, fishers, or
fowlers had taken up their quarters.

‘The Beormas told him many particulars both of their own
land and of other lands lying around them; but he knew not
what was true because he did not see it himself. It seemed to

- him that the Fins and the Beormas spoke nearly the same lan-

guage. He went thither chiefly, in addition to seeing the
country, on account of the walruses,? because they have very
noble bones in their teeth, of which the travellers brought some
to the king; and their hides are very good for ship-ropes.
These whales are much less than other whales, not being longer
than seven ells. But in his own country is the best whale-hunt-
ing. There they are eight-and-forty ells long, and the largest
are fifty ells long. Of these he said he and five others had killed
sixty in two days.* He was a very wealthy man in those pos-
sessions in which their wealth consists, that is, in wild deer, He
had at the time he came to the king, six hundred unsold tame
deer. These deer they call rein-deer, of which there were six

1 By Fins are here meant Lapps; by Terfins the inhabitants of the
Tersk coast of Russian Lapland.

2 Walruses are still captured yearly on the ice at the mouth of the
White Sea, not very far from the shore (cf. A. E. Nordenskidld, Redogér-
else for en expedition till mynningen af Jenisej och Sibirien ar 1875, p. 23 ;
Bihang till Vetenskaps-A kad. Handl. B. iv. No. 1). Now they occur there
indeed only in small numbers, and, it appears, not in the immediate neigh-
bourhood of land; but there is scarcely any doubt that in former days they
were common on the most northerly coasts of Norway. They have evidently
been driven away thence in the same way as they are now being driven
away from Spitzbergen. With what rapidity their numbers at the latter
place are yearly diminished, may be seen from the fact that during my
many Arctic journeys, beginning in 1858, I never saw walruses on Bear
Island or the west coast of Spitzbergen, but have conversed with hunters
who ten years before had seen them in herds of hundreds and thousands.
I have myself seen such herds in Hinloopen Strait in July 1861, but when
during my journeys in 1868 and 1872-3 I again visited the same regions,
I saw there not a single walrus.

3 As it appears to be impossible for six men to kill sixty great whales
in two days, this passage has caused the editors of Othere’s narrative
much perplexity, which is not wonderful if great whales, as the Balena
mysticetus, are here meant. But if the narrative relates to the smaller
species of the whale, a similar catch may still, at the present day, be made
on the coasts of the Polar countries. For various small species go together
in great shoals; and, as they occasionally come into water so shallow that
they are left aground at ebb, they can be killed with ease. Sometimes,
too, a successful attempt is made to drive them into shallow water. That
whales visit the coast of Norway in spring in large shoals dangerous to
the navigator is also stated by Jacob Ziegler, in his work, Que intus conti-
nentur Syria, Palestina, Arabia, A%gyptus, Schondia, &c. Argentorati,
1532, p. 97.

a So daa De el nei OO

42 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

decoy rein-deer, which are very valuable among the Fins, because
they catch the wild rein-deer with them.

“He was one of the first men in that country, yet he had not
more than twenty horned cattle, twenty sheep and twenty swine,
and the little that he ploughed he ploughed with horses. But their
wealth consists mostly in the rent paid them by the Fins. That
vent is in skins of animals and birds’ feathers, and whalebone,
and in ship-ropes made of whales’ ! hides, and of seals’. Every
one pays according to his birth ; the best-born, it is said, pay the
skins of fifteen martens, and five rein-deers, and one bear’s skin,
ten ambers of feathers, a bear’s or otter’s skin kyrtle, and two ship-
ropes, each sixty ells long, made either of whale or of seal hide.”

NORSE SHIP OF THE TENTH CENTURY.

Drawn with reference to the vessel found at Sandefjord in 1880, under the superintendence of
Ingvald Undset, Assistant at the Christiania University’s collection of Northern antiquities.

The continuation of Othere’s narrative consists of a sketch of
the Scandinavian peninsula, and of a journey which he under-
took from his home towards the south. King Alfred then gives
an account of the Dane, Wulfstan’s voyage in the Baltic. This
part of the introduction to Orosius, however, has too remote
a connection with my subject to be quoted in this historical
sketch.

It appears from Othere’s simple and very clear narrative that

1 Tn this case is meant by “whale” evidently the walrus, whose skin is
still used for lines by the Norwegian walrus-hunters, by the Eskimo, and
the Chukchis. The skin of the true whale might probably be used. for
the same purpose, although, on account of its thickness, perhaps scarcely
with advantage without the use of special tools for cutting it up.

eh

MAP oF NORTH EUROPE
from
Nicotat Dons EDITION
of
PTOLEMZ1 COSMOGRAPHIA
ULM_1482.

The oolouring of the Land, here added
for the sake of distinctness, is not in
the Original.

JAUGLIE-PARS:

cz + MARE COUGELATVM

es

; “f ae
e i sSuuteangteee armpits.
vi bol mGgnis: menfins opouns: om

geftinnd nonus partellus tite diem mals’ Duo menfhitt-

corttimee ido uidehie,. Ol Git circa prerpilt gerrinoy alge
AD fue tauri’ Sree pe ls sd
Tieearen rientis enpeone

Oe A \
5 oa \Visetirs oxtautly alu fedenies ante
4 i TUNIS tHeNNS CHINO LIDELiCet IDiCtARe ge?
aay = \ ora ufgite redieratent Gaynbaecaptano uty
wargareiier “ Spa ane Pn abeqnocciali hor 1+ Hite.

a ‘idelt
Vosinatoninsre e a aae

(oO pav odmimbernacult hes anaye bre malo yoo 33°
Vigefinms nitus yar Diff abeminciali box to
Inve Dien muaiovern owarunt- 22

Yoltelaut

achimus mutts; ny Difftrraleantocfali hos-9*
pio deem mavorennhowtun2 .

omni “Owe

U

Vises tects papel Differab efron _
Alslow Sluis dic Tan1oee Lotz 29-

act strand Deetebnes —
SEE Grisvis none HSE Zr

rogue par Diffectal
pap aT yuoIenunioz lip 19

14
"TS PoutvsparreATVS<”
0,
Vigel frnusanrdifertalchocia

fito FFiniwoiaaies
bos we 2:

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CRreviosvs. -DONTVS: Sa
A). INGA Pt 4 tah ay, Eee oS:
GERMaMicvM:- MARE: 9 S¥aue Ba. x B95 Ast Helier “= = Ea
g Q ¢ LZ ied Savmacie enmpe pas a Fasay

aoeuflie lis

need

+ ali.

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Vepar difketab,

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ba Sk" ST ha ict ae Wiese JT \ Pa
“Sg obtacscha in be

1.] THE OLDEST MAPS OF THE NORTH. 43

he undertook a veritable voyage of discovery in order to explore
the unknown lands and sea lying to the north-east. This
voyage was also very rich in results, as in the course of it
the northernmost part of Europe was circumnavigated. Nor
perhaps is there any doubt that during this voyage Othere
penetrated as far as to the mouth of the Dwina or at least
of the Mesen in the land of the Beormas.1. We learn from
the narrative besides, that the northernmost part of Scandinavia
was already, though sparsely, peopled by Lapps, whose mode of
life did not differ much from that followed by their descendants,
who live on the coast at the present day.

The Scandinavian race first migrated to Finmark and settled
there in the 13th century, and from that period there was
naturally spread abroad in the northern countries a greater
knowledge of those regions, which, however, was fora long time
exceedingly incomplete, and even in certain respects less correct
than Othere’s. The idea of the northernmost parts of Europe,
which was current during the first half of the 16th century, is
shown by lithographed copies of two maps of the north, one
dated 1482, the other 1532,? which are appended to this work.
On the latter of these Greenland is still delineated as connected
with Norway in the neighbourhood of Vardoehus. This map,
however, is grounded, according to the statement of the author
in the introduction, among other sources, on the statements of
two archbishops of the diocese of Nidaro,? to which Greenland
and Finmark belonged, and from whose inhabited parts
expeditions were often undertaken both for trade and plunder,
by land and sea, as far away as tothe land of the Beormas. It
is difficult to understand how with such maps of the distribution
of land in the north the thought of the north-east passage could
arise, if voices were not even then raised for an altogether
opposite view, grounded partly on a survival of the old idea,

1 Tt ought to be remarked here that the distances which Othere in that
case traversed every day, give a speed of sailing approximating to that
which a common sailing vessel of the present day attains on an average.
This circumstance, which on a cursory examination may appear somewhat
strange, finds its explanation when we consider that Othere sailed only
with a favourable wind, and, when the wind was unfavourable, lay still.
It appears that he usually sailed 70’ to 80’ in twenty-four hours, or perhaps
rather per diem.

2 The maps are taken from Ptolemei Cosmographia latine reddita a Jac.
Angelo, curam mapparum gerente Nicolao Donis Germano, Ulme 1482, and
from the above-quoted work of Jacobus Ziegler, printed in 1532. That
portion of the latter which concerns the geography of Scandinavia is
reprinted in Geografiska Sektionens Tidshrift, B. I. Stockholm, 1878.

3 These were the Dane, Erik Valkendorff, and the Norwegian, Olof Engel-
brektsson. The Swedes, Johannes Magnus, Archbishop of Upsala, and Peder
Maonsson, Bishop of Vesteraos, also gave Ziegler important information
regarding the northern countries.

44 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

we may say the old popular belief, that Asia, Europe and
Africa were surrounded by water, partly on stories of Indians
having been driven by wind to Europe, along the north coast of
Asia.1 To these was added in 1539 the map of the north by the
Swedish bishop OLAUS MaaGnus,? which for the first time gave
to Scandinavia an approximately correct boundary towards the
north. Six hundred years,? m any case, had run their course

1 Of these much-discussed narratives concerning Jndians—probably
men from North Scandinavia, Russia, or North America, certainly not
Japanese, Chinese, or Indians—who were driven by storms to the coasts
of Germany, the first comes down to us from the time before the birth of
Christ. For B.c. 62 Quintus Metellus Celer, ‘‘when as proconsul he
governed Gaul, received as a present from the King of the Beeti [Pliny says
of the Suevi] some Indians, and when he inquired “how they came to those
countries, he was informed that they had been driven by storm from the
Indian Ocean to the coasts of Germany ” (Pomponius Mela, lib. iii. cap. 5,
after a lost work of Cornelius Nepos. Plinius, Hist. Nat., lib. ii. cap. 67).

Of a similar occurrence in the middle ages, the learned AXneas Sylvius,
afterwards Pope under the name of Pius II., gives the following account
of his cosmography :—“I have myself read in Otto [Bishop Otto, of
Freising], that in the time of the German Emperor an Indian vessel and
Indian merchants were driven by storm to the German coast. Certain it
was that, driven about by contrary winds, they came from the east, which
had been by no means possible, if, as many suppose, the North Sea were
unnavigable and frozen ” (Pius II., Cosmographiain Asia et Europe eleganti
descriptione, etc., Parisiis, 1509, leaf 2). Probably it is the same occurrence
which is mentioned by the Spanish historian Gomara (Historia general de
las Indias, Saragocga, 1552-53), with the addition, that the Indians stranded
at Liibeck in the time of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1190).
Gomara also states that he met with the exiled Swedish Bishop Olaus
Magnus, who positively assured him that it was possible to sail from
Norway by the north along the coasts to China (French translation of the
above-quoted work, Paris, 1587, leaf 12). An exceedingly instructive
treatise on this subject is to be found in Aarbéger for nordisk Oldkyn-
dighed og Historie, Kjébenhavn, 1880, It is written by F. Schiern, and
entitled Om en etnologisk Gaade fra Oldtiden.

2 Olaus Magnus, Auslegung und Verklerung der neuen Mappen von den
alten Grettenreich, Venedig, 1539. Now perhaps (according to a communi-
cation from the Librarian-in-chief, G@. E. Klemming) there is scarcely any
copy of this edition of the map still in existence, but it is given unaltered
in the 1567 Basel edition of Olaus Magnus, “ De gentiwm septentrionalium
variis conditionibus,” &c. The edition of the same work printed at Rome
in 1555, on the otber hand, has a map, which differs a little from the
original map of 1539.

3 To interpret Nicolé and Antonio Zeno’s travels towards the end of the
fourteenth century, which have given rise to so much discussion, as Mr. Fr.
Krarup has done, in such a way as if they. had visited the shores of the
Arctic Ocean and the White Sea, appears to me to be a very unfortunate
guess, opposed to innumerable particulars in the narrative of the Zenos,
and to the accompanying map, remarkable in more respects than one,
which was first published at Venice in 1558, unfortunately in a somewhat

“improved” form by one of Zeno’s descendants. On the map there is
the date MCCCLXXX. (Cf. Zeniernes Reise til Norden, et Tolknings Forsig,
af Fr. Kr: arup, Kj6benhavn, 1878 ; R. H. Maior, The Voyages of the Venetian
Brothers Nicolo and Antonio Zeno, London ,1873, and other works concerning
these much-bewritten travels).

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ay GREGORY ISTOMA’S VOYAGE. 45

before Othere found a successor in Sir Hugh Willoughby ; and it
is usual to pass by the former,nd to ascribe to the latter the
honour of being the first in that Tong succession of men who
endeavoured to force a passage by the north-east from the
Atlantic Ocean to China.

Here however it ought to be remarked that while such maps
as those of Ziegler were published in western Europe, other and
better knowledge of the regions in question prevailed in the north.
For it may be considered certain that Norwegians, Russians
and Karelians often travelled in boats on peaceful or warlike
errands, during the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth
century, from the west coast of Norway to the White Sea, and
in the opposite direction, although we find nothing on record
regarding such journeys except the account that SIGISMUND VON
HERBERSTEIN! gives, in his famous book on Russia, of the
voyage of GREGORY IsToMA and the envoy Davin from the
White Sea to Trondhjem in the year 1496.

The voyage is inserted under the distinctive title Navigatio
per Mare Glaciale,* and the narrative begins with an explanation
that Herbertstein got it from Istoma himself, who, when a youth,
had learned Latin in Denmark. As the reasons for choosing the
unusual, long, “‘ but safe’ circuitous route over the North Sea in
preference to the shorter way that was usually taken, Istoma
gives the disputes between Sweden and Russia, and the revolt
of Sweden against Denmark, at the time when the voyage was
undertaken (1496). After giving an account of his journey
from Moscow to the mouth of the Dwina, he continues thus :—

“After having gone on board of four boats, they kept first.
along the right bank of the ocean, where they saw very high

1 The first edition, entitled Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii, dc.,
Vienna, 1549, has three plates, and a map of great value for the former
geography of Russia. It is, however, to judge by the copy in the Royal
Library at Stockholm, partly drawn by hand, and much inferior to the
map in the Italian edition of the following year (Comentari della Moscovia
et parimente della Russia, &c., per il Signor Sigismondo libero Barone in
Herbetstain, Neiperg and Guetnbag, tradotti nuaomente di Latino in lingua
nostra volgare Italiana, Venetia, 1550, with two plates and a map, with the
inscription “ per Giacomo Gastaldo cosmographo in Venetia, MDL”). Von
Herbertstein visited Russia as ambassador from the Roman Emperor on
two occasions, the first time in 1517, the second in 1525, and on the ground
of these two journeys published a sketch of the country, by which it
first became known to West-Europeans, and even for Russians themselves
it forms an important original source of information regarding the state
of civilisation of the empire of the Czar in former times. Von Adelung
enumerates in Kritisch-litertirische Ubersicht der Reisenden in Russland bis
1700, St. Petersburg and Leipzig, 1846, eleven Latin, two Italian, nine
German, and one Bohemian translation of this work. An English trans-
lation has since been published by the Hakluyt Society.

2 Von Herbertstein, first edition, leaf xxviii., in the second of the three
separately-paged portions of the work.

46 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. omar,

mountain peaks;1 and after having in this way travelled six-
teen miles, and crossed an arm of the sea, they followed the
western strand, leaving on their right the open sea, which like
the neighbouring mountains has its name from the river Petzora.
They came here to a people called Fin-Lapps, who, though they
dwell in low wretched huts by the sea, and live almost like wild
beasts, in any case are said to be much more peaceable than the
people who are called wild Lapps. Then, after they had passed
the land of the Lapps and sailed forward eighty miles, they came
to the land, Nortpoden, which is part of the dominions of the
King of Sweden. This region the Rutheni call Kayenska
Selma, and the people they call Kayeni. After sailing thence
along a very indented coast which jutted out to the right, they
came to a peninsula, called the Holy Nose,” consisting of a
great rock, which like a nose projects into the sea. But in this
there is a grotto or hollow which for six hours at a time
swallows up water, and then with great noise and din casts out
again in whirls the water which it had swallowed. Some call
it the navel of the sea, others Charybdis. It is said that this
whirlpool has such power, that it draws to itself ships and other
things in its neighbourhood and swallows them. Istoma said
that he had never been in such danger as at that place, because
the whirlpool drew the ship in which he travelled with such
force, that it was only by extreme exertion at the oars that
they could escape. After passing this Holy Nose they came to
a rocky promontory, which they had to sail round. After having
waited here some days on account of head winds, the skipper
said: ‘This rock, which ye see, is called Semes, and we shall
not get so easily past it if it be not propitiated by some ofter-
ing. Istoma said that he reproved the skipper for his foolish
superstition, on which the reprimanded skipper said nothing
more. They waited thus the fourth day at the place on ac-
‘count of the stormy state of the sea, but after that the storm
ceased, and the anchor was weighed. When the voyage was
now continued with a favourable wind, the skipper said: ‘You
laughed at my advice to propitiate the Semes rock, and con-
sidered it a foolish superstition, but it certainly would have
been impossible for us to get past it, if I had not secretly by
night ascended the rock and sacrificed.’ To the inquiry what
he had offered, the skipper replied: ‘I scattered oatmeal
mixed with butter on the projecting rock which we saw.’
As they sailed further they came to another great promontory,
called Motka, resembling a peninsula. At the end of this

1 An erroneous transposition of mountains seen in Norway, the north-
eastern shore of the White Sea being low land.

2 An unfortunate translation, which often occurs in old works, of
Swjatoinos, “the holy headland.”

1.] GUSTAF VASA AND THE NORTH-EAST PASSAGE, 47

there was a castle, Barthus, which means vakthus, watch-house,
for there the King of Norway keeps a guard to protect his
frontiers. The interpreter said that this promontory was so
long that it could scarcely be sailed round in eight days, on
which account, in order not to be delayed in this way, they
carried their boats and baggage with great. labour on their
shoulders over land for the distance of about half a mile. They
then sailed on along the land of the Dikilopps or wild Lapps
to a place which is called Dront (Trondhjem) and lies 200
miles north of! the Dwina. And they said that the prince of
Moscow used to receive tribute as far as to this place.”

The narrative is of interest, because it gives us an idea
of the way in which men travelled along the north coast of
Norway, four hundred years ago. It may possibly have had an
indirect influence on the sending of Sir Hugh Willoughby’s
expedition, as the edition of Herbertstein’s work printed
at Venice in 1550 probably soon became known to the
Venetian, Cabot, who, at that time, as Grand Pilot of England,
superintended with great care the fitting out of the first
English expedition to the north-east.

There is still greater probability that the map of Scandinavia
by Olaus Magnus, already mentioned, was known in England
before 1553. This map is an expression of a view which before
that time had taken root in the north, which, in opposition to
the maps of the South-European cosmographers, assumed the
existence of an open sea-communication in the north, between .
the Chinese Sea and the Atlantic, and which even induced
GustTAF VASA to attempt to bring about a north-east expedition.
This unfortunately did not come to completion, and all that
we know of it is contained in a letter to the Elector August of
Saxony, from the Frenchman HusBert LaNnGuet, who visited
Sweden in 1554. In this letter, dated 1st April 1576, Languet
says :—“ When I was in Sweden twenty-two years ago, King
Gustaf often talked with me about this sea route. At last he
urged me to undertake a voyage in this direction, and promised
to fit out two vessels with all that was necessary for a protracted
voyage, and to man them with the most skilful seamen, who
should do what I ordered. But I replied that I preferred
journeys in inhabitated regions to the search for new unsettled
lands.”? If Gustaf Vasa had found a man fit to carry out
his great plans, it might readily have happened that Sweden

1 Instead of “north of,” the true icading probably is “beyond” the
Dwina.

2 Huberti Langueti Epistole Secrete, Hale, 1699, i. 171. Compare also
a paper by A. G. Ahlquist, in Ny Illustrerad Tidning for 1875, p..270.

48 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

would have contended with England for the honour of opening
the long series of expeditions to the north-east.!

England’s navigation is at present greater beyond comparison
than that of any other country, but it is not of old date. In the
middle of the sixteenth century it was still very inconsiderable,
and mainly confined to coast voyages in Europe, and a few
fishing expeditions to Iceland and Newfoundland.? The great
power of Spain and Portugal by sea, and their jealousy of other
countries rendered it impossible at that period for foreign sea-
farers to carry on traffic in the Kast-Asiatic countries, which
had been sketched by Marco Polo with so attractive accounts of
unheard-of richness in gold and jewels, in costly stuffs, in spices
and perfumes. In order that the merchants of northern Europe
might obtain a share of the profit, it appeared to be necessary
to discover new routes, inaccessible to the armadas of the
Pyrenean peninsula. Here lies the explanation of the zeal with
which the English and the Dutch, time after time, sent out
vessels, equipped at great expense, in search of a new way to
India and China, either by the Pole, by the north-west, along
the north coast of the new world, or by the north-east, along
the north coast of the old. The voyages first ceased when the
maritime supremacy of Spain and Portugal was broken. By
none of them was the intended object gained, but it is remark-
able that in any case they gave the first start to the development
of England’s ocean navigation.

Sir HucH WILLouGHBY’s in 1553 was thus the first maritime
expedition undertaken on a large scale, which was sent from

' The first to incite to voyages of discovery in the polar regions was
an Englishman, Robert Thorne, who long lived at Seville. Seeing all other
countries were already discovered by Spaniards and Portuguese, he urged
Henry VIII. in 1527 to undertake discoveries in the north. After reaching
the Pole (going sufficiently far north) one could turn to the east, and, first
passing the land of the Tartars, get to China and so to Malacca, the East
Indies, and the Cape of Good Hope, and thus circumnavigate the ‘‘ whole
world.” One could also turn to the west, sail along the back of New-
foundland, and return by the Straits of Magellan (Richard Hakluyt, The
Principael Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, &c.,
London, 1589, p. 250). Two years before, Paulus Jovius, on the ground
of communications from an ambassador from the Russian Czar to Pope
Clement VIL., states that Russia is surrounded on the north by an immense
ocean, by which it is possible, if one keeps to the right shore, and if no
land comes between, to sail to China, (Pauli Jovii Opera Omnia, Basel,
1578, third part, p. 88; the description of Russia, inserted there under the
title ‘‘ Libellus de legatione Basilii ad Clementem VIL.,” was printed for
the first time at Rome in 15265.)

2 In the year 1540, London, exclusive of the Royal Navy, had no more
than four vessels, whose draught exceeded 120 tons (Anderson, Origin of
Commerce, London, 1787, vol. ii. p. 67). Most of the coast towns of
Scandinavia have thus in our days a greater sea-going fleet than London
had at that time.

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To face page 49.

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SIR HUGH WILLOUGHBY.

vortrait in the Great Picture Hall, Greenwich.)

(After a J

1] WILLOUGHBY’S VOYAGE. - 49

England to far distant seas. The equipment of the vessels
was carried out with great care under the superintendence of
the famous navigator, Sebastian Cabot, then an old man, who
also gave the commander precise instructions how he should
behave in the different incidents of the voyage. Some of these
instructions now indeed appear rather childish,’ but others
might still be used as rules for every well-ordered exploratory
expedition. Sir Hugh besides obtained from Edward VI. an
open letter written in Latin, Greek, and several other languages,
in which it was stated that discoveries and the making of com-

f
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SEBASTIAN CABOT.
After a portrait in E. Vale Blake’s Arctic Experiences, London, 1874.2

mercial treaties were the sole objects ot the expedition ; and the
people, with whom the expedition might come in contact, were
requested to treat Sir Hugh Willoughby as they themselves
would wish to be treated in case they should come to England.
So sanguine were the promoters of the voyage of its success in

1 For instance Article 30: ‘‘Item, if you shall see them [the foreigners
met with during the voyage] weare Lyons or Bears skinnes, hauing long
bowes, and arrowes, be not afraid of that sight : for such be worne often-
times more to feare strangers, then for any other cause.” (Hakluyt, 1st
edition, p. 262.)

2 The endeavour to procure for this work a copy of an original portrait
of Cabot, stated to be in existence in England, has unfortunately not been
crowned with success.

x

50 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [onan

reaching the Indian seas by this route, that they caused the
ships that were placed at Sir Hugh Willoughby’s disposal to be
sheathed with lead in order to protect them from the attacks of
the teredo and other worms.’ These vessels were :—

1. The Bona Esperanza, admiral of the fleet, of 120 tons
burden, on board of which was Sir Hugh Willoughby himself,
as captain general of the fleet. The number of persons in this
ship, including Willoughby, the master of the vessel, William
Getferson, and six merchants, was thirty-five.

2. The Edward Bonaventure, of 160 tons burden, the command
of which was given to Richard Chancelor, captain and pilot
major of the fleet. There were on board this vessel fifty men,
including two merchants. Among the crew whose names are
given in Hakluyt we find the name of Stephen Burrough,
afterwards renowned im the history of the north-east passage,
and that of Arthur Pet.

3. The Bona Confidentia, of ninety tons, under command of
Cornelius Durfoorth, with twenty-eight men, including three
merchants.

The expense of fitting out the vessels amounted to a sum
of £6,000, divided into shares of £25. Sir Hugh Willoughby
was chosen commander “both by reason of his goodly personage
(for he was of tall stature) as also for his singular skill in the
services of warre.”? In order to ascertain the nature of the
lands of the east, two “Tartars” who were employed at the
royal stables were consulted, but without any information
being obtained from them. The ships left Ratcliffe the 2°th
May 1553.3 They were towed down by the boats, ‘the
mariners being apparelled in watchet or skie coloured cloth,”
with a favourable wind to Greenwich, where the court then was.
The King being unwell could not be present, but “the courtiers
came running out, and the common people flockt together,
standing very thicke upon the shoare; the Privie Consel, they
lookt out at the windowes of the court, and the rest ran up to
the toppes of the towers; the shippes hereupon discharge their
ordinance, and shoot off their pieces after the maner of warre, and
of the sea, insomuch that the tops of the hilles sounded there-
with, the valleys and the waters gave an echo, and the mariners

1 According to Clement Adams’ account of the voyage. (Hakluyt, 1st
edition, p. 271.)

2 “Cum ob corporis formam (erat enim procere stature) tum ob singu-
larem in re bellica industriam.’’ Clement Adams’ account.—Hakluyt,

2th.
3 Ten days earlier or later are of very great importance with respect to
the state of the ice in summer in the Polar seas. I have, therefore, in
quoting from the travels of my predecessors, reduced the old style to

the new.

1.] WILLOUGHBY’S VOYAGE. 51

they shouted in such sort, that the skie rang again with the noise
thereof.” + All was joy and triumph; it seemed as if men fore-
saw that the greatest maritime power, the history of the world
can show, was that day born.

The voyage itself was, however, very disastrous for Sir Hugh
and many of his companions. After sailing along the east coast
of England and Scotland the three vessels crossed in company
to Norway, the coast of which came in sight the 24th July in
66° N.L. A landing was effected and thirty small houses were
found, whose inhabitants had fled, probably from fear of the
foreigners. The region was called, as was afterwards ascertained,
“ Halgeland,” aud was just that part of Norway from which
Othere began his voyage to the White Sea. Hence they sailed
on along the coast. On the sajuy they anchored in a harbour,
“Stanfew” (perhaps Steenfjord on the west coast of Lofoten),
where they found a numerous and friendly population, with no
articles of commerce, however, but dried fish and train oil. In the
middle of September the Edward Bonaventure, at Senjen during
a storm, parted company with the two other vessels. These now
endeavoured to reach Vardoehus, and therefore sailed backwards
and forwards in different directions, during which they came
among others to an uninhabited, ice-encompassed land, along
whose coast the sea was so shallow that it was impossible for
a boat to land. It was said to be situated 480’ east by north
from Senjen, in 72° N. L.2 Hence they sailed first to the north,
then to the south-east. Thus they reached the coast of Russian
Lapland, where, on the 28th September they found a good
harbour, in which Sir Hugh determined to pass the winter.
The harbour was situated at the mouth of the river Arzina

“near Kegor.” Of the further fate of Sir Hugh Willotghby and

1 “ Vibrantur bombardarum fulmina, Tartaria volvuntur nubes, Martem
sonant crepitacula, reboant summa montium juga, reboant valles, reboant
unde, claraque Nautarum percellit sydera clamor.’ Clement Adams’
account.—Hakluyt, p. 272.

2 At the time when the whale-fishing at Spitzbergen commenced,
Thomas Edge, a captain of one of the Muscovy Company’s vessels, endea-
voured to show that the land which Willoughby discovered while sailing
about after parting company with Chancelor was Spitzbergen (Purchas,
iii. p. 462). The statement, which was evidently called forth by the wish
to monopolise the Spitzbergen whale-fishing for England, can be shown
to be incorrect. It has also for a long time back been looked upon as
groundless. Later inquirers have instead supposed that the land which
Willoughby saw was Gooseland, on Novaya Zemlya. For reasons which
want of space prevents me from stating here, this also does not appear to
me to be possible. On the other hand, I consider it highly probable that
“Willoughby’s Land” was Kolgujev Island, which is surrounded by
shallow sand-banks. Its latitude has indeed in that case been stated 2°
too high, but such errors are not impossible in the determinations of the
oldest explorers.

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After a photograph.

54 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP,

his sixty-two companions, we know only that during the course
of the winter they all perished, doubtless of scurvy. The journal
of the commander ends with the statement that immediately
after the arrival of the vessels three men were sent south-south-
west, three west, and three south-east to search if they could
find people, but that they all returned “without finding of
people or any similitude of habitation.” The following.
year Russian fishermen found at the wintering station the ships
and dead bodies of those who had thus perished, together with
the journal from which the extract given above is taken, and a
will witnessed by Willoughby,! from which it appeared that he
himself and most of the company of the two ships were alive
in January, 1554.2 The two vessels, together with Willoughby’s
corpse, were sent to England in 1555 by the merchant George
Killingworth?

With regard to the position of Arzina it appears from a state-
ment in Anthony Jenkinson’s first voyage (Hakluyt, p. 335) that
it took seven days to go from Vardoehus to Swjatoinos, and that
on the sixth he passed the mouth of the river where Sir Hugh
Willoughby wintered. At a distance from Vardoehus of about
six-sevenths of the way between that town and Swjatoinos,
there debouches into the Arctic Ocean, in 68° 20’ N. L. and 38°
30’ E. L. from Greenwich, a river, which in recent maps is called
the Varzina, It was doubtless at the mouth of this river that
two vessels of the first North-east Passage Expedition wintered
with so unfortunate an issue for the officers and men.

The third vessel, the Hdward Bonaventure, commanded by
Chancelor, had on the contrary a successful voyage, and one
of great importance for the commerce of the world. As has
been already stated, Chancelor was separated from his com-
panions during a storm in August. He now sailed alone to
Vardoehus. After waiting there seven days for Sir Hugh
Willoughby, he set out again, resolutely determined “ either
to bring that to passe which was intended, or else to die
the death;” and though ‘certaine Scottishmen” earnestly
attempted to persuade him to return, “he held on his course
towards that unknown part of the world, and sailed so farre that
hee came at last to the place where hee found no night at all,
but a continuall hght and brightnesse of the sunne shining

1 The testator was Gabriel Willoughby, who, as merchant, sailed in the
commander’s vessel.

2 Hakluyt, p. 500; Purchas, iii. p. 249, and in the margin of p. 463,

3 It is of him that it is narrated in a letter written from Moscow by
Henrie Lane, that the Czar at an entertainment “called them to his table,
to receave each one a cuppe from his hand to drinke, and tooke into his
hand Master George Killingworths beard, which reached over the table,
and pleasantly delivered it the Metropolitane, who seeming to bless it, sad
in Russe, ‘this is Gods gift.’ ”—Hakluyt, p. 500.

Tal: CHANCELOR’S VISIT TO MOSCOW. 55

clearly upon the huge and mighty sea.”! In this way he
finally reached the mouth of the river Dwina in the White Sea,
where a small monastery was then standing at the place where
Archangel is now situated. By friendly treatment he soon won
the confidence of the inhabitants, who received him with great
hospitality. They, however, immediately sent off a courier to
-inform Czar Ivan Vasilievitsch of the remarkable occurrence.
The result was that Chancelor was invited to the court at
Moscow, where he and his companions passed a part of the
winter, well entertained by the Czar. The following summer he
returned with his vessel to England. Thus a commercial con-
nection was brought about, which soon became of immense
importance to both nations, and within a few years gave
rise to a number of voyages, of which I cannot here give any
account, as they have no connection with the history of the
North-east Passage.”

Great geographer or seaman Sir Hugh Willoughby clearly
was not, but his and his followers’ voluntary self-sacrifice and
undaunted courage have a strong claim on our admiration, Incal-
culable also was the influence which the voyages of Willoughby
and Chancelor had upon English commerce, and on the develop-
ment of the whole of Russia, and of the north of Norway. From
the monastery at the mouth of the Dwina a flourishing com-
mercial town has arisen, and a numerous population has settled
on the coast of the Polar Sea, formerly so desolate. Already
there is regular steam and telegraphic communication to the
confines of Russia. The people of Vardoe can thus in a few
hours get accounts of what has happened not only in Paris or
London, but also in New York, the Indies, the Cape, Australia,
Brazil, &c., while a hundred years ago the post came thither only
oncea year. It was then thata journal-loving commandant took
the step, giving evidence of strong self-command, of not “devour-
ing” the post at once, but reading the newspapers day by day
a year after they were published. All this is now different, and

1 As the Dwina lies to the south of Vardoehus, these remarks probably
relate to an earlier part of the voyage than that which is referred to in
the narrative.

2 Writings on these voyages are exceedingly numerous. An account of
them was published for the first time in Hakluyt, The principael Naviga-
tions, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, &c., London, 1589 ;
Ordinances, King Edward’s Pass, &c., p. 259; Copy of Sir Hugh Wil-
loughby s Journal, with a List of all the Members of the Expedition, p. 265 ;
Clement Adams’ Account of Chancelor’s Voyage, p. 270, &c. The same
documents were afterwards printed in Purchas’ Pilgrimage, iii. p. 211.
For those who wish to study the literature of this subject further, I may
refer to Fr. von Adelung, Kritisch-literdirische Ubersicht der Reisenden in
Russland, St. Petersburg and Leipzig, 1846, p. 200; and I. Hamel, Tvrades-
cant der Aeltere 1618 in Russland, St. Petersburg and Leipzig, 1847.

M() Hi)
Mt mil

COAST LANDSCAPE FROM MATOTSCHKIN SCHAR.

After Svenske.

CHAP. II.] - DEPARTURE FROM MAOSOE. 57

yet men are not satisfied. The interests of commerce and the
fisheries require railway communication with the rest of Europe.
That will certaily come in a few years, nor will it be long
before the telegraph has spun its net, and regular steam
communication has commenced along the coast of the Arctic
Ocean far beyond the sea which was opened by Chancelor to
the commerce of the world.

CHAPTER II,

Departure from Maosoe—Gooseland—State of the Ice—The Vessels of
the Expedition assemble at Chabarova—The Samoyed town there—
The Church—Russians and Samoyeds—Visit to Chabarova in 1875—
Purchase of Samoyed Idols—Dress and Dwellings of the Samoyeds
—Comparison of the Polar Races—Sacrificial Places and Samoyed
Grave on Vaygats Island visited—Former accounts of the Samoyeds
—Their place in Ethnography.

THE Vega was detained at Maosoe by a steady head wind,
rain, fog, and a very heavy sea till the evening of the 25th July.
Though the weather was still very unfavourable, we then
weighed anchor, impatient to proceed on our voyage, aud
steamed out to sea through Mageroe Sound. The Lena also
started at the same time, having received orders to accompany
the Vega as far as possible, and, in case separation could not be
avoided, to steer her course to the point, Chabarova m Yugor
Schar, which I had fixed on as the rendezvous of the four
vessels of the expedition. The first night, during the fog that
then prevailed, we lost sight of the Zena, and did not see her
again until we had reached the meeting place.

The course of the Vega was shaped tor South Goose Cape.
Although, while at Tromsoe, I had resolved to enter the Kara
Sea through Yugor Schar, the most southerly of the sounds
which lead to it—so northerly a course was taken, because
experience has shown that in the beginning of summer so
much ice often drives backwards and forwards in the bay
between the west coast of Vaygats Island and the mainland,
that navigation in these waters is rendered rather difficult,
This is avoided by touching Novaya Zemlya first at Gooseland,
and thence following the western shore of this island and Vaygats
to Yugor Schar. Now this precaution was unnecessary; for
the state of the ice was singularly favourable, and Yugor Schar
was reached without seeing a trace of it.

During our passage from Norway to Gooseland we were
favoured at first with a fresh breeze, which, however, fell as we

58 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

approached Novaya Zemyla; this notwithstanding, we made
rapid progress under steam, and without incident, except that
the excessive rolling of the vessel caused the overturn of some
boxes containing instruments and books, fortunately without
any serious damage ensuing.

Land was sighted on the 28th July at 10.30 pm. It was
the headland which juts out from the south of Gooseland in
70° 33’ N. L. and 51° 54° E. L. ee: Gooseland is a low
stretch of coast, occupied by grassy flats and innumerable
small dakes, which projects from the mainland of Novaya
Zemlya between 72°10! and 71°30’ N.L. The name is a trans-
lation of the Russian Gusinnaja Semlja, and arises from the
large number of geese and swans (Cygnus Bewickii, YARR.) which
breed in that region. The geese commonly place their ex-
ceedingly inconsiderable nests on little hillocks near the small
lakes which are scattered over the whole of Gooseland; the
powerful swans, which are very difficult of approach by the
hunter, on the other hand breed on the open plain. The swans’
nests are so large that they may be seen at a great distance.
The building material is moss, which is plucked from the
ground within a distance of two metres from the nest, which
by the excavation which is thus produced, is surrounded by a
sort of moat. The nest itself forms a truncated cone, 0°6 metre
high and 2-4 metres in diameter at the bottom. In its wpper
part there’ is a cavity, 0°2 metre deep and 0°6 metre broad, in
which the four large grayish-white eggs of the bird are laid.
The female hatches the eggs, but the male also remains in the
neighbourhood of the nest. Along with the swans and geese, a
large number of waders, a couple of species of Lestris, an owl
and other birds breed on the plains of Gooseland, and a few
guillemots or gulls upon the summits of the strand cliffs. The
avifauna along the coast here is besides rather poor. At least
there are none of the rich fowl-fells, which, with their millions
of inhabitants and the conflicts and quarrels which rage amongst
them, commonly give so peculiar a character to the coast
cliffs of the high north. I first met with true loom and
kittiwake fells farther north on the southern shore of Besim-
manaja Bay.

Although Gooseland, seen from a distance, appears quite level
and low, it yet rises gradually, with an undulating surface. from
the coast towards the interior, to a grassy plain about sixty metres
above the sea-level, with innumerable small lakes scattered over
it. The plain sinks towards the sea nearly everywhere with a
steep escarpment, three to fifteen metres high, below which
there is formed during the course of the winter an immense
snowdrift or so-called ‘“ snow-foot,” which does not melt until
late in the season. There are no true glaciers here, nor any

11.] GOOSELAND, 59

erratic blocks, to show that circumstances were different in former
times. Nor are any snow-covered mountain-tops visible from
the sea. It is therefore possible at a certain season of the
year (during the whole of the month of August) to sail from
Norway to Novaya Zemlya, make sporting excursions there,
and return without having seen a trace of ice or snow. This
holds good indeed only of the low-lying part of the south island,
but in any case it shows how erroneous the prevailing idea of
the natural state of Novaya Zemlya is. By the end of June
or beginning of July the greater part of Gooseland is nearly
free of snow, and soon after the Arctic flower-world develops
during a few weeks all its splendour of colour. Dry, favourably
situated spots are now covered by a low, but exceedingly rich
flower bed, concealed by no high grass or bushes. On moister
places true grassy turf is to be met with, which, at least when
seen from a distance, resembles smiling meadows.

In consequence of the loss of time which had been caused
by the delay in sailing along the coast of Norway, and our stay
at Maosoe, we were unable to land on this occasion, but
immediately continued our course along the west coast of
Novaya Zemlya towards Yugor Schar, the weather being for
the most part glorious and calm. The sea was completely
free of ice, and the land bare, with the exception of some small
snow-fields concealed in the valleys. Here and there too along
the steep strand escarpments were to be seen remains of the
winter’s snow-foot, which often, when the lower stratum of
air was strongly heated by the sun, were magnified by a strong
mirage, so that, when seen from a distance, they resembled
immense glaciers terminating perpendicularly towards the sea.
Coming farther south the clear weather gave us a good view
of Vaygats Island. It appears, when seen from the sea off the
west coast, to form a level grassy plain, but when we approached
Yugor Schar, low ridges were seen to run along the east side
of the island, which are probably the last ramifications of the
north spur of Ural, known by the name of Paj-koi.

When we were off the entrance to Yugor Schar, a steamer
was sighted. After much guessing, the Fraser was recognised. I
was at first very uneasy, and feared that an accident had occurred,
as the course of the vessel was exactly the opposite of that
which had been fixed beforehand, but found, when Captain
Nilsson soon after came on board, that he had only come out
to look for us. The Hxpress and the Fraser had been waiting
for us at the appointed rendezvous since the 20th. They had
left Vardoe on the 13th, and during the passage had met with
as little ice as ourselves. The Vega and Fraser now made
for the harbour at Chabarova, where they anchored on the
evening of the 30th July with a depth of fourteen metres and

60 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. (CHAP.

a clay bottom. The Zena was still wanting. We feared that
the little steamer had had some ditticulty in keeping afloat
in the sea which had been encountered on the other side of
North Cape. A breaker had even dashed over the side of
the larger Vega and broken in pieces one of the boxes which
were fastened to the deck. Our fears were unwarranted. The
Lena had done honour to her builders at Motala works, and
behaved well in the heavy sea. The delay had been caused by
a compass deviation, which, on account of the shght horizontal
intensity of the magnetism of the earth in these northern
latitudes, was greater than that obtained during the examina-
tion made before the departure of the vessel from Gothenburg.
On the 31st the Zena anchored alongside the other vessels, and
thus the whole of our little Polar Sea squadron was collected at
the appoimted rendezvous.

Chabarova is a little village, situated on the mainland, south
of Yugor Schar, west of the mouth of a small river in which at
certain seasons fish are exceedingly abundant. During summer
the place is inhabited by a number of Samoyeds, who pasture
their herds of remdeer on Vaygats Island and the surrounding
tundra, and by some Russians and Russianised Fins, who come
hither from Pustosersk to carry on barter with the Samoyeds,
and with their help to fish and hunt in the neighbouring sea.
During winter the Samoyeds drive their herds to more
southern regions, and the merchants carry their wares to
Pustosersk, Mesen, Archangel, and other places. Thus it has pro-
bably gone on for centuries back, but it is only im comparatively
recent times that fixed dwellings have been erected, for they are
not mentioned in the accounts of the voyages of the Dutch in
these regions.

The village, or “Samoyed town” as the walrus-hunters
grandiosely call it, consists, like other great towns, of two
portions, the town of the rich—some cabins built of wood,
with flat turf-covered roofs—and the quarter of the common
people, a collection of dirty Samoyed tents. There is, besides, a
little church, where, as at several places along the shore, votive
crosses have been erected. The church is a wooden building,
divided by a partition wall into two parts, of which the inner,
the church proper, is little more than two and a half metres in
height and about five metres square. On the eastern wall during
the time the region is inhabited, there is a large number of
sacred pictures placed there for the occasion by the hunters. One
of them, which represented St. Nicholas, was very valuable, the
material being embossed silver gilt. Before the lamps hung
large dinted old copper lamps or rather light-holders, resem-
bling inverted Byzantine cupolas, suspended by three chains. .
They were set full of numerous small, and some few thick wax

11] RUSSIAN MERCHANTS AT CHABAROVA. 61)

lights which were lighted on the occasion of our visit. Right
above our landing-place there were lying a number of sledges
laden with goods which the Russian merchants had procured
by barter, and which were to be conveyed to Pustosersk the
following autumn. The goods consisted mainly of train oil
and the skins of the mountain fox, common fox, Polar bear,
glutton, reindeer, and seal. The bears’ skins had often a very
close, white winter coat, but they were spoiled by the head and
paws having been cut otf. Some of the wolf skins which they

showed us were very close and fine. The merchants had besides

CHURCH OF CHABAROVA.
After a photograph by L. Palander.

collected a considerable stock of goose quills, feathers, down,
and ptarmigans’ wings. For what purpose these last are used
I could not learn. I was merely informed that they would be
sold in Archangel. Perhaps they go thence to the dealers in
fashions in Western Europe, to be afterwards used as orna-
ments on our ladies’ hats. Ptarmigans’ wings were bought as
long ago as 1611 at Pustosersk by Englishmen.*

1 “Vetter of Richard Finch to Sir Thomas Smith, Governor; and to the

rest of the Worshipful Companie of English Merchants, trading into
tussia.”—Purchas, iii, p. 534.

62 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

At the same time I saw, among the stocks of the merchants,
walrus tusks and lines of walrus hide. It is noteworthy that
these wares are already mentioned in Othere’s narrative.

As I was not myself sufficiently master of the Russian
language, I requested Mr. Serebrenikoff to make inquiries on the
spot, regarding the mode of life and domestic economy of the
Russians in the neighbourhood, and I have received from him
the following communication on the subject :—

“The village consists of several cabins and tents. In the
cabins nine Russian householders live with their servants, who
are Samoyeds.t. The Russians bring hither neither their
wives nor children. In the tents the Samoyeds live with their
families. The Russians are from the village Pustosersk on the
Petchora river, from which they set out immediately after
Easter, arriving at Chabarova about the end of May, after
having traversed a distance of between 600 and 700 versts.
During their stay at Chabarova they employ themselves in the
management of reindeer, in catching whales, and in carrying
on barter with the Samoyeds. They bring with them from
home all their household articles and commercial wares on
sledges drawn by reindeer, and as there is a poor ruinous chapel
there, they bring also pictures of St. Nicholas and other saints.
The holy Nicholas also figures as a shareholder in a company
for the capture of whales. Part of their reindeer is left. during
summer on Vaygats, and after their arrival at Chabarova they
still pass over on the ice to that island. Towards the close of
August, when the cold commences, the reindeer are driven
across Yugor Schar from Vaygats to the mainland, About the
Ist October, old style, the Russians return with their reindeer
to Pustosersk. Vaygats Island is considered by them to afford
exceedingly good pasturage for reindeer ; they therefore allow a
number of them to winter on the island under the care of some
Samoyed families, and this is considered the more advan-
tageous, as the reindeer there are never stolen. Such thefts, on
the contrary, are often committed by the Samoyeds on the

1 Mr. Serebrenikoff writes Samodin instead of Samoyed, considering the
latter name incorrect. For Samoyed means ‘“ self-eater,” while Samodin
denotes “an individual,” ‘one who cannot be mistaken for any other,”
and, as the Samoyeds never were cannibals, Mr. Serebrenikoff gives a
preference to the Jatter name, which is used by the Russians at Chabarova,
and appears to be a literal translation of the name which the Samoyeds
give themselves. I consider it probable, however, that the old tradition
of man-eaters (androphagi) living in the north, which originated with
Herodotus, and was afterwards universally adopted in the geographical
literature of the middle ages, reappears in a Russianised form in the name
“Samoyed.” (Compare what is quoted further on from Giles Fletcher's
narrative).

11.] RUSSIANS AND SAMOYEDS. 63

mainland. For thirty years back the Siberian plague has
raged severely among the reindeer. A Russian informed me
that he now owned but two hundred, while some years ago he
bad a thousand ; and this statement was confirmed by the other
Russians. Men too are attacked by this disease. Two or three
days before our arrival a Samoyed and his wife had eaten the
flesh of a diseased animal, in consequence of which the woman
died the following day, and the man still lay ill, and, as the
people on the spot said, would not probably survive. Some of
the Samoyeds are considered rich, for instance the ‘eldest’
(starschina) of the tribe, who owns a thousand reindeer. The
Samoyeds also employ themselves, like the Russians, in fishing.
Durimg winter some betake themselves to Western Siberia,
where ‘corn is cheap,’ and some go to Pustosersk.

“The nine Russians form a company (artell) for whale-fishing.
There are twenty-two shares, two of which fall to the holy
Nicholas, and the other twenty are divided among the share-
holders. The company’s profit for the fishing season commonly
amounts to 1,500 or 2,000 pood train oil of the white whale
(Beluga), but this season there had been no fishing on account
of disagreements among the shareholders. For in the Russian
‘artell’ the rule is, ‘equal liability, equal rights,’ and as the
rich will never comply with the first part of the rule, it was
their arrogance and greed which caused contention here, as
everywhere else in the world.

“ Neither the Russians nor the Samoyeds carry on any agri-
culture. The former buy meal for bread from Irbit. The price
of meal varies; this season it costs one rouble ten copecks per
pood in Pustosersk. Salt is now brought from Norway to
Mesen, where it costs fifty to sixty copecks per pood. The Samo-
yeds buy nearly everything from the Russians. There were
many inquiries for gunpowder, shot, cheap fowling-pieces, rum,
bread, sugar, and culinary vessels (teacups, &c.). The Samo-
yed women wear clothes of different colours, chiefly red. In
exchange for the goods enumerated above there may be obtained
fish, train oil, reindeer skins, walrus tusks, and furs, viz., the skins
of the red, white, and brown fox, wolf, Polar bear, and glutton.

“The Russians in question are ‘Old Believers,’ but the
difference between them and the orthodox consists merely in
their not smoking tobacco, and in their making the sign of the
cross with the thumb, the ring finger, and the little finger,
while the orthodox Russians, on the other hand, make it with
the thumb, the forefinger, and the middle finger. AIl Samo-
yeds are baptised into the orthodox faith, but they worship their
old idols at the same time. They travel over a thousand versts
as pilgrims to their sacrificial places. There are several such
places on Vaygats, where their idols are to be found. The

64 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

Russians call these idols ‘bolvany.’+ Both the Russians and
Samoyeds are very tolerant in regard to matters of faith. The .
Russians, for instance, say that the Samoyeds attribute to their
‘bolvans’ the same importance which they themselves attach
to their sacred pictures, and find in this nothing objectionable.
The Samoyeds have songs and sagas, relating among other
things to their migrations.

“The Samoyed has one or more wives; even sisters may
marry the same man. Marriage is entered upon without
any solemnity. The wives are considered by the men as having
equal rights with themselves, and are treated accordingly, which
is very remarkable, as the Russians, like other Christian nations,
consider the woman as in certain respects inferior to the man.”

I visited the place for the first time in the beginning of
August, 1875. It was a Russian holiday, and, while still a
long way off at sea, we could see a large number of Russians
and Samoyeds standing in groups on the beach. Coming
nearer we found them engaged in playing various different
games, and though it was the first time in the memory of
man that European gentlemen had visited their “town,” they
scarcely allowed themselves to be more disturbed in their occu-
pation than if some stranger Samoyeds had suddenly joined
their company. Some stood in a circle and by turns threw a
piece of iron, shaped somewhat like a marlinspike, to the
eround ; the art consisting in getting the sharp end to strike it
just in front of rings placed on the ground, in such a way that
the piece of iron remained standing. Others were engaged in
playing a game resembling our nine-pins; others, again, in
wrestling, &c. The Bussians and Samoy eds played with each
other without distinction. The Samoyeds, small of stature,
dirty, with matted, unkempt hair, were clad in dirty summer
clothes of skin, sometimes with a showy-coloured cotton shirt
drawn over them; the Russians (probably originally of the
Finnish race and descendants of the old Beormas) tall, well-
grown, with long hair shining with oil, ornamentally parted,
combed, and ‘aval and held together by a head band, or
covered with a cap resembling that ‘shown in the accompanying
woodcut, were clad in long variegated blouses, or “ mekkor,”
fastened at the waist with a belt. Notwithstanding the feigned
indifference shown at first, which was evidently considered good
manners, we were received in a friendly way. We were first
invited to try our luck and skill in the game in turn with the
rest, when it soon appeared, to the no small gratification of our

1 This name, which properly denotes a coarse likeness, has passed into
the Swedish, the word bulvan being one of the few which that language
has borrowed from the Russian,

‘II. ] VISIT TO CHABAROVA IN 1875. 65

hosts, that we were quite incapable of entering into com-
petition either with Russian or Samoyed. Thereupon one of
the Russians invited us to enter his cabin, where we were enter-
tained with tea, Russian wheaten cakes of unfermented dough,
and brandy. Some small presents were given us with a naive
notification of what would be welcome in their stead, a notifi-
cation which I with pleasure complied with as far as my resources
permitted. A complete unanimity at first prevailed between
our Russian and Samoyed hosts, but on the following day a
sharp dispute was like to arise because the former invited one
of us to drive with a reindeer
team standing in the neighbour-
hood of a Russian hut. The
Samoyeds were much displeased
on this account, but declared at
the same time, as well as they
could by signs, that they them-
selves were willing to drive us,
if we so desired, and they
showed that they were serious
in their declaration by there
and then breaking off the
quarrel in order to take a short
turn with their remdeer teams
at a rapid rate among the tents.
The Samoyed sleigh is in-
tended both for winter travel-
ling on the snow, and _ for
summer travelling on the
mosses and water-drenched
bogs of the tundra. They are,
therefore, constructed quite dif-
ferently from the ‘akja” of
the Lapp. As the woodcut ail
on p. 66 shows, it completely SAC one eae ee
resembles a high sledge, the One-eighth of natural size.
carriage consisting of a low and
short box, which, in convenience, style, and warmth, cannot
be compared to the well-known equipage of the Lapps. We
have here two quite different types of sleighs. The Lapp
‘‘akja”’ appears from time immemorial to have been peculiar
to the Scandinavian north ; the high sleigh, on the contrary, to
northern Russia. Thus we find “akjas” of the kind still in
common use, delineated in Olaus Magnus (Rome edition, 1555,
page 598); Samoyed sleighs, again, in the first works
we have on those regions, for instance, in HUYGHEN VAN
LINSCHOTEN’S Schip-vaert van by Noorden, &c., Amsterdam,
F

66 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP,

1601, as a side drawing on the principal map. Such high
sleighs are also used on the Kanin peninsula, on Yalmal,
and in Western Siberia. The sleighs of the Chukchis, on
the other hand, as will be seen by a drawing given farther
on, are lower, and thus more resemble our “ kaelkar,” or
work-sledges.

The neighbourhood of the tents swarmed with small black
or white long-haired dogs, with pointed nose and pointed ears.
They are used exclusively for tending the herds of reindeer, and
appear to be of the same race as the “renvallhund,” the reindeer
dog. At several places on the coast of the White Sea, how-
ever, dogs are also employed as beasts of draught, but according

SAMOYED SLEIGH,
After a drawing by Hj. Theel.

to information which I procured before my departure for
Spitzbergen in 1872—it was then under discussion whether
dogs should be used during the projected ice journey—these
are of a different race, larger and stronger than the Lapp or
Samoyed dogs proper.

Immediately after the Vega came to anchor, I went on land
on this occasion also; in the first place with a view to take some
solar altitudes, in order to ascertain the chronometer’s rate of
going ; for during the voyage of 1875 I had had an opportunity
of determining the position of this place as accurately as is

He] TRAFFIC WITH THE SAMOYEDS. 67

possible with the common reflecting circle and chronometer,
with the following result :—.

§ Latitude 69° 38’ 50”.

EBS eburch su Chabarova +7 cnsitudes 60° £9497 Be from Greenwich.

When the observations were finished I hastened to renew my
acquaintance with my old friends on the spot. I also endea-
voured to purchase from the Samoyeds dresses and household
articles; but as I had not then with me goods for barter, and
ready money appeared to be of small account with them, prices
were very high; for instance, for a lady’s beautiful “ pesk,”

LAPP AKJA.

After original in the Northern Museum, Stockholm.

twenty roubles; for a cap with brass ornaments, ten roubles ;
for a pair of boots of reindeer skin, two roubles; for copper
ornaments for hoods, two roubles each; and so on.

As I knew that the Samoyeds during their wanderings
always carry idols with them, I asked them whether they could
not sell me some. All at first answered in the negative. It
was evident that they were hindered from complying with my
requests partly by superstition, partly by being a little ashamed,
before the West European, of the nature of their gods, The
metallic lustre of some rouble pieces which I had procured in
Stockholm, however, at last induced an old woman to set aside

Fie

68 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

all fears. She went to one of the loaded sledges, which appeared
to be used as magazines, and searched for a long time till she
got hold of an old useless skin boot, from which she drew a fine
skin stocking, out of which at Jast four idols appeared. After
further negotiations they were sold to me at a very high price.
They consisted of a miniature “‘pesk,” with belt, without body; a
skin doll thirteen centimetres long, with face of brass ; another
doll, with a bent piece of copper plate for a nose; and a stone,
wrapped round with rags and hung with brass plates, a corner
of the stone forming the countenance of the human figure it

was intended to resemble.

sg

Joon 7274 & My \

Loy
i,
reas

J Y yp QTV) i) 4 i
LEE or aN

Samoudarum,trahis a rangiferis protyactis infidentium,
Nec non (dolornm ab iii cultorum. ef figies.

SAMOVED SLEIGH AND IDOLS.
After an old Dutch engraving.

More finely-formed gods, dolls pretty well made, with bows
forged of iron, I have seen, but have not had the good fortune
to get possession of. In the case now in question the traffic
was facilitated by the circumstance that the old witch, Anna
Petrovna, who sold her gods, was baptised, which was naturally
taken advantage of by me to represent to her that it was wrong
for her as a Christian to worship such trash as “ bolvans,” and
the necessity of immediately getting rid of them. But my argu-
ments, at once sophistic and egoistic, met with disapproval, both
from the Russians and Samoyeds standing round, inasmuch as

11.] TEA IN A RUSSIAN CABIN. 69%

they declared that on the whole there was no great difference
between the “bolvan” of the Samoyed and the sacred picture
of the Christian. It would even appear as if the Russians
themselves considered the “ bolvans” as representatives of some
sort of Samoyed saints in the other world.

When the traffic in gods was finished, though not to my full
satisfaction, because I thought I had got too little, we were
invited by one of the Russians, as in 1875, to drink tea in his
cabin. This consisted of a lobby, and a room about four metres
square, and scarcely two metres and a half high. One corner
was occupied by a large chimney, at the side of which was the
very low door, and right opposite the window opening, under
which were placed some chests, serving as tea-table for the
occasion. Along the two remaining sides of the room there
were fastened to the wall sleeping places of boards covered with
reindeer skin. The window appeared to have been formerly

SAMOYED IDOLS.
One-third of natural size,

filled with panes of glass, but most of these were now broken
and replaced by boards. It need scarcely surprise us if glass
is a scarce article of luxury here.

We had no sooner entered the cabin than preparations for tea
commenced. Sugar, biscuits, teacups and saucers, and a brandy
flask were produced from a common Russian travelling trunk.
Fire was lighted, water boiled, and tea made in the common
way, a thick smoke and strong fumes from the burning fuel
spreading in the upper part of the low room, which for the
time was packed full of curious visitors. Excepting these
trifling inconveniences the entertainment passed off very agree-
ably, with constant conversation, which was carried on with
great liveliness, though the hosts and most of the guests could
only with difficulty make themselves mutually intelligible.

Hence we betook ourselves to the skin tents of the Samoyeds

70 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

which stood apart from the wooden huts inhabited by the
Russians. Here too we met with a friendly reception. Several
of the inhabitants of the tents were now clad with somewhat
greater care in a dress of reindeer skin, resembling that of the
Lapps. The women’s holiday dress was particularly showy.
It consisted of a pretty long garment of reimdeer skin, fitting
closely at the waist, so thin that it hung from the middle in

S\MOYED HAIR ORNAMENTS.
One-third of natural size.

beautiful regular folds. The petticoat has two or three differ-
ently coloured fringes of dogskin, between which stripes of
brightly coloured cloth are sewed on. The foot-covering con-
sists of boots of reindeer skin beautifully and tastefully em-
broidered. During summer the men go bare-headed. The
women then have their black straight hair divided behind into
two tresses, which are braided with straps, variegated ribbons

nJ SAMOYED DRESS. 71

and beads, which are continued beyond the point where the
hair ends as an artificial prolongation of the braids, so that, in-
cluding the straps which form this continuation, loaded as they
are with beads, buttons, and metal ornaments of all kinds, they
nearly reach the ground. The whole is so skilfully done, that
at first one is inclined to believe that the women here were
gifted with a quite incredible growth of hair. A mass of other

SAMOYED WOMAN’S DRESS.

After a drawing by Hj. Theel.

bands of beads ornamented with buttons was besides often
intertwined with the hair in a very tasteful way, or fixed to the
perforated ears. All this hair ornamentation is naturally very
heavy, and the head is still more weighed down in winter, as it
is protected from the cold by a thick and very warm cap of rein-
deer skin, bordered with dogskin, from the back part of which
hang down two straps set full of heavy plates of brass or copper.

72 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

The young woman also, even here as everywhere else, bedecks
herself as best she can ; but fair she certainly is not in our eyes.
She competes with the man in dirt. Like the man she is small
of stature, has black coarse hair resembling that of a horse’s
mane or tail, face of a yellow colour, often concealed by dirt,
small, oblique, often running and sore eyes, a flat nose, broad
projecting cheekbones, slender legs and small feet and hands.

The dress of the man, which resembles that of the Lapps,
consists of a plain, full and long “ pesk,”’ confined at the waist
with a belt richly ornamented with buttons and brass mount-
ing, from which the knife is suspended, The boots of rein-
deer skin commonly go above the knees, and the head covering
consists of a closely fitting cap, also of reindeer skin.

WEAR O Sorting dal

SAMOYED BELT WITH KNIFP.
One-sixth of natural size.

The summer tents, the only ones we saw, are conical, with a
hole in the roof for carrying off the smoke from the fireplace,
which is placed in the middle of the floor. The sleeping
places in many of the tents are concealed by a curtain of varie-
gated cotton cloth. Such cloth is also used, when there is a
supply of it, for the mner parts of the dress. Skin, it would
appear, is not a very comfortable material for dress, for the first
thing, after fire-water and iron, which the skin-clad savage
purchases from the European, is cotton, linen, or woollen cloth.

Of the Polar races, whose acquaintance I have made, the
reindeer Lapps undoubtedly stand highest; next te them
come the Eskimo of Danish Greenland. Both these races are
Christian and able to read, and have learned to use and require a
large number of the products of agriculture, commerce, and the

11.] THE POLAR RACES COMPARED. 73

industrial arts of the present day, as cotton and woollen cloth,
tools of forged and cast iron, firearms, coffee, sugar, bread, &c.
They are still nomads and hunters, but cannot be called savages ;
and the educated European who has lived among them for a
considerable time commonly acquires a liking for many points of
their natural disposition and mode of life. Next to them in
civilisation come the Eskimo of North-western America, on
whose originally rough life contact with the American whale-
fishers appears to have had a very beneficial influence. I form
my judgment from the Eskimo tribe at Port Clarence. The
members of this tribe were still heathens, but a few of them
were far travelled, and had brought home from the Sandwich
Tslands not only cocoa-nuts and palm mats, but also a trace of
the South Sea islander’s greater love for ornament and order.
Next come the Chukchis, who have as yet come in contact
with men of European race to a limited extent, but whose re-
sources appear to have seriously diminished in recent times, in
consequence of which the vigour and vitality of the tribe have
decreased to a noteworthy extent. Last of all come the Samo-
yeds, or at least the Samoyeds who inhabit regions bordering
on countries inhabited by the Caucasian races; on them the
influence of the higher race, with its regulations and ordinances,
its merchants, and, above all, its fire-water, has had a distinctly
deteriorating effect.

When I once asked an Eskimo in North-western Greenland,
known for his excessive self-esteem, whether he would not admit
that the Danish Inspector (Governor) was superior to him, I
got for answer: “That is not so certain: the Inspector has, it
is true, more property, and appears to have more power, but
there are people in Copenhagen whom he must obey. I receive
orders from none.” The same haughty self-esteem one meets
with in his host in the “ gamma,” of the reindeer Lapp, and the
skin tent of the Chukchi. In the Samoyed, on the other
hand, it appears to have been expelled by a feeling of inferiority
and timidity, which in that race has deprived the savage of his
most striking characteristics.

I knew from old travels and from my own experience on
Yalmal, that another sort of gods, and one perhaps inferior to
those which Anna Petrovna pulled out of her old boot, was
to be found set up at various places on eminences strewn with
the bones of animals that had been offered in sacrifice. Our
Russian host informed us the Samoyeds from far distant
regions are accustomed to make pilgrimages to these places
in order to offer sacrifices and make vows. They eat the flesh
of the animals they sacrifice, the bones are scattered over the
sacrificial height, and the idols are besmeared with the blood of
the sacrificed animal. I immediately declared that I wished

74 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

to visit such a place. But for a long time none of the Russians
who were present was willing to act as guide. At last how-
ever a young man offered to conduct me to a place on Vaygats
Island, where I could see what I wished. Accordingly the
following day, accompanied by Dr. Almquist, Lieutenant
Hovgaard, Captain Nilsson, and my Russian guide, I made
an excursion in one of the steam launches to the other shore
of Yugor Straits.

The sacrificial eminence was situated on the highest point of
the south-western headland of Vaygats Island, and consisted
of a natural hillock which rose a couple of metres above the

SACRIFICIAL EMINENCE ON VAYGATS ISLAND.
After a drawing by A. Hovgaard.

surrounding plain. The plain terminated towards the sea
with a steep escarpment. The land was even, but rose gradually
to a height of eighteen metres above the sea. The country
consisted of upright strata of Silurian limestone running -
from east to west, and at certain places containing fossils
resembling those of Gotland. Here and there were shallow
depressions in the plain, covered with a very rich and uniformly
green growth of grass. The high-lying dry parts again made a
gorgeous show, covered as they were with an exceedingly
luxuriant carpet of yellow and white saxifrages, blue Aritrichia,
Polemonia and Parry, and yellow Chrysosplenia, &c. The last

11.] SACRIFICIAL PLACES. Th

named, commonly quite modest flowers, are here so luxuriant
that they form an important part of the flower covering.
Trees are wholly wanting. Even bushes are scarcely two feet
high, and that only at sheltered places, in hollows and at the
‘foot of steep slopes looking towards the south. The sacrificial
mound consisted of a cairn of stones some few metres square,
situated on a special elevation of the plain. Among the stones
there were found :—

1. Reindeer skulls, broken in pieces
for the purpose of extracting the brains,
but with the horns still fast to the coronal
bone; these were now so arranged among
the stones that they formed a close thicket
of reindeer horns, which gave to the
sacrificial mound its peculiar character.

2. Reindeer skulls with the coronal
bone bored through, set up on sticks
which were stuck in the mound. Some-
times there was carved on these sticks a
number of faces, the one over the other.

3. A large number of other bones of rein-
deer, among them marrow bones, broken
for the purpose of extracting the marrow.

4. Bones of the bear, among which
were observed the paws and the head,
only half flayed, of a bear which had been
shot so recently that the flesh had not
begun to decompose; alongside of this
bear’s head there were found two lead
bullets placed on a stone.

5. A quantity of pieces of iron, for
instance, broken axes, fragments of iron
pots, metal parts of a broken harmonicon,
&c. ; and finally,

6, lhe michty bemes to which allthis. ....c wow mr saceriicud.
splendour was oftered. CAIRN,

They consisted of hundreds of small One twelfth cf naturalsize,
wooden sticks, the upper portions of which
were carved very clumsily in the form of the human counte-
nance, most of them from fifteen to twenty, but some of them
370 centimetres in length. They were all stuck in the ground
on the south-east part of the eminence. Near the place of
sacrifice there were to be seen pieces of driftwood and remains
of the fireplace at which the sacrificial meal was prepared.
Our guide told us that at these meals the mouths of the idols
were besrmeared with blood and wetted with brandy, and the
former statement was confirmed by the large spots of blood

76 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. | CHAP.

which were found on most of the large idols below the holes
intended to represent the mouth.

After a drawing had been made of the mound, we robbed it
discreetly, and put some of the idols and the bones of the animals
offered in sacrifice into a bag which I ordered to be carried down
to the boat. My guide now became evidently uncomfortable
and said that I ought to propitiate the wrath of the “bolvans ”
by myself offermmg something. I immediately said that I was
ready to do that, if he would only show me how to go to
work. A little at a loss, and doubting whether he ought to
be more afraid of the wrath of the “ bolvans”’ or of the punish-
ment which in another world would befal those who had
sacrificed to false gods, he replied that it was only necessary
to place some small coims among the stones. With a solemn
countenance I now laid my gift upon the cairn. It was cer-
tainly the most precious thing that had ever been offered
there, consisting as it did of two silver pieces. The Russian
was now satisfied, but declared that I was too lavish, “a
couple of copper coins had been quite enough.”

The following day the Samoyeds came to know that I had
been shown their sacrificial mound. For their own part
they appeared to attach little importance to this, but they
declared that the guide would be punished by the offended
“bolvans.” He would perhaps come to repent of his deed
by the following autumn, when his reindeer should return
from Vaygats Island, where they for the present were tended
by Samoyeds; indeed if punishment did not befall him now,
it would reach him in the future and visit his children and
grandchildren—certain it was that the gods would not leave him
unpunished. In respect to God's wrath their religious ideas
were thus in full accordance with the teaching of the Old
Testament.

This place of sacrifice was besides not particularly old, for
there had been an older place situated 600 metres nearer the
shore, beside a grotto which was regarded by the Samoyeds
with superstitious veneration. A larger number of wooden
idols had been set up there, but about thirty years ago a
zealous, newly-appointed, and therefore clean-sweeping™ archi-
mandrite visited the place, set fire to the sacrificial mound,
and in its place erected a cross, which is still standing. The
Samoyeds had not sought to retaliate by destroying in their
turn the symbol of Christian worship. They left revenge to
the gods themselves, certain that in a short time they would
destroy all the archimandrite’s reindeer, and merely removed
their own place of sacrifice a little farther into the land.
There no injudicious religious zeal has since attacked their
worship of the ‘ bolvans.”

11. ] SACRIFICIAL CAVITY ON VAYGATS ISLAND. 7

The old place of sacrifice was still recognisable by the number
of fragments of bones and rusted pieces of iron which lay strewed
about on the ground, over a very extensive area, by the side
of the Russian cross. Remains of the fireplace, on which
the Schaman gods had been burned, were also visible. These
had been much larger and finer than the gods on the present
eminence, which is also confirmed by a comparison of the

SACRIFICIAL CAVITY ON VAYGATS ISLAND.

After a drawing by A. Hovgaard.

drawings here given of the latter with those from the time
of the Dutch explorers. The race of the Schaman gods has
evidently deteriorated in the course of the last three hundred
years.

After I had completed my examination and collected some
contributions from the old sacrificial mound I ordered a little
boat, which the steam-launch had taken in tow, to be carried

78 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

over the sandy neck of land which separates the lake shown on
the map from the sea, and rowed with Captain Nilsson and my
Russian guide to a Samoyed buryimg-place farther inland by
the shore of the lake.

Only one person was found buried at the place. The grave
was beautifully situated on the sloping beach of the lake, now
gay with numberless Polar flowers. It consisted of a box
carefully constructed of broad stout planks, fixed to the ground
with earthfast stakes and cross-bars, so that neither beasts of
prey nor lemmings could get through. The planks appeared
not to have been hewn out of drift-wood, but were probably

SAMOYED GRAVE ON VAYGATS ISLAND.

brought from the south, like the birch bark with which the
bottom of the coffin was covered. As a “ pesk,” now fallen in
pieces, lying round the skeleton, and various rotten rags showed,
the dead body had heen wrapped in the common Samoyed
dress. In the grave were found besides the remains of an iron
pot, an axe, knife, boring tool, bow, wooden arrow, some copper
ornaments, &e. Rolled-up pieces of bark also lay in the coffin,
which were doubtless intended to be used in lighting fires
in another world. Beside the grave lay a sleigh turned upside
down, evidently placed there in order that the dead man should
not, away there, want a means of transport, and it is probable

11.] SAMOYED WEAPONS. 79

that reindeer for drawing it were slaughtered at the funeral
banquet.

As it may be of interest to ascertain to what extent the
Samoyeds have undergone any considerable changes in their
inode of life since they ‘first became known to West- Europeans,
I shall here quote some of the sketches of them which we
find in the accounts of the voyages of the English and Dutch
travellers to the North-Kast.

_That changes have taken place in their weapons, in other
words, that the Samoyeds have made progress in the art of
war or the chase, is shown by the old drawings, some of which
are here reproduced. For in these they are nearly always

SAMOYED ARCHERS.
After Linschoten.

delineated with bows and arrows. Now the bow appears to
have almost completely gone out of use, for we saw not
a single Samoyed archer. They had, on the other hand, the
wretched old flint firelocks, in which lost pieces of the lock
were often replaced in a very ingenious way with pieces of bone
and thongs. They also inquired eagerly for percussion guns,
but breechloaders were still unknown to them. In_ this
respect they had not kept abreast of the times so well as the
Eskimo at Port Clarence.

One of the oldest accounts of the Samoyeds which I know
is that of Stephen Burrough from 1556. It is given in

80 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHaP.

Hakluyt (1st edition, page 318). In the narrative of the
voyage of the Searchthrift we read :—

“On Saturday the Ist August 1556 I went ashore,’ and there
saw three morses that they (Russian hunters) had killed: they
held one tooth of a morse, which was not great, at a roble, and
one white beare skin at three robles and two robles: they
further told me, that there were people called Samoeds on the
great Island, and that they would not abide them nor us, who
have no houses, but only coverings made of Deerskins, set ouer
them with stakes: they are men expert in shooting, and have
great plenty of Deere. On Monday the 3rd we weyed and
went roome with another Island, which was five leagues (15’)
East-north-east from us: and there I met againe with Loshak,”
and went on shore with him, and he brought me to a heap of
Samoeds idols, which were in number above 300, the worst
and the most unartificiall worke that ever I saw: the eyes and
mouthes of sundrie of them were bloodie, they had the shape
of men, women, and children, very grosly wrought, and that
which they had made tor other parts, was also sprinkled with
blood. Some of their idols were an olde sticke with two or
three notches, made with a knife in it. There was one
of their sleds broken and lay by the heape of idols, and
there I saw a deers skinne which the foules had spoyled: and
before certaine of their idols blocks were made as high as their
mouthes, being all bloody, I thought that to be the table
whereon they offered their sacrifice : I saw also the instruments
whereupon they had roasted flesh, and as farre as I could
perceiue, they make the fire directly under the spit. Their
boates are made of Deers skins, and when they come on shoare
they cary their boates with them upon their backs: for their
cariages they haue no other beastes to serve them but Deere
only. As for bread and corne they have none, except the Russes
bring it to them: their knowledge is very base for they know
no letter.”

Giles Fletcher, who in 1588 was Queen _ Elizabeth’s
ambassador to the Czar, writes in his account of Russia of the
Samoyeds in the following way :—*

“The Samoyt hath his name (as the fusse saith) of eating
himselfe: as if in times past they lived as the Cannibals, eating

1 Probably on one of the small islands near Vaygats.

2 A Russian hunter who had been serviceable to Stephen Burrough in
many ways.

3 Treatise of Russia and the adjoining Regions, written by Doctor
Giles Fletcher, Lord Ambassador from the late Queen, Everglorious
Elizabeth, to Theodore, then Emperor of Russia. A.D. 1588. Purchas,
ii. p. 413,

11. ] OLD ACCOUNTS OF THE SAMOYEDS 81

one another. Which they make more probable, because at
this time they eate all kind of raw flesh, whatsoeuer it bee,
euen the very carrion that lyeth in the ditch. But as the
Samoits themselves will say, they were called Samoie, that is,
of themselves, as though they were Jndigene, or peuple bred
upon that very soyle that never changed their seate from one
place to another, as most Nations have done. They are clad
in Seale-skinnes, with the hayrie side outwards downe as low
as the knees, with their Breeches and Netherstocks of the
same, both men and women. They are all Blacke hayred,
naturally beardless. And therefore the Men are hardly dis-
cerned from the Women by their lookes: saue that the Women
weare a locke of hayre down along both their eares.”

In nearly the same way the Samoyeds are described by
G. De VEER in his account of Barents’ second voyage in 1595.
Barents got good information from the Samoyeds as to the
navigable water to the eastward, and always stood on a good
footing with them, excepting on one occasion when the
Samoyeds went down to the Dutchmen’s boats and took back
an idol which had been carried off from a large sacrificial
mound,

The Samoyeds have since formed the subject of a very
extensive literature, of which however it is impossible for
me to give any account here. Among other points their
relations to other races have been much discussed. On this
subject I have received from my learned friend, the renowned
philologist Professor AHLQUIST of Helsingfors the following
communication :—

The Samoyeds are reckoned, along with the Tungoose, the
Mongohan, the Turkish and the Finnish-Ugrian races, to belong
to the so-called Altaic or Ural-Altaic stem. What is mainly
characteristic of this stem, is that all the languages occurring
within it belong to the so-called agelutinating type. For in
these languages ‘the relations of ideas are expressed exclusively
by terminations or suffixes—inflections, prefixes and pre-
positions, as expressive of relations, being completely unknown
to them. Other peculiarities characteristic of the Altaic
languages are the vocal harmony occurring in many of them,
the “inability to have more than one consonant in the beginning
of a word, and the expression of the plural by a peculiar affix,
the case terminations being the same in the plural as in the
singular. The affinity between the different branches of the
Altaic stem is thus founded mainly on analogy or resemblance
in the construction of the languages, while the different tongues
in the material of language (both in the words themselves
and in the expression of relations) show a very limited affinity

G

82 THE VOYAGE OF TIE VEGA. [cuar.

or none at all. The circumstance that the Samoyeds for the
present have as their nearest neighbours several Finnish-Ugrian
races (Lapps, Syrjaeni, Ostjaks, and Voguls), and that these

SAMOYEDS.,

From Schleissing’s Neu-entdecktes Sieweria, worinnen die Zobeln gefangen werden.
Zittau 1693.*

1 A still more extraordinary idea of the Samoyeds, than that which this
woodcut gives us, we get from the way in which they are mentioned in
the account of the journey which the Italian Minorite, Joannes de Plano
Carpini, undertook in High Asia in the years 1245-47 as ambassador from
the Pope to the mighty conqueror of the Mongolian hordes. In this book
of travels it is said that Occodai Khan, Chingis Khan’s son, after having
been defeated by the Hungarians and Poles, turned towards the north,
conquered the Bascarti, ie. the Great Hungarians, then came into collision
with the Parositi—who had wonderfully small stomachs and mouths, and
did not eat flesh, but only boiled it and nourished themselves by inhaling
the steam—and finally came to the Samogedi, who lived only by the chase
and had houses and clothes of skin, and to a land by the ocean, where
there were monsters with the bodies of men, the feet of oxen and the faces
of dogs (Relation des Mongols ou Tartares, par le frére Jean du Plan de
Carpin, publ. par M. d’Avezac, Paris 1838, p. 281. Compare Ramusio,
Delle navigationi e viaggi, ii. 1583, leaf 236). At another place in the
same work it is said that ‘the land Comania has on the north immediately
after Russia, the Mordvini and Bileri, ze. the Great Bulgarians, the
Basearti, 7.e. the Great’ Hungarians, then the Parositi and Samogedi, who
are said to have the faces of dogs” (Relation des Mongols, p. 351.
Ramusio, ii., leaf 239).

111 | THE ANIMAL WORLD OF NOVAYA ZEMLYA. 83

to a great extent carry on the same modes of life as themselves,
has led some authors to assume a close affinity between the
Samoyeds and the Fins and the Finnish races in general. The
speech of the two neighbouring tribes however affords no
ground for such a supposition. Even the language of the
Ostjak, which is the most closely related to that of the
Samoyeds, is separated heaven-wide from it and has nothing
in common with it, except a small number of borrowed worcs
(chiefly names of articles from the Polar nomad’s life), which the
Ostjak has taken from the language of his northern neighbour.
With respect to their language, however, the Samoyeds are
said to stand at a like distance from the other branches of the
stem in question. To what extent craniology or the modern
anthropology can more accurately determine the affinity-relation-
ship of the Samoyed to other tribes, is still a question of
the future.

CHAPTER III.

From the Animal World of Novaya Zemlya—The Fulmar Petrel—The
Rotge or Little Auk—Briinnich’s Guillemot—The Black Guillemot—
The Arctic Puffin—The Gulls—Richardson’s Skua—the Tern—Ducks
and Geese—The Swan—Waders—The Snow Bunting—The Ptarmigan
—The Snowy Owl—The Reindeer—The Polar Bear—The Mountain Fox
-—~The Lemming—Insects—The Walrus—The Seal— Whales.

Ir we do not take into account the few Samoyeds who of
recent years have settled on Novaya Zemlya or wander about
during summer on the plains of Vaygats Island, all the lands
which in the old wor'd have formed the field of research of
the Polar explorer—Spitzbergen, Franz-Josef Land, Novaya
Zemlya, Vaygats Island, the Taimur Peninsula, the New
Siberian Islands, and perhaps Wrangel’s Land also—are unin-
habited. The pictures of life and variety, which the native,
with his peculiar manners and customs, commonly offers to the
foreigner in distant foreign lands, are not to be met with here.
But, instead, the animal life, which he finds there in summer—
for during winter almost all beings who live above the surface of
the sea disappear from the highest North—is more vigorous and
perhaps even more abundant, or, to speak more correctly, less
concealed by the luxuriance of vegetation than in the south.

It is not, however, the larger mammalia—whales, walruses,
seals, bears and reindeer— that attract attention in the first place,
but the innumerable flocks of birds that swarm around the Polar
traveller during the long summer day of the North.

G 2

| HII {HII
Ml Il A Hil
HA i] \| WAH

9

(

BREEDING-PLACE FOR LITTLE AUKS.

Foul Bay, on the West Coast, of Spitzbergen, after a photograph taken by A. Enyall on the 30th August, 1S

CHAP. III. ] THE LITTLE AUK. 85

Long before one enters the region of the Polar Sea proper, the
vessel is surrounded by flocks of large grey birds which fly, or
rather hover without moving their wings, close to the surface of
the sea, rising and sinking with the swelling of the billows,
eagerly searching for some eatable object on the surface of the
water, or swim in the wake of the vessel in order to snap up
any scraps that may be thrown overboard. It is the Arctic
stormfogel+ (Fulmar, ‘ Mallemuck,” “Hafhaest,’ Procellaria
glacialis, L.). The fulmar is bold and voracious, and smells
vilianously, on which account it is only eaten in cases of
necessity, although its flesh, if the bird has not recently devoured
too much rotten blubber, is by no means without relish, at least
for those who have become accustomed to the flavour of train
oil, when not too strong. Itis more common on Bear Island
and Spitzbergen than on Novaya Zemlya, and scarcely appears
to breed in any considerable numbers on the last-named place.
I know three places north of Scandinavia where the fulmar
breeds in large numbers: the first on Bear Island, on the
slopes of some not very steep clitfs near the so-called south
harbour of the island,? the second on the southern shore of
Brandywine Bay on North-East Land, the third on ledges of the
perpendicular rock-walls im the interior of Ice Fjord. At the
two latter places the nests are inaccessible. On Bear Island, on
the other hand, one can without very great difficulty plunder the
whole colony of the dirty grey, short eggs, ‘which are equally
rounded at both ends. The eggs taste exceedingly well. The
nest 1s very inconsiderable, smelling badly like the bird itself.

When the navigator has gone a little further north and come
to an ice-bestrewed sea, the swell ceases at once, the wind is
hushed and the sea becomes bright as a mirror, rising and
sinking with a slow gentle heaving. Flocks of little auks
(Mergulus alle, L.) Briinnich’s guillemots (Uria Briinnichii,
Sabine), and black guillemots (Uria grylle, L.) now swarm in the
air and swim among the ice floes. The alke-kung (little auk), also
called the “sea king,” or rotge, occurs only sparingly oft the
southern part of Novaya Zemlya, and does not, so far as I know,
breed there. The situation of the land is too southerly, the
accumulations of stones along the sides of the mountains too

1 The name stormfogel is also used for the Stormy Petrel (Thalassidroma
pelagica, Vig.). This bird does not occur in the portions of the Polar Sea
with which we are now concerned.

2 At Bear Island, Tobiesen, on the 28th May, 1866, saw fulmars’ eggs
laid immediately on the ice which still covered the rock. At one place a
bird sitting on its eggs was even frozen fast by one leg to the ice on the
32 August, 1596. Barents found on the north part of Novaya Zemlya
that some fulmars had chosen as a hatching-place a piece of ice covered
with a little earth. In both these cases the under part of the egg during
hatching could never be warmed above the freezing-point.

85 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

inconsiderable, for the thriving of this little bird. But on
Spitzbergen it occurs in incredible numbers, and breeds in the
talus, 100 to 200 metres high, which frost and weathering have
formed at several places on the steep slopes of the coast mountain
sides; for instance, at Horn Sound, at Magdalena Bay, on the
Norways (near 80° N.L.), and other places. These stone heaps
form the palace of the rotge, richer in rooms and halls than any
other in the wide round world. If one climbs up among the
stones, he sees at intervals actual clouds of fowl suddenly emerge
from the ground either to swarm round in the air or else to fly
out to sea, and at the same time those that remain make their
presence underground known by an unceasing cackling and din,
resembling, according to Friedrich Martens, the noise of a
crowd of quarrelling women. Should this sound be stilled for
a few moments, one need only attempt in some opening among
the stones to imitate their cry
(according to Martens: rott-tet-
tet-tet-tet) to get immediately
eager and sustained replies from
all sides. The fowl circling in
the air soon settle again on the
stones of the mountain slopes,
where, squabbling and fighting,
they pack themselves so close
together that from fifteen to thirty
of them may be killed by a single
shot. A portion of the flock now
flies up again, others seek their
safety like rats in concealment
among the blocks of stone. But
they soon creep out again, in
order, as if by agreement, to fly out to sea and search for
their food, which consists of crustacea and vermes. The
rotge dives with ease. Its single blueish-white egg is laid on
the bare ground without’a nest, so deep down among the stones
that it is only with difficulty that it can be got at. In the
talus of the mountains north of Horn Sound I found on the
18th June, 1858, two eggs of this bird lying directly on the
layer of ice between the stones. Probably the hatching season
had not then begun. Where the main body of these flocks of
birds passes the winter, is unknown,’ but they return to the
north early—sometimes too early. Thus in 1873 at the end
of April I saw a large number of rotges frozen to death on

THE LITTLE AUK, OR ROTGE.
Swedish, Alkekung. (Mergulus Alle, L.)

' It deserves to be investigated whether some little auks do not, like the
Spitzbergen ptarmigan, pass the winter in their stone mounds, flying out
to sea only at pretty long intervals in order to collect their food.

ay.) THE LOOM. 87

the ice in the north part of Hinloopen Strait. When cooked
the rotge tastes exceedingly well, and in consequence of the
great development of the breast muscles it affords more food
than could be expected from its small size.

Along with the rotge we find among the ice far out at sea
flocks of alkor (looms, or Briinnich’s guillemots), and the nearer
we come to the coast, the more do these increase in number,
especially if the cliffs along the shore offer to this species of sea-
fowl—the most common of the Polar lands—convenient hatching
places. For this purpose are chosen the faces of cliffs which rise
perpendicularly out of the sea, but yet by ledges and uneven

THE LOOM OR BRUNNICH’S GUILLEMOT.
Swedish, Alka. (Uria Briinnichii, Sabine.)

places afford room for the hatching fowl. On the guillemot-
fells proper, eggs lie beside eggs in close rows from the crown of
the clitf to near the sea een and the whole fell is also closely
covered with seafowl, which besides in flocks of thousands and
thousands fly to and from the cliffs, filling the air with their
exceedingly unpleasant scream. The eggs are laid, without trace
of a nest, on the rock, which is either bare or only covered with |
old birds’ dung, so closely packed together, that in 1858 from a
ledge of small ‘extent, which I reached by means of a rope from
the. top of the fell, I collected more than half a barrel-full

of eggs. Each bird has but one very large egg, grey pricked.

88 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

with brown, of very variable size and form. After it has been
sat upon for some time, it is covered with a thick layer of birds’
dung, and in this way the hunters are accustomed to distinguish
uneatable eggs from fresh.

If a shot be fired at a “loomery,” the fowl fly away in
thousands from their hatching places, without the number of
those that are not frightened away being apparently diminished.
The clumsy and short-winged birds, when they cast themselves
out of their places, fall down at first a good way before they
get “sufficient air” under their wings to be able to fly. Before
this takes place, many plump down into the water, sometimes
even into the boat which may be rowed along the foot of
the fell.

An unceasing, unpleasant cackling noise indicates that a
continual gossip goes on in the ‘“loomery”; and that the
unanimity there is not great, is proved by the passionate
screams which are heard now and then. A bird squeezes
forward in order to get a place on a ledge of rock already
packed full, a couple of others quarrel about the ownership of
an egg which has been laid on a corner of the rock only a few
inches broad, and which now during the dispute is precipitated
into the abyss. By the beginning of July most of the eggs
are uneatable. I have seen the young of the size of a rotge
accompany their mothers in the middle of August. The
loom breeds on Walden Island and the north coast of
North-East land, accordingly far north of 80°. I found the
largest ‘“loomeries” on Spitzbergen south of Lomme Bay in
Hinloopen Strait, at the southern entrance to Van Meyen Bay
in Bell Sound, and at Alkornet in Ice Fjord. In respect to the
large number of fowl, however, only the first of these can
compete with the south shore of Besimannaja Bay (72° 54’ N.L.)
and with the part of Novaya Zemlya that lies immediately to
the south of this bay. The eggs of the loom are palatable,
and the flesh is excellent, though not quite free from the
flavour of train oil. In any case it tastes much better than
that of the eider.

Along with the rotge and the loom two nearly allied
species of birds, /uwnnefogeln, the Arctic puffin (Mormon
arcticus, L.) and tejsten or tobis-grisslan, the black guillemot
(Uria grylle, L.) are to be seen among the drift-ice. I do not
know any puffin-fells on Spitzbergen. The bird appears to
breed there only im small numbers, though it is still found on
the most northerly part of the island. On Novaya Zemlya,
too, it occurs rather sparingly. The black guillemot, on the other
hand, is found everywhere, though never collected in large
flocks, along the shores of Spitzbergen, and Novaya Zemlya,
even as far north as Parry Island in 80° 40’ N.L., where in 1861

m1] THE ARCTIC PUFFIN AND THE BLACK GUILLEMOT. 89

I saw several of their nests. These are placed near the summits
of steep cliffs along the shore. The black guillemots often swim
out together in pairs in the fjords. Their flesh has about the
same taste as Briinnich’s guillemot, but is tougher and of
inferior quality; the eggs, on the other hand, are excellent.

The sea fowl mentioned above are never met with inland.
They never settle on a grassy sward or on a level sandy beach.
The steep fowl-fell sides, the sea, ground-ice, pieces of drift-ice
and small stones rising above the water, form their habitat.
They swim with great skill both on, and under the water. The
black guillemots and rotges fly swiftly and well; Briinnich’s
cuillemots, on the contrary, heavily and ill. The latter therefore
do not perhaps remove in winter farther from their hatching

THE ARCTIC PUFFIN. THE BLACK GUILLEMOT.
Swedish, Lunnefogel. (Mormon Arcticus, L.) Swedish, Tejst. (Uria Grylle, L.)

places than to the nearest open water, and it is probable that
colonies of Briinnich’s guillemots are not located at places
where the sea freezes completely even far out from the coast.
On this perhaps depends the scarcity of Britnnich’s guillemot
in the Kara Sea.

While sailing in the Arctic Ocean, vessels are nearly always
attended by two kinds of gulls, the greedy stormuosen or
borgmaesteren, glaucous gull (Larus glaweus, Briinn.), and the
gracefully formed, swiftly flying kryckian or tretaoiga maosen,
kittiwake (Larus tridactylus, L.), and if the hunter les to at an
ice-floe to flense upon it a seal which has been shot, it is not
long till a large number of snow-white birds with dark blue
bills and black legs settle down in the neighbourhood in order

HMA WAIT
ANAT

BREEDING-PLACE FOR GLAUCOUS GULLS.
Borgmaestareport on Bear Island, after a midnight photograph taken by the Author on the 1sth—19th June, 1864.

CHAP. III.] THE KITTIWAKE. o1

that they may get a portion of the spoil. They belong to the
third kind of cull common in the north, ismaosen, the ivory
gull (Larus ebur neus, Gmel.),

In disposition and mode of life these gulls differ much from
each other. The glaucous gull is sufficiently strong to be able .
to defend its eggs and young against the attack of the mountain
fox. It therefore breeds commonly on the summits of easily
accessible small cliffs, hillocks or heaps of stones, preferably in
the neighbourhood of « loomeries” or on fowl- islands, where
the young of the neighbouring birds offer an opportunity for
prey and hunting during the season when its own young are
being fed. Sometimes, as for instance at Brandywine Bay on
Spitzbergen, the glaucous gull breeds in great flocks on the
ledges of steep fell- sides, right in the midst of Briinnich’s
guillemots. On Bear Island I have seen it hatch on the very
beach, at a place, for instance, under the arch of a waterfall
leapmg down from a precipitous cliff. The nests, which, to
judge from the quantity of birds’ dung in their neighbourhood,
are used for a long succession of years, are placed in a depression
in the rock or the ground, and lined with a little straw or a
feather or two. The number of the eggs is three or four.
After boiling they show a jellyhke, half transparent white, and
a reddish yellow, and are exceedingly delicious. The young
birds have white flesh, resembling chicken. The burgomaster
is common everywhere along the coasts of Novaya Zemlya and
Spitzbergen. Yet I have not seen the nest of this gull on the
north coast of North East Land or on the Seven Islands.

Still more common than the glaucous gull in the lands of the
High North is kryckian, the kittiwake. It is met with far out
at sea, where it accompanies the vessel whole days, circling
round the tops of the masts, and sometimes-—according to the
statements of the walrus- hunters, when a storm is approaching—
pecking at the points of the pendant, When the vessel is in
harbour, the kittiwakes commonly gather round it to pick out
anything eatable in the refuse that may be thrown away. They
breed in great flocks on the steep escarpments in some separate
part of the fowl- fells, in connection with which, it is evident
that the kittiwakes always endeavour to choose the best places
of the fell—those that are most inaccessible to the fox and are
best protected against bad weather. Among the birds of the
north the kittiwake is the best builder; for its nest is walled
with straw and mud, and is very firm. It juts out like a great
swallow’s nest from the little ledge to which it is fixed.
Projecting ends of straw are mostly bent in, so that
the nest, with its regularly rounded form, has a very tidy
appearance. The interior is further lined with a soft, carefully
arranged layer of moss, grass and seaweed, on which the bird

92 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

lays three to four well-flavoured eggs. The soft warm
underlayer is, however, not without its inconvenience ; for
Dr. Stuxberg during the voyage of 1875 found in such a nest
no fewer than twelve kinds of insects, among them Pulex
vagabundus, Bohem., in nine specimens, a beetle, a fly, &e.

The ivory gull, called by Fr. Martens “ Rathsherr,” the
Councillor, is found, as its Swedish name indicates, principally
out at sea in the pack, or in fjords filled with drift-ice. It is a
true ice-bird, and, it may almost be said, scarcely a water-bird at
all, for it is seldom seen swimming on the surface, and it can

. . . . 5 . .
dive as little as its relatives, the glaucous gull and the kittiwake.

A. THE KITTIWAKE, B. THE IVORY GULL.
Swedish, Kryckia. (Larus tridactylus, L.) Swedish, Ismaos. (Larus eburneus, L.)

In greed it competes with the fulmar. When any large animal
has been killed among the drift-ice, the ivory gull seldom fails to
put in an appearance in order to quench its hunger with flesh
and blubber. It consumes at the same time the excrements of
the seal and the walrus, on which account from three to five
ivory gulls may often be seen sitting for a long time round a
seal-hole, quiet and motionless, waiting patiently the arrival of
the seal (Malmgren).

The proper breeding places of this bird scarcely appear to be
yet known. So common as it is both on the coasts of Spitz-
bergen from the Seven Islands to South Cape and on the north

U1] THE IVORY GULL. 93

coast of Novaya Zemlya and America, its nest has only been
found twice, once in 1853 by McClintock at Cape Krabbe
in North America in 77° 25’ N.L., the second time by Dr.
Malmgren at Murchison Bay, in 82° 2’ N.L. The two nests
that Malmgren found consisted of depressions, twenty-three
to twenty-six centimetres in diameter, in a heap of loose ‘gravel,
on a ledge of a steeply-sloping limestone-rock wall. In each
nest was found only one egg, which, on the 30th July, already
contained a down-covered young bird. For all the ivor y gulls
which have their home on Spitzbergen there were doubtless
required several hundred such breeding-places as that at
Murchison Bay. When to this is added the fact that we never

RARE NORTHERN GULLS.
A, Sabine’s Gull. (Larus Sabinii, Sabine.) 3B. Ross’s Gull (Larus Rossii, Richards.)

in autumn saw on Spitzbergen any full-grown young of this
kind of gull, I assume that its proper breeding-place must be
found farther north, on the shores of some still unknown Polar
land, perhaps continually surrounded by ice. It deserves to
be mentioned with reference to this, that Murchison Bay was
covered with ice when Malmgren found the nests referred to
above.

Besides these varieties of the gull, two other species have
been found, though very rarely, in the Polar regions, viz.,
Larus Sabinii, Sabine, and Larus Rossii, Richards. Although
I have myself only seen the latter, and that but once (on the
Chukchi Peninsula), I here give drawings of them both for

94 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

the use of future Polar explorers. They are perhaps, if they
be properly observed, not so rare as is commonly supposed.
Often during summer in the Arctic regions one hears a
penetrating shriek in the air. When one inquires into the
reason of this, it is found to proceed from a kittiwake, more
rarely from a glaucous gull, eagerly pursued by a bird as large

vw J

as a crow, dark-brown, with white breast and long tail-feathers.

A. THE COMMON SKUA. B, BUFFON’S SKUA.
Swedish, Labben, (Lestris parasitica, L.) Swedish, Fjellabven. (Lestris Buffonii, Boic.)
C. THE POMARINE SKUA.
Swedish, Bredstjertade Labben. (Lestris pomarina, Tem.)

It is dabben, the common skua (Lestris parasitica, L.), known by
the Norwegian walrus-hunters under the name of ¢jufjo, de-
rived from the bird’s cry, “ J-0 7-0,” and its shameless thief-nature.
When the “tjufjo”’ sees a kittiwake or a glaucous gull fly off
with a shrimp, a fish, or a piece of blubber, it instantly attacks
it. Jt flies with great swiftness backwards and_ forwards
around its victim, striking it with its bill, until the attacked

TI. | THE “TJUFJO.” 95

bird either drops what it has caught, which is then immediately
snapped up by the skua, or else settles down upon the surface
of the water, where it is protected against attack. The skua
besides eats eggs of other birds, especially of eiders and geese.
lf the eggs are left but for a few moments unprotected in the
nest, it is immediately to the front and shows itself so voracious
that it is not afraid to attack nests from which the hatching
birds have been frightened away by men engaged in gathering
eggs only a few yar rds off. With incredible dexterity it pecks
a hole in the eges and sucks their contents. If speed is
necessary, this takes place so quickly and out of so many eggs
in succession that it sometimes has to stand without moving,
unable to fly further until it has thrown up what it had
swallowed. The skua in this way commonly takes part in
the plundering of every eider island. The walrus-hunters are
very much embittered against the bird on account of this in-
trusion on their industry, and kill it whenever they can. The
whalers called it “struntjaeger ’—refuse-hunter—because they
believed that it hunted gulls in order to make them void their
excrements which ‘“‘ struntjaegeren” was said to devour as a
luxury.

The skua breeds upon low, unsheltered, often water-drenched
headlands and islands, where it lays one or two eggs on the
bare ground, often without trace of a nest. The eggs are so
like the oround that it is only with difficulty that they ¢ can be
found. The male remains in the neighbourhood of the nest
during the hatching season. If a man, or an animal which
the bird considers “dangerous, approaches the eggs, the pair
endeavour to draw attention from them by removing from the
nest, creeping on the ground and flapping their wings in the
most pitiful way. The bird thus acts with great skill a
veritable comedy, but takes good care that it is not caught.

As is well known, we know only two varieties of colour in
this bird, a self-coloured brown, and a brown on the upper part
of the body with white below. Of these I have only once in
the Arctic regions seen the self-coloured variety, viz. at Bell
Sound in 1858. All the hundreds of skuas which I have
seen, besides, have had the throat and lower part of the body
coloured white.

This bird is very common on Spitzbergen and Novaya
Zemlya. Yet perhaps it scarcely breeds on the north part of
North-East Land. Along with the bird now described there
occur, though sparingly, two others :—bredstjertade labben, the
Pomarine skua (Lestris pomarina, Tem.) and fjellabben, Butfon’s
skua (Lestris Buffonii, Boie). The latter is distinguished by its
more slender build and two very long tail- feathers, and it is
much more common farther to the east than on Spitzbergen.

96 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

T have not had an opportunity of making any observations on
the mode of life of these birds.

As the skua pursues the kittiwake and the glaucous gull, it
is in its turn pursued with extraordinary fierceness by the little
swiftly-flying and daring bird taernan, the Arctic tern (Sterna
macroura, Naum.). This beautiful bird is common everywhere
on the coasts of Spitzbergen, but rather rare on Novaya Zemlya.
It breeds in considerable flocks on low grass-free headlands or
islands, covered with sand or pebbles. The eggs, which are
laid on the bare ground without any trace of a nest, are so like
lichen-covered pebbles in colour, that it 1s only with difficulty
one can get eyes upon them; and this is the case in a yet
higher degree with the newly-hatched young, which notwith-
standing their thin dress of down have to he without anything
below them among the bare stones. From the shortness of
their legs and the length of their wings it is only with difficulty
that the tern can go on the ground. It is therefore impossible
for it to protect its nest in the same way as the “ tjufjo.”” In-
stead, this least of all the swimming birds of the Polar lands
does not hesitate to attack any one, whoever he may be, that
dares to approach its nest. The bird circles round the disturber
of the peace with evident exasperation, and now and then goes
whizzing past his head at such a furious rate that he must every
moment fear that he will be wounded with its sharp beak.

Along with the swimmers enumerated above, we find every-
where along these shores two species of eider, the vanliga eidern,
common eider (Somateria mollissima, L.) and praktedern, king-
duck (Somateria spectabilis, L.). The former prefers to breed on
low islands, which, at the season for laying eggs, are already
surrounded by open water and are thus rendered inaccessible to
the mountain foxes that wander about on the mainland. The
richest eider islands I have seen in Spitzbergen are the Down
Islands at Horn Sound. When I visited the place in 1868 the
whole islands were so thickly covered with nests that it was
necessary to proceed with great caution in order not to trample
on eggs. Their number in every nest was five to six, sometimes
larger, the latter case, according to the walrus- hunters, being
accounted for by the female when she sits stealing eggs from
her neighbours. I have myself seen an egg of Anser bernicla in
an eider’s nest. The eggs are hatched by the female, but
the beautifully coloured male watches in her neighbourhood and
gives the signal of flight when danger approaches. The nest
consists of a. rich, soft, down bed. The best down is got by
robbing the ‘down-covered nest, an inferior kind by plucking
the dead birds. When the female is driven from the nest she
seeks in haste to scrape down over the eggs in order that they
may not be visible. She besides squirts over them a very

ul. } EIDERS. 97

stinking fluid, whose disgusting smell adheres to the collected
eggs und down. The stinking substance is however so volatile
or so easily decomposed in the air that the smell completely
disappears in a few hours. The eider, which some years ago was
very numerous on Spitzbergen,’ has of late years considerably
diminished in numbers, and perhaps will soon be completely
driven thence, if some restraint be not laid on the heedless way
in which not only the Eider Islands are now plundered, but the
birds too killed, often for the mere pleasure of slaughter. On
Novaya Zemlya, too, the eider is common. It breeds, for in-
stance, In not inconsiderable numbers on the high islands in
Karmakul Bay. ‘The eider’s flesh has, it is true, but a slight
flavour of train oil, but it is coarse and far inferior to that of
Briinnich’s guillemot. In particular, the flesh of the female
while hatching is almost uneatable.

HEADS OF THE
A. EIDER; B. KING DUCK ; C. BARNACLE GOOSE; D. WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE.

The king-duck occurs more sparingly than the common
eider. On Spitzbergen it is called the “Greenland eider,” on
Greenland the ‘Spitzbergen eider,” which appears to indicate
that in neither place is it quite at home. On Novaya Zemlya, on
the other hand, it occurs in larger numbers. Only once have I
seen the nest of this bird, namely, in 1873 on Axel’s Islands in
Bell Sound, where it bred in limited numbers together with the
common eider. In the years 1858 and 1864, when I visited the
same place, it did not breed there. _ Possibly its proper breeding

1 The quantity of eider-down which was brought from the Polar lands
to Tromsoe amounted in 1868 to 540, in 1869 to 963, in 1870 to 882, in 1871
to 630. and in 1872 to 306 kilograms. The total annual yield may be
estimated at probably three times as much.

H

98 nates TIE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHap.

place is on Novaya Zemlya at the inland lakes a little way from
the coast. The walrus-hunters say that its eggs taste better
than those of the common eider. They are somewhat smaller
and have a darker green colour.

On the Down Islands hatches, along with the eiders, the long-
necked prutgaessen, barnacle goose (Anser bernicla, L.) marked
on the upper part of the body in black and brownish grey.
It lays four to five white eggs in an artless nest without
down, scattered here and there among the eiders’ nests rich in
down. This variety of goose is found in greatest numbers
during the moulting season at small inland lakes along the
coast, for instance on the line of coast between Bell Sound and
Ice Fjord and on Gooseland. The walrus-hunters sometimes
call them “rapphoens” —partridges—a misleading name, which
in 1873 induced me to land on the open coast south of Ice
Fjord, where “‘rapphoens” were to be found in great numbers.
On landing I found only moulting barnacle geese. The bar-
nacle goose finds its food more on land and inland lakes than
in the sea. Its flesh accordingly is free from the flavour of
train oil and tastes well, except that of the female during the
hatching season, when it is poor and tough. The eggs are
better than the eider’s.

On Spitzbergen besides the barnacle goose we meet with the
closely allied species Anser leucopsis, Bechst. It is rather rare,
but more common on Novaya Zemlya. Further there occurs at
the last-named place a third species of goose, vildgaosen, the
“grey goose” or “great goose” of the walrus-hunters ; the bean
goose (Anser segetum, Gmel.), which is replaced on Spitzbergen
by a nearly allied type, the pink-footed goose (Anser brachy-
rhynchus, Baillon). These geese are much larger than both the
eider and the barnacle goose, and appear to be sufficiently
strong to defend themselves against the fox. They commonly
breed high up on some mossy or grassy oasis, among the stone
mounds of the coast mountains, or on the summit of a steep
strand escarpment in the interior of the fjords. During the
moulting season the grey geese collect in flocks at the small
fresh-water lakes along the coast. The flesh of this species of
goose is finer than that of the common tame goose and has no
trace of any train flavour.

Among the swimming birds that give the summer life on
Novaya Zemlya its peculiar character, we may further reckon
the scaup-duck and the swan. <Al/ogel or allan, the long-tailed
duck (Fuligula glacialis, L.) is rare on Spitzbergen, but occurs
very generally on Novaya Zemlya, and especially in the Kara
Sea, on whose coasts it is seen in summer collected in large
flocks. Mindre saongsvanen, Bewick’s swan (Cygnus Bewickit,
Yarr.), is the most nebly formed and coloured bird of the

m1 ] BEWICK’S SWAN, 99

north. I have already described its nest, which is found in
considerable numbers in Gooseland. The bird is blinding
white, resembling the common swan, but somewhat smaller
and with a considerable difference in the formation of the wind-
pipe and the “keel” of the breastbone. The flesh is said to
be coarse and of inferior flavour.

BEWICK’'S SWAN.

Swedish, Mindre Saongsvanen. (Cygnus Bewickii, Yarr.)

BREASTBONE
of Cygnus Bewickii, showing the peculiar position of the windpipe. After Yarrell.

The land-birds in the Arctic regions are less numerous both
in species and individuals than the sea-birds. Some of them,
however, also occur in large numbers. Almost wherever one
lands, some small greyish brown waders are seen running quickly
to and fro, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in flocks of ten to
twenty. It is the most common wader of the north, the
fjaerplyt of the walrus-hunters, the purple sandpiper (7'ringa
maritima, Briinn.). It lives on flies, gnats, and other land

H 2

100 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

insects. Its well-filled crop shows how well the bird knows
how to collect its food even in regions where the entomologist
can only with difficulty get hold of a few of the animal forms
belonging to his field of research. The purple sandpiper lays
its four or five eggs in a pretty little nest of dry straw on open
grassy or mossy plains a little distance from the sea. It also
endeavours to protect its nest by acting a comedy like that of
the tjufjo. Its flesh is delicious.

In the company of the purple sandpiper there is often seen a
somewhat larger wader, or, more correctly, a bird intermediate
between the waders and the swimming birds. This is the
beautiful brednaebbade simsnaeppan, the grey (or red) phalarope
(Phalaropus fulicarius, Bonap.). It is not rare on Spitzbergen,
and it is exceedingly common, perhaps even the commonest
bird on the north coast of Asia. I imagine therefore that it is
not absent from Novaya Zemlya, though there has hitherto been
observed there only the nearly allied smalnaebbade simsnaeppan,
the red-necked phalarope (Phalaropus hyperboreus, Lath.).
This bird might be taken as the symbol of married love, so
faithful are the male and female, being continually to be seen
in each other’s company. While they search for their food in
pools of water along the coast, they nearly always bear each
other company, swimming in zigzag, so that every now and
then they brush past each other. If one of them is shot, the
other flies away only for a short time until it observes that its
mate is left behind. It then flies back, swims with evident
distress round its dead friend, and pushes it with its bill to get
it to rise. It does not, however, spend any special care on its
nest or the rearing of its young, at least to judge by the nest
which Dunér found at Bell Sound in 1864. The position of
the nest was indicated by three eggs laid without anything
below them on the bare ground, consisting of stone splinters.
The flesh of the phalarope is a great delicacy, like that of other
waders which occur in the regions in question, but which I
cannot now stay to describe.

During excursions in the interior of the land along the coast,
one often hears, near heaps of stones or shattered cliffs, a
merry twitter. It comes from an old acquaintance from the
home land, the snoesparfven or snoelaerkan, the snow-bunting
(Emberiza nivalis, L.). The name is well chosen, for in winter
this pretty bird lives as far south as the snow goes on the
Scandinavian peninsula, and in summer betakes itself to the
snow limit in Lapland, the tundra of North Siberia, or the
coasts of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. It there builds
its earefuily-constructed nest of grass, feathers and down, deep
in a stone heap, preferably surrounded by a grassy plain.
The air resounds with the twitter of the little gay warbler,

ul | THE SNOW-BUNTING AND THE PTARMIGAN. 101

which makes the deeper impression because it is the only
true bird’s song one hears in the highest north.?

On Spitzbergén there is sometimes to be met with in the
interior of the country, on the mountain slopes, a game bird,
spetsbergsripan, the rock ptarmigan (Layopus hyperboreus,
Sund.). <A nearly allied type occurs on the Taimur peninsula,
and along the whole north coast of Asia. It perhaps therefore
can scarcely be doubted that it is also to be found on Novaya
Zemlya, though we have not hi herto seen it there. On Spitz-

PTARMIGAN FELL
Mussel Bay on Spitzbergen, after a photograph taken by A. Envall on the 21st June, 1872.

bergen this bird had only been found before 1872 in single
specimens, but in that year, to our glad surprise, we discovered
an actual ptarmigan-fell in the neighbourhood of our winter
colony, immediately south of the 80th degree of latitude. It
formed the haunt of probably a thousand birds; at least a
couple of hundred were shot there in the course of the winter.
They probably breed there under stones in summer, and creep-
ing In among the stones pass the winter there, at certain seasons
doubtless in a kind of torpid state.

1 There are, however, various other song-birds found already on south
Novaya Zemlya, for instance, lappsparfven, the Lapland bunting (Emberiza
lapponica, L.), and berglaerkan, the shore-lark (A lauda alpestris, L.). They
hatch on the ground under bushes, tufts of grass, or stones, in very care-
fully constructed nests lined with cotton-grass and feathers, and are not
uncommon.

102 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

The mode of life of the Spitzbergen ptarmigan is thus widely
different from that of the Scandinavian ptarmigan, and its flesh
also tastes differently. For the bird is exceedingly fat, and its
flesh, as regards flavour, is intermediate between black-cock and
fat goose.' We may infer from this that it is a great delicacy.

When I was returning, in the autumn of 1872, from an ex-
cursion of some length along the shore of Wijde Bay, I fell in
with one of our sportsmen, who had in his hand a white bird
marked with black spots, which he showed me as a “very large
ptarmigan.” In doing so, however, he fell into a great ornitho-
logical mistake, for it was not a ptarmigan at all, but another

THE SNOWY OWL.
Swedish, Fjelluggla. (Strix nyctea, L.)

kind of bird, similarly marked in winter, namely, fjellugglan,
the walrus-hunter’s zsoern, the snowy owl (Strix nyctea, L.). It
evidently breeds and winters at the ptarmigan-fell, which it
appears to consider as its own poultry-yard. In fact, the
marking of this bird of prey is so similar to that of its victim
that the latter can scarcely peihaps know how to take care of
itself. On Spitzbergen the snowy owl is very rare; but on
Novaya Zemlya and the North coast of Asia—where the lem-
ming, which is wanting on Spitzbergen, occurs in great crowds

1 Hedenstrim also states (Otrywki o Sibiri, St. Petersburg, 1830, p. 130,)
that the ptarmigan winters on the New Siberian Islands, and that there it
is fatter and more savoury than on the mainland.

111. ] THE REINDEER. 103

—it is common. It commonly sits immoveable on an open
mountain slope, visible at a great distance, from the strong
contrast of its white colour with the greyish-green ground.
Even in the brightest sunshine, unlike other owls, it. sees
exceedingly well. It is very shy, and therefore difficult to
shoot. The snow ptarmigan and the snowy owl are the only
birds of which we know with certainty that they winter on
Spitzbergen, and both are, according to Hedenstrém, native
to the New Siberian Islands (Otrywki 0 Sibiri, p. 112).

In the cultivated regions of Europe the larger mammalia
are so rare that most men in their whole lifetime have never
seen a wild mammal so large as a dog. This is not the case
in the high north. The number of the larger mammalia here
is indeed no longer so large as in the seventeenth century, when
their capture yielded an abundant living to from twenty to
thirty thousand men; but sport on Novaya Zemlya and Spitz-
bergen still supports several hundred hunters, and during
summer scarcely a day passes without a visitor of the coasts of
these islands seeing a seal or a walrus, a reindeer or a Polar
bear. In order to present a true picture of the Polar traveller's
surroundings and mode of life, it is absolutely necessary to
give a sketch of the occurrence and mode of life of the wild
mammalia in the Polar lands.

I shall make a beginning with the reindeer. This grami-
nivorous animal goes nearly as far to the north as the land in
the old world. It was not, indeed, observed by Payer on Franz
Josef Land, but traces of the reindeer were seen by us on
the clay beds at Cape Chelyuskin; remnants of reindeer were
observed at Barents’ winter harbour on the northernmost part
of Novaya Zemlya; some very fat animals were killed by
Norwegian walrus-hunters on King Karl’s Land east of Spitz-
bergen, and for some years back the reindeer was very numerous
even on the north coast of North East Land, and on Castrén’s,
Parry’s, Marten’s, and Phipps’ Islands, lying still farther to the
north. Although these regions are situated between 80° and
81° N.L., the remdeer evidently thrives there very well, and
finds, even in winter, abundant food on the mountain slopes
swept clear of snow by storms, as is shown by the good condi-
tion in which several of the animals shot by us were, and by
the numerous reindeer traces and tracks which we saw on
Castrén’s Island in the month of May, 1873. Nor does a
winter temperature of — 40° to —50° appear to agree particu-
larly ill with these relatives of the deer of the south. Even
the Norwegian reindeer can bear the climate of Spitzbergen,
for some of the selected draught reindeer which I took with
me to Spitzbergen in 1872, and which made their escape soon
after they were landed, were shot by ‘hunters in 1875. They

104 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [oap.

then pastured in company with wild reindeer, and were, like
them, very fat. It is remarkable that the reindeer, notwith-
standing the devastating pursuit to which it is exposed on
Spitzbergen,’ is found there in much larger numbers than on
North Novaya Zemlya or the Taimur peninsula, where it is
almost protected from the attacks of the hunter. Even on the
low-lying part of South Novaya Zemlya, the reindeer, notwith-
standing the abundance of the summer pasture, is so rare that,
when one lands there, any reindeer-hunting is scarcely to be
counted on. It first occurs in any considerable numbers farther
to the north, on both sides of Matotschkin Schar.

It deserves to be mentioned here that three hundred years
ago, when the north part of Novaya Zemlya was for the
first time visited by man, reindeer do not appear to have
been more numerous there than now. In the narrative of
Barents’ third voyage (De Veer, Diarium Nauticum, 21st
June, 1596) it is expressly stated: “‘ Here it may be remarked
that, although the land, which we consider as Groenland (the
present Spitzbergen), lies under and over the 80th degree of
latitude, there grow there abundant leaves and grass, and
there are found there such animals as eat grass, as reindeer,
while on the other hand, on Novaya Zemlya, under the 76th
degree of latitude, there are neither leaves nor grass nor any
grass-eating animal.” After this, however, traces-of reins were
found even at the winter station; a bear, for imstance, was
killed that had devoured a reindeer.

On Spitzbergen the reindeer have been considerably diminished
in numbers by the hunting, first of the Dutch and English,
and afterwards of the Russians and Norwegians. In the north-
western part of the island, where the Dutch had their train-boiling
establishments, the animal has been completely extirpated.”

1 The hunters from Tromsoe brought home, in 1868, 996; in 1869, 975 ;
and in 1870, 837 reindeer. When to this we add the great number of
reindeer which are shot in spring and are not included in these calculations,
and when we consider that the number of walrus-hunting vessels which
sre fitted out from Troinsoe is less than that of those which go out from
Hummerfest, and that the shooting of reindeer on Spitzbergen is also
carried on by hunters from other towns, and by tourists, we must suppose
that at least 3,000 reindeer have been killed during each of those years.
Formerly reindeer stalking was yet more productive, but since 1870 the
number killed has considerably diminished.

2 When Spitzbergen was first mapped, a great number of places were
named after reindeer, which shows that the reindeer was found there in
large numbers, and now just at these places it is completely absent. On
the other hand, the Dutch and English explorers during the sixteenth
century saw no reindeer on Novaya Zemlya. During the Swedish expedi-
tion of 1875 no reindeer were seen on the west coast of this island south of
Karmakul Bay, while a number were shot at Besimannaja Bay and Matot-
schkin.Schar. When some of the companions of the well-known walrus-

111. ] MARKED REINDEER. 105

It still, however, occurs on Ice Fjord in very great numbers,
which, were the animal protected, would speedily increase.

That so devastating a pursuit as that which goes on year after
year on Spitzbergen can be carried on without the animal being
extirpated, has even given rise to the hypothesis of an immi-
gration from Novaya Zemlya. But since I have become better
acquainted with the occurrence of the reindeer in the latter
place, this mode of explanation does not appear to me to be
correct. If, therefore, as several circumstances in fact indicate,
an immigration of reindeer to Spitzbergen does take place, it
must be from some still unknown Polar land situated to the
north-north-east. In the opinion of some of the walrus-hunters
there are indications that this unknown land is inhabited, for
it has repeatedly been stated that marked reindeer have been
taken on Spitzbergen. The first statement on this point is to
be found in Witsen (Noort ooster gedeelte van Asia en Europa,
1705, ii. page 904), where the reins are said to have been
marked on the horns and the ears ; and I have myself heard
hunters, who in Norway were well acquainted with the care of
reindeer, state positively that the ears of some of the Spitz-
bergen reindeer they shot were clipped—probably, however,
the whole has originated from the ears having been marked
by frost. That no immigration to Spitzbergen of remdeer from
Novaya Zemlya takes place, is shown besides by the fact that
the Spitzbergen reindeer appears to belong to a race differing
from the Novaya Zemlya reindeer, and distinguished by its
smuller size, shorter head and legs, and plumper and fatter body.

The life of the wild reindeer is best known from Spitzbergen.
During summer it betakes itself to the grassy plains in the
ice-free valleys of the island, in late autumn it withdraws—
according to the walrus-hunters’ statements—to the sea-coast, in
order to eat the seaweed that is thrown up on the beach, and in
winter it goes back to the lichen-clad mountain heights in the
interior of the country, where it appears to thrive exceedingly
well, though the cold during winter must be excessively severe ;
for when the reindeer in spring return to the coast they are
still very fat, but some weeks afterwards, when the snow has

hunting captain, Sievert Tobiesen, were compelled in 1872-73 to winter at
North Goose Cape, they shot during winter and spring only eleven
reindeer. Some Russians, who by an accident were obliged to pass six
years in succession somewhere on the coast of Stans Foreland (Maloy
Broun), and who, during this long tim, were dependent for their food on
what they could procure by hunting without the use of fire-arms (they had
when they landed powder and ball for only twelve shots), when the three
survivors were found and taken home in 1749, had killed two hundred and
fifty reindeer (P. L. le Roy, Relation des Aventures arrivées a quatre
matelots Russes jettés pur une tempéte pres de U Isle deserte d’ Ost-Spitzbergen,
sur laquelie ils ont passé six ans et trois mois, 1766}.

106 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

frozen on the surface, and a crust of ice makes it difficult for
them to get at the mountain sides, they become so poor as
scarcely to be eatable. In summer, however, they speedily eat
themselves back into condition, and in autumn they are so fat
that they would certainly take prizes at an exhibition of fat
cattle. In the museum at Tromsoe there is preserved the
backbone of a reindeer, shot on King Karl’s Land, which had a
layer of fat seven to eight centimetres in thickness on the loin.
The reindeer, in regions where it has been much hunted, is
very shy, but, if the ground is not quite even, one can creep

REINDEER PASTURE.
Green Harbour on Spitzbergen, after a photograph taken by A. Envall on the 20th July, 1873.

within range, if the precaution be taken not to approach it
from the windward. During the rutting season, which falls in
late autumn, it sometimes happens that the reimdeer attacks
the hunter.

The Spitzbergen reindeer is not tormented, like the rein-
deer in Lapland and on Novaya Zemlya, by ‘“‘gorm” (inch-long
larvee of a fly, which are developed under the animal’s skin).
Its flesh is also better than that of the Lapp reindeer. None
of the contagious diseases which of late years have raged so

m1.) ‘THE POLAR BEAR. 107

dreadfully among the reindeer in northern Europe has ever, at
least during the ‘last fifty years, been common on Spitzbergen.

The Polar bear occurs principally on coasts and islands which
are surrounded by drift-ice, often even upon ice-fields far out at
sea, for his best hunting is among the ice-floes. Now he is
rather rare on the south-western coasts of Spitzbergen and
Novaya Zemlya which are almost free of ice during summer,
but more common on the northern parts of these islands, which
are almost always surrounded by ice. Thus for instance during
my many landings at Horn Sound, Bell Sound, Ice Fjord, Fore-
land Sound, and King’s Bay, on the west coast of Spitzbergen,
I have never seen a single bear. On the other hand, bears
were seen at nearly every resting-place during the boat voyage
I made in 1861 with Torell in Hinloopen Strait and along the
shores of the most northerly islands on Spitzbergen, also during
the sledge journey which Palander and I made in the spring of
1873 round North East Land. The Polar bear is besides found
everywhere along the north coast of Asia and America,
apparently in greater numbers the farther north we go.
Sometimes too, first on ice and then swimming, he has
reached the north coast of Norway, for instance, in March
1853, when, according to a statement in Tromsoe Stiftstidende
(No. 4 for 1869), a Polar bear was killed in Kjoellefjord in East
Finmark.

The bear is not difficult to kill, When he observes a man he
commonly approaches in hope of prey, with supple movements,
and in a hundred zigzag bends, in order to conceal the direction
he intends to take, and thus keep his prey from being frightened.
During his approach he often climbs up on blocks of ice, or
raises himself on his hind legs, in order to get a more extensive
view, or else stands snuffing up the air with evident care in all
directions, in order, by the aid of smell, which he seems to rely
upon more than sight, to ascertain the true kind and nature of
the surrounding objects. If he thinks he has to do with a seal,
he creeps or trails himself forward along the ice, and is said
then to conceal with the fore-paws the only part of his body that
contrasts with the white colour of the snow—his large black
nose. If one keeps quite still, the bear comes in this way so
near that one can shoot him at the distance of two gun-lengths,
or, What the hunters consider safer, kill him with the lance.
If an unarmed man falls in with a Polar bear, some rapid
movements and loud cries are generally sufficient to put him to
flight, but if the man himself flies, he is certain to have the
bear after him at full speed. If the bear is wounded, he
always takes to flight. He often lays snow upon the wound
with his fore-paws ; sometimes in his death struggles he scrapes
with his fore-feet a hole in the snow, in which he “buries his head.

103 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA [CHAP.

When a vessel lies at anchor, the bear sometimes swims out
to it, and if one encamps in distant regions one often finds on
getting up in the morning a Polar bear in the neighbourhood,
who during the night has gone and nosed round the tent,
without daring to attack it. I remember only one case of a
bear venturing to look into an inhabited tent; it was during
Kane’s journey. He was frightened on that occasion by the
lighting of some lucifers. I have myself with my comrades
encamped without a watch in regions where we were certain
that our encampment would be visited, while we lay in deep

POLAR BEARS.
Drawn by G. Miitzel of Berlin.

sleep, by some bear, that seldom, when the cook rose to make
coffee, failed to come within range of shot.

The bear on the other hand has a special fancy for taking an
inventory of depdts of provisions, of abandoned vessels, or of
boats that have been left drawn up on the beach. Most Arctic
travellers have remarkable adventures to relate, which both
men and bears have gone through on such occasions. During our
expedition in 1864, for instance, a large bear came and closely
examined the contents of a boat pocred with a tent, which we

III. ] THE POLAR BEAR. 109

had left unwatched for a few hours at the bottom of Stor Fjord.
He ate up a carefully-cooked reindeer roast, tore the reserve
clothes, scattered about the ship-biscuit, &c.; and after we had
returned in the evening, gathered our things together in a heap,
closed the tent and lain down to sleep, the same bear returned,
and, while we slept, appropriated all the reindeer beef we had
cooked to be used, in place of the roast we had lost, during the
following day’s journey. During one of the English expeditions
in search of Franklin, there was killed on one occasion, a bear
in whose stomach there was found, among many other articles,
the stock of sticking-plaster from a neighbouring depot. The
bear can also remove very large stones, but a layer of frozen
sand is too much for him.

The Polar bear swims exceedingly well, but not so fast as that
he can escape in this way, if he be pursued in a boat; if a boat
and stout rowers are at hand he is accordingly done for, if, as
often happens, he in attempting to escape seeks his deliverance
in the sea. There, he is, as the hunters say, “as easy to kill as
a sheep,” but one has to make haste to get hold of the killed
animal with a harpoon or in some other way, for it speedily
sinks, unless it is very fat.

The walrus-hunting vessels from Tromsoe brought home in
1868 twenty, in 1869 fifty-three, in 1870 ninety-eight, in 1871
seventy-four, and in 1872 thirty-three bears. It may be inferred
feom this that the Norwegian walrus-hunters kill yearly on an
average at least a hundred bears. It is remarkable that in this
Jarge number a pregnant female or one with newly-born young
is never found.!' The female bear appears to keep herself well
concealed during the time she is pregnant; perhaps in some
ice-hole in the interior of the country.

Whether the Polar bear hibernates during winter is not
quite settled; various facts, however, point in this direction.
For instance, he disappears almost completely from wintering
stations during the dark time, and holes have sometimes
been met with in which bears were concealed. Thus it once
happened to Tobiesen that he went down with one foot into
such a hole, to the no small dismay not only of the experienced
walrus-hunter, but also of the bear.

It is also stated that the bear during the dark time goes to
the edge of the ice to seek his food. I cannot say positively
whether this is the case or not; but the fact points in an
opposite direction, that while only a single bear was seen in the
course of the winter in the open water in the neighbourhood of
our winter station at Mussel Bay in 1872-73, Palander and I

1 During the wintering of 1869-70 on East Greenland, Dr. Pansch once
saw a female bear with quite small young (Die zweite deutsche Nord-
polarfahrt, Leipzig, 1873-74. Vol. II. p. 157).

110 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

almost daily saw bears on the hard frozen sea north of North
East Land. Tracks of bears were visible there in all directions
on the ice, and along with them light, sinuous traces of the fox.
There were, on the other hand, no seal holes to be found, and it
was accordingly difficult to understand wherefore the bears had
chosen just this desolate stretch of ice as their haunt. The
bears that were killed were besides uncommonly lean, the fat
which they yielded being scarcely available as fuel for the
sledge-party’s cooking apparatus.

During their extended excursions after prey the male and the
female, the latter generally attended by one or two large young
ones, keep each other company. Larger numbers are seldom
seen together, unless at places where a good many carcases of
walruses, seals, or white fish are lying.

In former times the sight of a bear created great dismay in
Polar travellers, but now the walrus-hunters do not hesitate a
moment to attack, lance in hand, a large number of bears.
They have sometimes in this way killed as many as twelve
within a short time. They depend less on the gun, During
the expedition of 1861 Carl Chydenius shot three in a few
minutes, close to his tent-covered boat.

I do not know a single case in which any Norwegian walrus-
hunter has been seriously wounded by a bear. “Tt appears,
h owever, as if this animal were bolder and more dangerous in
regions where he has not made acquaintance with man’s dan-
gerous hunting implements. During the first English and
Duttch voyages to Novaya Zemlya, bears were met with at
nearly every place where a landing was effected, in regions where
the Polar bear is now wholly absent, and the travellers were
compelled to undertake actual combats—combats which cost
several human lives. During Barents’ second voyage some men
on the 24% September, 1595, landed on the ate dlland near the
eastern mouth of Yugor Schar, in order to collect “a sort of
diamonds occurring there ” (valueless rock crystals), when a large
white bear, according to De Veer, rushed forward and caught one
of the stone collectors by the neck. On the man screaming
“Who seizes me by the neck?” a comrade standing beside
answered, “A bear,” and ran off. The bear immediately bit
asunder the head of his prey, and sucked the blood. The rest of
the men who were on land now came to hisrelief, attacking the
bear with levelled guns and lances. But the bear was not
frightened, but ranked forward and laid hold of a man in the
ale of Ane attacking party, and killed bim too, whereupon all
the rest took to flight. Assistance now came from the vessel,
and the bear was surrounded by thirty men, but against their
will, because they had to do with a “ grim, undeomicd and greedy

beast.” Of these thirty men only three ventured to attack the

TI. | THE POLAR BEAR. 111

bear, whom these ‘‘ courageous” men finally killed, after a rather
severe struggle.

A large number of occurrences of a similar nature, though
commonly attended with fortunate results, are to be found
recorded in most of the narratives of Aretic travel, Thus
a sailor was once carried off from a whaler caught in the ice
in Davis’ Straits, and in 1820, among the drift-ice in the
sea between Greenland and Spitzbergen, the same fate was
like to befall one of the crew of a Hull whaler; but he succeeded
in effecting his escape by taking to flight, and throwing to the
bear, first his only weapon of defence, a lance, and then his
articles of clothing, one after the other.1 On the 6th of March
HS 70, Dr. Boergen was attacked by a bear, and dragged a
considerable distance? It is remarkable that the bear did not
this time either kill his prey, but that he had time to cry out,
“A bear is dragging me’ away ;” and that, after the bear had
dragged him several hundred yards and he had got free, he
could, though very badly scalped, himself make his way back to
the vessel. The scalping had been done by the bear attempting
to crush the skull in its mouth, as it is accustomed to do to the
seals it catches. Scoresby considers it dangerous to hunt the
Polar bear in deep snow. The well-known Dane, C. Petersen,
guide to McClintock, Kane and others, on the other hand,
considered it as little dangerous to attack a bear as to slaughter
_asheep. The Siberian traveller, Hedenstrom, says that a man
may venture to do so with a knife tied to a walking-stick, and
the Norwegian hunters, or at least the Norwegian-Finnish
harpooners, express themselves in much the same way regarding
“this noble and dangerous” sport.

The bear’s principal food consists of the seal and walrus.
It is said that with a single stroke of his powerful paw he can
cast a walrus up on the ice. On the other hand he seldom
succeeds in catching the reindeer, because it is fleeter than the
bear. I have, however, in North East Land, on two occasions,
seen blood and hair of reindeer which had been caught by bears.
There is not the least doubt that, along with flesh, the bear also
eats vegetable substances, as seaweed, grass, and lichens. I
have several times, on examining the stomach of a bear that
had been shot, found in it only remains of vegetable substances;
and the. walrus-hunters know this so well that they called a
large old Polar bear, which Dr. Theel shot at Port Dickson in
1875, “an old Land- king” that was too fat to go a hunting, and
therefore ate grass on land. He makes use besides of food of
many different kinds ; a bear, for instance, in the winter 1865-66

1 W. Scoresby’s des Jiingern, Tagebuch einer Reise auf dem Wallfischfang.
Aus dem engl. iiebers. Hamburg, 1825, p. 127.
* Die zweite deutsche Nordpolarfahrt, Vol. I. p. 465.

112 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

consumed for Tobiesen the contents of two barrels of salt fish,
which he had left behind in a deserted hut.

The flesh of the bear, if he is not too old or has not recently
eaten rotten seal-flesh, is very eatable, being intermediate in
taste between pork and beef. The flesh of the young bear is
white and resembles veal, The eating of the liver causes
sudden illness.

Although, as already mentioned, the Polar bear sometimes
drifts to land and is killed in the northernmost part of Norway,
his skin is not enumerated by Othere among the products of
Finmark. It thus appears to have become known in Europe
first after the Norwegians’ discovery of Iceland and Greenland,
and was at first considered an extraordinary rarity. A Norwegian
of importance, who had emigrated to Iceland, and there suc-
ceeded in getting hold of a female bear with two young, sent
them in 880 to the King of Norway, and got in return a small
vessel Jaden with wood. This animal had not then been seen in
Norway before. The old sagas of the north are said to relate
further that the priest Isleif, in order to be nominated bishop of
Iceland, in the year 1056 presented a white bear to Kejsar
Henrik. In the year 1064 the King of Denmark gave in
exchange for a white bear from Greenland a well-equipped, full
rigged, trading vessel, a considerable sum of money, and a
valuable gold ring.

Marco Polo also says in his account of the country of the
peace-loving nomad Tatar tribes living in the north, that there
are to be found there white bears most of them twenty hands long,
large black foxes, wild asses (reideer), and a little animal called:
“rondes,”’ from which we get the sable fur2 As the Polar
bear is only to be found on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, these
statements prove that in the thirteenth century the northernmost
part of Asia was inhabited or at least visited by hunters. Olaus
Magnus even describes the bear's mode of life not incorrectly,
with the addition that it was customary to present their skins
to the altars of cathedrals and parish churches in order that
the feet of the priest might not freeze during mass. The Polar
bear however first became more generally known in Western
Europe by the Arctic voyages of the English and Dutch, and its
price has now sunk so much that its skin, which was once con-
sidered an article of extraordinary value, is now, in adjusting
accounts between the owners of a vessel and the walrus-hunters,
reckoned at from twenty-five to fifty Scandinavian crowns
(say twenty-eight to fifty-six shillings).

1 Grinlands historiske Mindesmirker. Wjobenhavn, 1838, IIT. p. 384.
2 Ramusio, Part II., Venice, 1583, p. 60.
3 QO]. Magnus. Rome edition, 1555, p. 621.

III. ] - THE MOUNTAIN FOX. 113

In 1609 Stephen Bennet, during his seventh voyage to Bear
Island, captured two young Polar bears, which were brought to
England and kept at Paris Garden (Purchas, i. p. 562). Now
such animals are very frequently brought to Norway in order to
be sent from thence to the zoological gardens of Europe,
in which the Polar bear is seldom wanting. The capture is
facilitated by the circumstance that the young bears seldom
leave their mother when she is killed.

Along with the remdeer and the bear there are found in
the regions now in question only two other land-mammalia,
the mountain fox (Vulpes layopus L.) and the lemming (Myodes
obensis Brants).1 The fox is rather common both on Spitz-
bergen and Novaya Zemlya. Its abode sometimes consists of

POLAR BEARS.
After Olaus Magnus (1555).

a number of passages excavated in the ground and con-
nected together, with several openings. Such a nest I saw on
Wahlberg’s Island in Hinloopen Strait on the summit of a
fowl-fell; it was abundantly provided with a stock of half
rotten guillemots, concealed in the passages. The old foxes
were not visible while we were there, but several young ones,
some black, some variegated red and white, ran hither and
thither from out the openings and played with supple move-
ments in the neighbourhood of the nest. A similar nest also,
with young that ran between its openings, played and hunted
each other, I have seen on the north shore of Matotschkin

1 Tt is stated that wolves also occur on Novaya Zemlya as far up as to
Matotschkin Sound. They are exceedingly common on the north coasts of
Asia and Eastern Europe.

I

114 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar,

Schar, and uninhabited fox-holes and passages at several
places on the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, commonly in the
tops of dry sandy knolls.

The lemming is not found on Spitzbergen, but must at
certain seasons occur in incredible numbers on Novaya Zemlya.
For at the commencement of summer, when the snow has
recently melted away, there are to be seen, everywhere in the
level fertile places in the very close grass of the meadows, foot-
paths about an inch and a half deep, which have been formed
during winter by the trampling of these small animals, under the
snow, in the bed of grass or lichens which lies immediately
above the frozen ground. They have in this way united with each
other the dwellings they had excavated in the ground, and con-
structed for themselves convenient ways, well protected against
the severe cold of winter, to their fodder-places. Thou-
sands and thousands of animals must be required in order to
carry out this work even over a small area, and wonderfully
keen must their sense of locality be, if, as seems probable, they
can find their way with certainty in the endless labyrinth they
have thus formed. During the snow-melting season these pass-
ages form channels for running off the water, small indeed, but
everywhere to be met with, and contributing in a considerable
degree to the drying of the ground. The ground besides is at
certain places so thickly strewed with lemming dung, that it
must have a considerable influence on the condition of the soil.

In the Arctic regions proper one is not tormented by the
mosquito,’ and viewed as a whole the insect fauna of the entire
Polar area is exceedingly scanty, although richer than was
before supposed. Arachnids, acarids, and podurids occur most
plentifully, Dr. Stuxberg having been able during the Yenisej ex-
pedition of 1875 to collect a very large number of them, which
were worked out after his return —the podurids by Dr. T.
TULLBERG of Upsala, the arachnids by Dr. T. Kocu of Ninberg.
These small animals are found in very numerous individual speci-
mens, among mouldering vegetable remains, under stones and
pieces of wood on the beach, creeping about on grass, straws, &c.

Of the insects proper there were brought home from Novaya

1 That is to say, not on Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, for it is
otherwise on the coast of the mainland. In West Greenland the mosquito
as far north as the southern part of Disco Island is still so terrible, especi-
ally to the new comer during the first days, that the face of any one who
without a veil ventures into marshy ground overgrown with bushes,
becomes in a few hours unrecognisable. The eyelids are closed with
swelling and changed into water-filled bladders, suppurating tumours are
formed in the head under the hair, &e. But when a man has once under-
gone this unpleasant and painful inoculation, the body appears, at least
for one summer, to be less susceptible to the mosquito-poison.

111, | POLAR ANIMAL LIFE. 115

Zemlya, during the same expedition, nine species of coleoptera,
which were determined by Professor F. W. MAK In, of Hel-
singfors.1 _ Some few hemiptera and lepidoptera and orthoptera,
and a large nuinber of hymenoptera and diptera from the same
expedition have been examined by Lector A. E. HoLMGREN of
Stockholm. Dr. Stuxberg also collected a large number of
land-worms, which have been described by our countryman Dr.
G. EIsen, now settled in California. The occurrence of , this
animal group in a region where the ground at the depth of a
few inches is continually frozen, appears to me exceedingly
remarkable—and from a general point of view the occurrence of
insects im a land which is exposed to a winter cold below the
freezing-point of mercury, and where the animal cannot seek
protection from it by creeping down to a stratum of earth which
never freezes, presupposes that either the insect itself, its egg,
larva, or pupa, may be frozen stiff without being killed. Only
very few species of these small animals, however, appear to
survive such a freezing test, and the actual land-evertebrate-
fauna of the Polar countries is therefore exceedingly scanty in
comparison with that of more southerly regions.

It is quite otherwise as regards the sea. Here animal life is
exceedingly abundant as far as man has succeeded in making his
way to the farthest north. At nearly every sweep the dredge
brings up from the sea-bottom masses of decapods, crustacea,
mussels, asterids, echini,? &c., in varying forms, and the surface
of the sea on a sunny day swarms with pteropods, beroids,
surface-crustacea, &c. Dr. Stuxberg will give, farther on, a
sketch of this department of animal life, which in the high
north is so rich in variety. In the meantime I can but refer to
the large number of papers on this subject which have been
issued in the publications of the Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Of the higher animal typesa greater number within the Polar
territory occur in the sea than on the land. Thus by far the greater

1 As the only Chrysomela, which von Baer found at Matotschkin Schar,
played so great a ré/e in Arctic-zoological literature, I shall here enumerate
the species of coleoptera, now known—after Professor Miiklin’s determina-
tion of the collections which we brought home with us—to exist on Novaya
Zemlya. These are :—Feronia borealis Ménétr., F’. gelida Mikl., Amara
alpina Fabr., Agabus subquadratus Motsch., Homalota sibirica Makl.,
Homalium angustatum Makl., Cylletron (2) hyperboreum Mikl., Chrysomela
septentrionalis (2) Ménétr., Prasocuris hannoverana Fabr., v. degenerata,
From Vaygats Island we brought home seven species more, which were
not found on Novaya Zemlya. The insects occur partly under stones,
especially at places where lemming dung is abundant, or in tracts where
birds’-nests are numerous, partly in warm days on willow-bushes.

2 Echini occur only very sparingly in the Kara Sea and the Siberian
Polar Sea, but west of Novaya Zemlya at certain places in such numbers
that they almost appear to cover the sea-bottom.

1

y

ey

i)
Me fy i if

SS:

yh {Wh |

WALRUSES
After a drawing by G. von Yhlen (1861).

AES EU SHEN =

CHAP, II1.] THE WALRUS. 117

number of the birds I have enumerated above belong to the
sea, not to the land, and this is the case with nearly all the
animals which for three or four hundred years back have been the
objects of capture in the Arctic regions. This industry, which
during the whale-fishing period yielded a return perhaps equal to
that of the American oil-wells in our time, has not now in the
most limited degree the importance it formerly had. For the
animal whose capture yielded this rich return, the right whale
(Balena mysticetus L.), is now so extirpated in these navigable
waters, that the whalers were long ago compelled to seek new
fishing-places in other parts of the Polar seas. It is therefore
no longer the whale, but other species of animals which attract
the hunter to the coasts of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya.

Of these animals the most important for the last fifty years
has been the walrus, but it too is in course of being extirpated.
It is now seldom found during summer on the west coast of
Novaya Zemlya south of Matotschkin Schar. During our visits
to that island in 1875, 1876, and 1878 we did not see one of
these animals. But in the Kara Gate, on the east coast of
Novaya Zemlya, and at certain places in the Kara Sea, abundant
hunting is still to be had. Earlier in the year the walrus is also
to be met with among the drift-ice on the west coast, and to the
south, off the mouth of the Petchora, although the number of
the animals that are captured by the Samoyeds at Chabarova
appears to be exceedingly small. On the other hand the Dutch,
in their first voyages hither, saw a considerable number of
these gregarious animals. The walrus, however, did not then
occur here in such abundance as they did at the same time on
Spitzbergen and Bear Island, which evidently formed their
principal haunts. .

During Stephen Bennet’s third voyage to Bear Island in 1606,
700 to 800 walruses were killed there in six hours, and in 1608
nearly 1,000 in seven hours, The carcases left lying on the
beach attracted bears thither in such numbers that, for instance,
in 1609 nearly fifty of them were killed by the crew of a single
vessel. At one place eighteen bears were seen at once (Purchas,
ii. p. 560). A Norwegian skipper was still able during a
wintering in 1824-25 to kill 677 walruses. But when Tobiesen
wintered there in 1865-66 he killed only a single walrus, and
on the two occasions of my landing there I did not see one.
Formerly the hunters almost every year, during late autumn
when the drift-ice had disappeared, found “ walrus on land,” 7c.
herds of several hundred walruses which had crept up on some
low, even, sandy beach, to pass days and weeks there in an
almost motionless state. During this period of rest most of
them appear to be sunk in deep sleep, yet not all, for—according
to the concurrent statements of all the walrus-hunters with

118 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

whom I have conversed on this subject—they keep a watch to
warn their comrades when danger is near. If necessary pre-
cautions are observed, 7.¢. if the hunters approach the beach
where the animals are assembled when the wind blows from the
land, and kill with the lance those that lie nearest the water, the
rest are slaughtered without difficulty, being prevented by the
carcases of their dead comrades from reaching the sea, Now
such an opportunity for the hunter happens exceedingly seldom ;
there are famous headlands on which in former times the
walrus was found by hundreds, in whose neighbourhood now not
a single one is to be seen.

In the sea too there are certain places which the walrus
principally haunts, and which are therefore known by the
hunters as walrus-banks. Such a bank is to be found in the
neighbourhood of Muffin Island, situated on the north coast
of Spitzbergen in 80° north latitude, and the animals that have
been killed here must be reckoned by thousands. Another bank
of the same kind is to be met with in 72° 15’ north latitude, on
the coast of Yalmal. The reason why the walruses delight to
haunt these places is doubtless that they find there abundant food,
which does not consist, as has often been stated, of seaweed, but
of various living mussels from the bottom of the sea, principally
Mya truncata and Saxicava rugosa. Their fleshy parts are freed,
before they are swallowed, so remarkably well from the shells,
and cleaned so thoroughly, that the contents of the stomach
have the appearance of a dish of carefully-shelled oysters. In -
collecting its food the walrus probably uses its long tusks to
dig up the mussels and worms which are deeply concealed in
the clay.1 Scoresby states that in the stomach of a walrus he
found, along with small crabs, pieces of a young seal.

The largest walrus tusks I have seen were two of a male
walrus purchased in the summer of 1879 at St. Lawrence Island,
in the north part of Behring’s Sea. They measured 830 and
825 millimetres in Jength, their largest circumference was 227
and 230 millimetres, and they weighed together 6,680 gram.
I have seen the tusks of females of nearly the same length, but
they are distinguished from those of the male by being much
more slender. The surface of the tusks is always full of cracks,
but under it there is a layer of ivory free of cracks, which again
incloses a grained kernel of bone which at some places is semi-
transparent, as if drenched with oil.

When the walrus ox gets very old, he swims about by

1 Compare Malmgren’s instructive papers in the publications of the
Royal (Swedish) Academy of Sciences and Scoresby’s Arctic Regions,
Edinburgh, 1820, i, p. 502. That the walrus eats mussels is already
indicated in the Dutch drawing from the beginning of the seventeenth
century reproduced below, page 123,

111. | WALRUS-HUNTING. 119

himself as a solitary individual, but otherwise animals of the
same age and sex keep together in large herds. The young
walrus long follows its mother, and is protected by her with
evident fondness and very conspicuous maternal affection. Her
first care, when she is pursued, is accordingly to save her young
even at the sacrifice of her own life. A female walrus with
young is nearly always lost, if they be discovered from a hunting
boat. However eagerly she may try by blows and cuffs to get
her young under water or lead her pursuers astray by diving

WALRUS TUSKS.
A. Tusk of male, outside. B. Tusk of male, inside. c. Tusks of female.
One-tenth of natural size.

with it under her forepaw, she is generally overtaken and killed.
Such a hunt is truly grim, but the walrus-hunter knows no
mercy in following his occupation. The walrus, especially the
old solitary male, sleeps and rests during autumn, when the
drift-ice has disappeared, also in the water, with his head now
above the surface, now under it, and with his lungs so strongly
inflated that the body is kept floating, with part of the back
projecting out of the water. The latter way of sleeping is
indeed possible only for so long at once as the animal can keep

120 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

below, but this is said to be a very long time. If a hunting
boat meets a walrus sleeping in this way it is first wakened with
a loud “strike up” before it is harpooned, “in order that in
its fright it may not knock a hole in the boat with its tusks.”
The walrus sinks and is lost, if he is killed by a shot while in
the water, or if he be shot while lying on a piece of ice, but
without being killed so instantaneously that he cannot cast
himself into the water in his death struggles. He is killed
accordingly almost exclusively with the harpoon or lance.

The harpoon consists of a large
and strong iron hook, very sharp
on the outer edge, and provided with
a barb. The hook is loosely fixed
to the shaft, but securely fastened
to the end of a slender line ten
fathoms long, generally made of
walrus hide. The line is fastened
at its other end to the boat, in the
forepart of which it lies in a carefully
arranged coil. There are from five
to ten such harpoon lines in every
hunting boat. When the hunters
see a herd of walrus, either on a
piece of drift-ice or in the water,
they endeavour silently and against
the wind to approach sufficiently
near to one of the animals to be able
to harpoon it. If this is managed,
the walrus first dives and then
endeavours to swim under water all
he can. But he is fixed with the
line to the boat, and must draw it
along with him. His comrades

ee Lee, swim towards the boat, curious to
(1) Harpoon, and (2)Lance for Walrus- ascertain the cause of the alarm.
puting. (Beet toe eee )§=— A. new walrus is fixed with another

One-fifteenth of natural size. harpoon, and so it goes on, one after

another, until all the harpoons are
in use. The boat is now drawn forward at a whizzing speed,
although the rowers hold back with the oars; but there is no
actual danger as long as all the animals draw in the same
direction. If one of them seeks to take a different course
from that of his comrades in misfortune, his line must be cut
off, otherwise the boat capsizes. When the walruses get exhausted
by their exertions and by loss of blood, the hunters begin to
haul in the lines. One animal after the other is drawn to the
stem of the boat, and there they commonly first get a blow on

i)
is)
iad

111. ] WALRUS CHARACTERISTICS. MWe

the head with the flat of a lance, and when they turn to guard
against it, a lance is thrust into the heart. Since breechloaders
have begun to be used by the walrus-hunters, they often prefer to
kill the harpooned walruses with a ball instead of “lancing” them.
To shoot an unharpooned walrus, on the other hand, the walrus
hunters formerly considered an unpardonable piece of though t-
lessness, because the animal was in this way generally wounded
or killed without any advantage accruing. They therefore
expressed themselves with great irritation against the tourists who
sometimes came to Spitzbergen, and in this way destroyed the
hunting. It cannot however be denied that they themselves in
recent times have often followed the bad example, and many
consider that this is one of the main reasons of the great dim-_
inution in the numbers of the walrus of late years. Should
an international code be established for hunting in the Polar sea,
all shooting of unharpooned walruses ought to be forbidden in
the first place.

Gregariousness and curiosity appear to be the main charac-
teristics of the walrus. These qualities of theirs I had an
opportunity of observing when once, on a glorious nortbern
summer day, I rowed forward over a mirror-bright, drift-ice-
bestrewn sea right into the midst of a considerable herd of
these animals. Part followed the boat long distances quite
peaceably, now and then emitting a grunting sound ; others
swam quite close, and raised themselves high out of the water
in order to take a view of the foreigners; others, again, lay
so closely packed on pieces of drift-ice as to sink them down
to the water’s edge, while their comrades swimming about
in the sea endeavoured with violence to gain a place on the
already overfilled resting-places, though a number of unoccupied
pieces of ice floated up and down in the neighbourhood.

When the hunters have killed a female walrus, it often
happens that they take the young living. It is easily
tamed, and soon regards its keeper with warm attachinent. It
seeks, as best it can—poorly equipped as it is for moving about
on dry land—to follow the seamen on the deck, and gives
itself no rest if it be left alone. Unfortunately, one does not
succeed in keeping them long alive, probably because it is
impossible to provide them with suitable food. There are
instances, however, of the young of the walrus being brought
to Europe alive. Thus it is said (Purchas, iii., p. 560), that
Master Welden and Stephen Bennet, on the {3h July, 1608,
caught two young walruses alive, one a male and the other
a female. The female died before they reached England, but
the male lived ten weeks. He was carried to court, shown
to the king and many honourable gentlemen, and excited
general admiration for his extraordinary form and great docility.

122 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

A young walrus that was taken to St. Petersburg in 1829-30,
also died in a short time. It gave occasion to K. HE. von Baxr’s
famous treatise: ‘“ Anatomische und zoologische Untersuch-
ungen iiber das Wallross,”: printed in Mémoires de [Académie
Impériale des Sciences de St. Petersbourg, ser. Vi., t. iv. 2, 1838,
one

The walrus is hunted for its skin, blubber, and oil. The
value of a full-grown walrus was calculated at Tromsoe, in
1868, in settling accounts between the owners of hunting
sloops and the hunters, at eighty Scandinavian crowns (say

WALRUS HUNTING.
After Olaus Magnus (1555).

4]. 10s.), but it sank in 1871 to only forty-eight crowns (say
2/. 15s.). The flesh of the walrus is coarse and train-flavoured,
and is eaten by the hunters only in eases of necessity. From
my own experience, however, I can certify that its compara-
tively small tongue is very delicious. By the Eskimo and the
Chukchis the flesh of the walrus is considered a delicacy.

The walrus was doubtless hunted by the Polar tribes long
before the historic period,’ but it is mentioned for the first time
in writing in the sketch of Othere’s Arctic journey. The
narrative shows that it was then captured on the north coast of
Scandinavia. This appears the less improbable, as a walrus now
and then even in our days drifts to land on the Norwegian coast,
and walruses are still annually killed off Swjatomos on the
Kola peninsula.? The walrus is very correctly described in the
well-known Norse confession written in the end of the eleventh

1 Implements of walrus-bone occur among the Northern grave jinds.
* Compare note * at page 41 above.

lil. ] OLD ACCOUNTS OF THE WALRUS. 123

century, ‘ Konungs skuggsji” (the King’s Mirror), as an animal
resembling the seal,! except that, besides several smaller teeth, it
has two large tusks which project beyond the upper jaw. This
clear and unexaggerated sketch is however replaced in the later
writings of the middle ages by the most extraordinary accounts
of the animal’s appearance and mode of capture. Thus Albertus
Magnus,” who died in 1280, says that the walrus is taken by the

Ii aA
Ail] -—W
aa \

WALRUSES (female with young).
Old Dutch drawing.3

hunter, while the sleeping animal hangs by its large tusks to a
cleft of the rock, cutting out a piece of its skin and fastening to

1 I saw in 1858 a Phoca barbata with tusks worn away by age, which
in its reddish-brown colour very much resembled a walrus, and was little
inferior to it in size. :

2 Albertus Magnus, De animalibus, Mantua, 1479, Lib. xxiv. At the
same place however is given a description of the whale-fishery grounded
on actual experience, but with the shrewd addition that what the old
authors had written on the subject did not correspond with experience.

3 This drawing is made after a facsimile by Frederick Miller from
Hessel Gerritz, Descriptio et delineatio geographica detectionis freti, &c.
Amsterodami, 1613. The same drawing is reproduced coloured in Blavii
Atlas major, Part I., 1665, p. 25, with the inscription: “Ad vivum
delineatum ab Hesselo G.A.”

124 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

it a strong rope whose other end is tied to trees, posts, or large
rings fixed to rocks. The walrus is then wakened by throwing
large stones at its head. In its attempts to escape it leaves its
hide behind. It perishes soon after, or is thrown up half dead
on the beach. He further states that walrus lines on account of
their strength are suitable for lifting great weights, and that they
are always on sale at Cologne. They were probably used at the

JAPANESE DRAWING OF THE WALRUS.1

building of the Cathedral there. Similar extraordinary repre-
sentations of the appearance and mode of life of the walrus are

1 The drawing is taken from a Japanese manuscript book of travels—.
No. 360 of the Japanese library which I brought home. According to a
communication by an attaché of the Japanese embassy which visited Stock-
holm in the autumn of 1880, the book is entitled Kau-kai-i-fun, ‘‘ Narrative
of a remarkable voyage on distant seas.” The manuscript, in four volumes,
was written in 1830, In the introduction it is stated that when some
Japanese, on the 21st November, 1793 (?), were proceeding with a cargo
of rice to Yesso, they were thrown out of their course by a storm, and
were driven far away on the sea, till in the beginning of the following
June they came to some of the Aleutian islands, which had recently been
taken by the Russians. They remained there ten months, and next year
in the end of June they came to Ochotsk. The following year in autumn
they were carried to Irkutsk, where they remained eight years, well treated
by the Russians. They were then taken to St. Petersburg, where they
had an audience of the Czar, and got furs and splendid food. Finally
they were sent back by sea round Cape Horn to Japan in one of Captain
von Krusenstern’s vessels. They were handed over to the Japanese
authorities in the spring of 1805, after having been absent from their
native country about thirteen years. From Nagasaki they were carried to
Yeddo, where they were subjected to an examination. One person put
questions, another wrote the answers, and a third showed by drawings all
the remarkable events they had survived. They were then sent to their
native place. In the introduction it is further said that the shipwrecked
were unskilful seamen, by whom little attention was often given to the
most important matters. A warning accordingly is given against full
reliance on their accounts and the drawings in the book. The latter
occupy the fourth part of the work, consisting of more than 100 quarto
pages. Itis remarkable that the first Russian circumnayigation of the
globe, and the first journey of the Japanese round the world, happened at
the same time.

I11.] THE WALRUS AND SEAL. 125

repeated in a more or less altered form even by Olaus Magnus,
whose representation of the walrus is shown by the woodcut on
page 123.

The 1% of August 1556, the year after the publication of the
work of Olaus Magnus, a West European saw for the first time
some actual walruses, which had been killed by Russian hunters
at Vaygats Island. No description of the animal, however,
is given, but from that period all the members of the English
and Dutch north-east expeditions had opportunities of seeing
walruses in hundreds and thousands. It was now’first that man
learned actually to know this remarkable animal which had
been decked out in so many fables. To this period belongs the
beautiful and natural delineation of the walrus which is given
above.

A peculiarity of the walrus may be mentioned here. The
hide, especially in old males, is often full of wounds and scratches,
which appear to be caused partly by combats and scraping
against sharp pieces of ice, partly by some severe disease of the
skin. Mr. H. W. Elliot has remarked this of the walrus in
Behring’s Sea.!_ The walrus is also troubled with lice, which
is not the case, so far as I know, with any kind of seal.
Masses of intestinal worms are found instead in the stomach
of the seal, while on the contrary none are found in that
of the walrus.

With reference to the other animals that are hunted in the
Polar Sea I am compelled to be very brief, as I have scarcely
any observations to make regarding them which are not already
sufficiently known by numerous writings.

There are three kinds,of seals on Novaya Zemlya. Storsaelen,
the bearded seal (Phoca barbata, Fabr.) occurs pretty generally
even on the coasts of Spitzbergen, though never in large flocks.
The pursuit of this animal is the most important part of the
seal-fishing in these waters, and the bearded seal is still killed
yearly by thousands. Their value is reckoned in settling
accounts between owners and hunters at twenty to twenty-five
Scandinavian crowns (say 22s. to 27s. 6d.).

Groenlands or Jan-Mayen-saelen, the Greenland seal (Phoca
Groenlandica Miller), which at Jan Mayen gives occasion to so
profitable a fishing, also is of general occurrence among the
drift-ice in the Murman and Kara seas.

Snadden, the rough or bristled seal (Phoca hispida, Erxl.) is also
common on the coast. These animals in particular are seen to
lie, each at its hole, on the ice of fjords, which has not been
broken up. It also many times follows with curiosity in the

1 A Report upon the Condition of Affairs in the Territory of Alaska.
Washington, 1875, p. 160.

YOUNG OF THE GREENLAND SEAL.
After a drawing by A. W. Quennerstedt (1664).

CHAP. III. ] THE BLADDERNOSE SEAL. 1g

wake of a vessel for long distances, and can then be easily shot,
because it is often so fat that, unlike the two other kinds of
seals, it does not sink when it has been shot dead in the
water.

Klapmytsen, the bladdernose seal, (Cystophora cristata, Erxl.)
the walrus-hunters say they have never seen on Novaya Zemlya,

‘

ines “boils
Wee LAA

THE BEARDED SEAL.
Swedish, Storsal. (Phoca barbate, Fabr )

THE ROUGH SEAL.
Swedish, Snadd. (Phoca hispida, Erxl.)

but it is stated to occur yearly in pretty large numbers among
the ice W.S.W. of South Cape on Spitzbergen. Only once
during our many voyages in the Polar Sea has a Klapmyts been
seen, viz, a young one that was killed in 1858 in the neighbour-

hood of Bear Island.
Of the various species of whales, the narwhal, distinguished

128 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

by its long and valuable horn projecting in the longitudinal
direction of the body from the upper jaw, now occurs so seldom on
the coast of Novaya Zemlya that it has never been seen theres»
by the Norwegian “walrus-hunters. It is more common at Hope |
Island, and Witsen states (p. 903) that large herds of narwhals _
have been seen between Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya.
The white whale or beluga, of equal size with the narwhal,
on the other hand, occurs in large shoals on the coasts of
Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, especially near the mouths of
fresh-water streams. These animals were formerly captured, but
not with any great success, by means of a peculiar sort of
harpoon, called by the hitatess “skottel.” Now they are caught
with nets of extraordinary size and strength, which are laid out
from the shore at places which the white whales are wont to
frequent. In this way there were taken in the year 1871, when
the fishing appears to have been most productive, by vessels
belonging to Tromsoe alone, 2,167 white whales. Their value
was estimated at fifty-four Scandinavian crowns each (about 3/.).

THE WHITE WHste (Delphinapierus leucas, Pallas.)
After a drawing by A. W. Quennersiedi (1864)

The fishing, though tempting, is yet very uncertain ; it sometimes
falls out extraordinarily abundant, as in the spring of 1880, when

a skipper immediately on arriving at Magdalena Bay caught 300
of these animals at a cast of the net. Of the whales thus
killed not only the blubber and hide are taken away, but also,
when possible, the carcases, which, when cheap freight can be
had, are utilised at the guano manufactories in the north of
Norway. After having lain a whole year on the beach at
Spitzbergen they may be taken on board a vessel without any
great inconvenience, a proof that putrefaction proceeds with
extreme slowness in the Polar regions.

With its blinding milk-white hide, on which it is seldom
possible to discover a spot, wrinkle, or scratch, the full-grown |
white whale is an animal of extraordinary beauty. The young
whales are not white, but very light greyish brown. The white
whale is taken in nets not only by ‘the Norwegians at Spitzbergen,
but also by the Russians and Samoyeds at Chabarova. In
former times they appear to have been also caught at the mouth
of the Yenisej, to judge by the large number of vertebre that

In] WHALES. 129

are found at the now deserted settlements there. The white
whale there goes several hundred kilometres up the river. I
have also seen large shoals of this small species of whale on the
north coast of Spitzbergen and the Taimur peninsula.

Other species of the whale occur seldom on Novaya Zemlya.
Thus on this occasion only two small whales were seen during
our passage from Tromsoe, and I do not remember having seen
more than one in the sea round Novaya Zemlya in the course of
my two previous voyages to the Yenisej. Atthe north part of
the island, too, these animals occur so seldom, that a hunter told
me, as something remarkable, that towards the end of July, 1873,
W.N.W. of the western entrance to Matotschkin Schar 20’ to 30’
from land, he had seen a large number of whales, belonging to
two species, of which one was a slaethral, and the other had as
it were a top, instead of a fin, on the back.

It is very remarkable that whales still occur in great abun-
dance on the Norwegian coast, though they have been hunted
there for a thousand years back, but, on the other hand, if we
except the little white whale, only occasionally east of the
White Sea. The whale fishing which was carried on on so
grand a scale on the west coast of Spitzbergen, has therefore
never been prosecuted to any great extent on Novaya Zemlya:
and fragments of skeletons of the whale which are found thrown
up in such quantities on the shores of Spitzbergen, are not to be
found, so far as my experience reaches, either on the shores of
Novaya Zemlya, on the coast of the Kara Sea, or at the places
on the north coast of Siberia between the Yenisej and the Lena.
at which we landed. The sacrifices which were so long made
in vain in the endeavour to find a passage to China in this
direction accordingly were not compensated, as on Spitzbergen,
by the rise of a profitable whale fishery. Meeting with a whale
is spoken of by the first seafarers in these regions as something
very remarkable and dangerous; for instance, in the account of
Stephen Burrough’s voyage in 1556:—“On St. James his
day, there was a monstrous whale aboord of us, so neere to our
side that we might have thrust a sworde or any other weapon in
him, which we durst not doe for feare he should have over-
throwen our sbhippe; and then I called my company together,
and all of us shouted, and with the crie that we made he de-

ed from us; there was as much above water of his back as
the bredth of our pinnesse, and at his falling down he made
such a terrible noise in the water, that a man would greatly have
marvelled, except he had known the cause of it; but, God be
thanked, we were quietly delivered of him.” ? When Nearchus
sailed with the fleet of Alexander the Great from the Indus to
the Red Sea, a whale also caused so great a panic that it was
1 Hakluyt, first edition, p. 317.
K

130 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. III.

only with difficulty that the commander could restore order
among the frightened seamen, and get the rowers to row to the
place where the whale spouted water and caused a commotion
in the sea like that of a whirlwind. All the men now shouted,
struck the water with their oars, and sounded their trumpets, so
that the large, and, in the judgment.of the Macedonian heroes,
terrible animal, was frightened. It seems to me that from these
incidents we may draw the conclusion that great whales in
Alexander’s time were exceedingly rare in the sea which
surrounds Greece, and in Burrough’s time in that which washes
the shores of England. Quite otherwise was the whale regarded
on Spitzbergen some few years after Burrough’s voyage by the
Dutch and English whalers. At the sight of a whale all men
were out of themselves with joy, and rushed down into the boats
in order from them to attack and kill the valuable animal. The
fishery was carried on with such success, that, as has already
been stited, the right whale (Dalena mysticetus L.), whose
pursuit then gave full employment to ships by hundreds. and to
men by tens of thousands, is now practically extirpated. Thus
during our many voyages in these waters we have only seen one
such whale, which happened on the 23rd June, 1864, among the
drift-ice off the west coast of Spitzbergen in 78° N.L. As the
right whale still occurs in no limited numbers in other parts of
the Polar Sea, and as there has been no whale fishing on the
coast of Spitzbergen for the last forty or fifty years, this state of
things shows how difficult it is to get an animal type to return
to a region where it has once been extirpated, or from which it
has been driven away.

The whale which Captain Svend Foeyn has almost exclusively
hunted on the coast of Finmark since 1864 belongs to quite
another species, blaohvalen (Baiwnoptera Sibbaldii Gray); and
there are likewise other species of the whale which still in pretty
large numbers follow shoals of fish to the Norwegian coast, where
they sometimes strand and are killed in considerable numbers.
A tandhval, killer or sword-fish (Orca gladiator Desm.) was ever
captured some-years ago in the harbour of Tromsoe. This whale
was already dying of suffocation, caused by an attempt to
swallow an eider which entered the gullet, not, as the proper way
is, with the head, but with the tail foremost. When the mouth-
ful should have slidden down, it was prevented by the stiff
feathers sticking out, and the bird stuck in the whale’s throat,
which, to judge by the extraordinary struggles it immediately
began to make, must have caused it great inconvenience,
which was increased still more wheu the inhabitants did not
neglect to take advantage of its helpless condition to harpoon it.

‘cmap. 1V.] YUGOR SCHAR OR THE KARA SEA. 131

CHAPTER IV.

The Origin of the names Yugor Schar and Kara Sea—Rules for Sailing
through Yugor Schar—The “ Highest Mountain’’ on Earth—An-
chorages-—Entering the Kara Sea—Its Surroundings—The Inland-ice
of Novaya Zemlya—True Icebergs rare in certain parts of the Polar
Sea—The Natural Conditions of the Kara Sea—Animals, Plants, Bog
Ore—Passage across the Kara Sea—The Influence of the Ice on
the Sea-bottom—Fresh-water Diatoms on Sea-ice—Arrival at Port
Dickson—Animal Life there—Settlers and Settlements at the Mouth of
the Yenisej—The Flora at Port Dickson—Evertebrates—Excursion to
White Island—Yalmal—Previous Visits—Nummelin’s Wintering on the
Briochov Islands.

IN crossing to Vaygats Island I met the Lena, which then first
steamed to the rendezvous that had been fixed upon. I gave
the captain orders to anchor without delay, to coal from the
Express, and to be prepared immediately after my return from
the excursion to weigh anchor and start along with the other
vessels. I came on board the Vega on the evening of the 31st
July, much pleased and gratified with what I had seen and
collected in the course of my excursion on Vaygats Island.
The Lena, however, was not quite ready, and so the start was put
off till the morning of the Ist August. All the vessels then
weighed anchor, and sailed or steamed through Vaygats Sound
or Yugor Schar into the Kara Sea.

We do not meet with the name Yugor Schar in the oldest
narratives of travel or on the oldest maps. But it is found in
an account dating from 1611, of a Russian commercial route
between “ Pechorskoie Zauorot and Mongozei,” which is annexed
to the letter of Richard Finch to Sir Thomas Smith, already
quoted (Purchas, ii. p. 539). The name is clearly derived
from the old name, Jugaria, for the land lying south of the sound,
and it is said, for instance, in the map to Herberstein’s work,
to have its name from the Hungarians, who are supposed to
derive their origin from these regions. The first Dutch north-
east explorers called it Vaygats Sound or Fretum Nassovicum.
More recent geographers call it also Pet’s Strait, which is
incorrect, as Pet did not sail through it.

There was at first no special name for the gulf between the
Taimur peninsula and Novaya Zemlya. The name “ Carska
Bay ” however is to be found already in the information about
sailing to the north-east, communicated to the Muscovie Companie
by its principal factor, Antonie Marsh (Purchas, 11. p. 805).
At first this name was applied only to the estuary of the Kara
river, but it was gradually transferred .to the whole of the
neighbouring sea, whose oldest Samoyed name, ae tones

K 2

132 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

from a river, was in a somewhat Russianised form, “Neremskoe”
(compare Purchas, 1. p. 805, Witsen, p. 917). I shall in the
following part of this work comprehend under the name “ Kara
Sea’’ the whole of that gulf which from 77° N.L. between Cape
Chelyuskin and the northern extremity of Novaya Zemlya extends
towards the south to the north coast of Europe and Asia.
Captain Palander gives the following directions for sailing
through the sound between Vaygats Island and the mainland :-—

“As Yugor Straits are difficult to discover far out at sea, good
solar observations ought to be taken on approaching them, where
such can be had, and after these the course is to be shaped
in the middle of the strait, preferably about N.E. by the compass.
On coming nearer land (three to four English miles) one dis-
tinguishes “the straits with ease. Afterwards there is nothing
else to observe than on entering to keep right in the middle of
the fairway.

“Tf one wishes to anchor at the Samoyed village one ought
to keep about an English mile from the land on the starboard,
and steer N.E. by the compass, until the Samoyed huts are
seen, when one bends off from starboard, keeping the church a
little to starboard. For larger vessels it is not advisable to go
in shallower water than eight to nine fathoms, because the depth
then diminishes rather suddenly to from three to four fathoms.

“From the Samoyed village the course is shaped right to
the south-east headland of Vaygats Island (Suchoi Nos), which
ought to be passed at the distance of half an English mile.
Immediately south-west of this headland lies a very long shoal,
which one ought to take care of.

«From this headland the vessel is to be steered N. 1p, out
into the Kara Sea. With this course there are two shoals on
starboard and two on port at the distance of half an English mile.

“The depth is in general ten fathoms; at no place in the
fairway is it less than nine fathoms.

“Vessels of the greatest draught may thus sail through
Yugor Schar. In passing the straits it is recommended to
keep a good outlook from the top, whence in clear weather
the shoals may easily be seen.’

In the oldest narratives very high mountains, covered with ice
and snow, are spoken of as occurring in the neighbourhood of
the sound between Vaygats Island “and the mainland. It is
even said that here were to be found the highest mountains
on earth, whose tops were said to raise themselves to a height
of a hundred German miles.!- The honour of having the highest

1 Les moeurs et usages des Ostiackes, par Jean Bernard Muller, Capitaine
de dragon au service de la Suéde, pendant sa captivité en Sibérie (Recueil
de Voiages aw Nord, T, VIII., Amsterdam, 1727, p. 389).

Iv. | SAILING THROUGH YUGOR SCHAR. 135

mountains on earth has since been ascribed by the dwellers
on the plains of Northern Russia to the neighbourhood of
Matotschkin Schar, “where the mountains are even much higher
than Bolschoj Kamen,” a rocky eminence some hundreds of feet
high at the mouth of the Petchora—an orographic idea which
forms a new proof of the correctness of the old saying :—“ In the
kingdom of the blind the one-eyed is king.” Matotschkin Schar
indeed is surrounded by a wild Alpine tract with peaks that
rise to a height of 1,000 to 1,200 metres. On the other hand
there are to be seen around Yugor Straits only low level plains,
terminating towards the sea with a steep escarpment. These
plains are early free of snow, and are covered with a rich turf,
which yields good pasture to the Samoyed reindeer herds.

Most of the vessels that wish to sail into the Kara Sea through
Yugor Schar require to anchor here some days to wait for favour-
able winds and state of the ice. There are no good harbours
in the neighbourhood of the sound, but available anchorages
occur, some in the bay at Chabarova, at the western entrance
of the sound; some, according to the old Dutch maps, on the
eastern side of the sound, between Mestni Island (Staten Eiland)
and the mainland. I have, however, no experience of my own
of the latter anchorages, nor have I heard that the Norwegian
walrus-hunters have anchored there. Perhaps by this time they
are become too shallow.

When we sailed through Yugor Schar in 1878, the sound was
completely free of ice. The weather was glorious, but the wind
was so light that the sails did little service. Im consequence
of this we did not go very rapidly forward, especially as I wished
to keep the three vessels together, and the sailing ship xpress,
not to be left behind, had to be towed by the Fraser. Time was
lost besides in dredging and taking specimens of water. The
dredgings gave at some places, for instance off Chabarova, a rich
yield, especially of isopods and sponges. The samples of water
showed that already at a limited depth from the surface it had
a considerable salinity, and that therefore no notable portion
of the mass of fresh water, which the rivers Kara, Obi, Tas, and
Yenisej and others pour into the Kara Sea, flows through this
sound into the Atlantic Ocean.

In the afternoon of the Ist August we passed through the
sound and steamed into the sea lying to the east of it, which
had been the object of so many speculations, expectations, and
conclusions of so many cautious governments, merchants eager
for gain, and learned cosmographers, from the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and which even to the geographer and
man of science of the present has been a mare incognitum down
to the most recent date. It is just this sea that formed the
turning-point of all the foregoing north-east voyages, from

134 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

Burrough’s to Wood’s and Vlamingh’s, and it may therefore not
be out of place here, before I proceed further with the sketch
of our journey, to give some account of its surroundings and
hydrography.

If attention be not fixed on the little new-discovered island,
“ Knsamheten,”’ the Kara Sea is open to the north-east. It
is bounded on the west by Novaya Zemlya and Vaygats Island ;
on the east by the Taimur peninsula, the land between the
Pjaesina and the Yenisej and Yalmal; and on the south by the
northernmost portion of European Russia, Beli Ostrov, and the
larze estuaries of the Obi and the Yenisej. The coast between
Cape Chelyuskin and the Yenisej consists of low rocky heights,
formed of crystalline schists, gneiss, and eruptive rocks, from
the Yenise} to beyond the most southerly part of the Kara
Sea, of the Gyda and Yalmal tundras beds of sand of equal
fineness, and at Vaygats Island and the southern part of
Novaya Zemlya (to 73° N.L.) of limestone and beds of schist!
which slope towards the sea with a steep escarpment three
to fifteen metres high, but form, besides, the substratum of a
level plain, full of small collections of water which is quite
free of snow in summer. North of 73° again the west coast
of the Kara Sea is occupied by mountains, which near
Matotschkin are very high, and distributed in a confused
mass of isolated peaks, but farther north become lower and
take the form of a plateau.

Where the mountains begin, some few or only very incon-
siderable collections of ice are to be seen, and the very moun-
tain tops are in summer free of snow. Farther north glaciers
commence, which increase towards the north in number and
size, till they finally form a continuous inland-ice which, lke
those of Greenland and Spitzbergen, with its enormous ice-sheet,
levels mountains arid valleys, and converts the interior of the
land into a wilderness of ice, and forms one of the fields for the
formation of icebergs or glacier-iceblocks, which play so great
a rdle in sketches of voyages in the Polar seas. I have not
myself visited the imland-ice on the northern part of Novaya
Zemlya, but doubtless the experience I have previously gained
during an excursion with Dr. Berggren on the inland-ice of
Greenland in the month of July 187 0, after all the snow on it
had melted, and with Captain Palander on the inland-ice of
North-East Land in the beginning of June 1873, before any
melting of snow had commenced, is also applicable to the ice-
wilderness of north Novaya Zemlya.

1 IT come to this conclusion from the appearance of the strata as seen
from the sea, and from their nature on Vaygats Island and the west coast
of Novaya Zemlya. So far as I know, no geologist has landed on this part
of the east coast.

Iv.] * INLAND-ICE TRAVELLING. 135

As on Spitzbergen the ice-field here is doubtless interrupted
by deep bottomless clefts, over which the snowstorms of winter
throw fragile snow-bridges, which conceal the openings of the
abysses so completely that one may stand close to their edge
without having any suspicion that a step further is certain
death to the man, who, without observing the usual precaution
of being bound by a rope to his companions, seeks his way
over the blinding-white, almost velvet-like, surface of this
snow-field, hard packed indeed, but bound together by no
firm crust. Ifa man, after taking necessary precautions against
the danger of tumbling down into these crevasses, betakes
himself farther into the country in the hope that the apparently
even surface of the snow will allow of long day’s marches, he is
soon disappointed in his expectations; for he comes to regions
where the ice is everywhere crossed by narrow depressions,
canals, bounded by dangerous clefts, with perpendicular walls
up to fifteen metres in height. One can cross these depressions

SECTION OF INLAND-ICE,

a. Open glacier-canal. B. Snow-filled canal. c. Canal concealed by a snow-vault.
D. Glacier-clefts.

only after endless zigzag wanderings, at places where they have
become filled with snow and thereby passable. In summer
again, when the snow has melted, the surface of the ice-
wilderness has quite a different appearance. The snow has
disappeared and the ground is now formed of a blue ice, which
however is not clean, but everywhere rendered dirty by
a grey argillaceous dust, carried to the surface of the
glacier by wind and rain, probably from distant mountain
heights. Among this clay, and even directly on the ice itself,
there is a scanty covering of low vegetabie organisms. The
ice-deserts of the Polar lands are thus the habitat of a peculiar
flora, which, insignificant as it appears to be, forms however
an important condition for the issue of the conflict which goes
on here, year after year, century after century, between the sun
and the ice. For the dark clay and the dark parts of plants
absorb the warm rays of the sun better than the ice, and
therefore powerfully promote its melting. They eat themselves

136 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [owar. tv.

down in perpendicular cylindrical holes thirty to sixty centi-
metres in depth, and from a few millimetres to a whole metre

in diameter. The surface of the ice is thus destroyed and
broken up.

_ After the melting of the snow there appears besides a number
of inequalities, and the clefts previously covered with a fragile
snow-bridge now gape before the wanderer where he goes
forward, with their bluish-black abysses, bottomless as far as

we can depend on ocular evidence. At some places there are

a

\ \\

VIEW FROM THE INLAND-ICE OF GREENLAND.
After a drawing by 8. Berggren, 23rd July, 1870.

also to be found in the ice extensive shallow depressions, down
whose sides innumerable rapid streams flow in beds of azure-
blue ice, often of such a volume of water as to form actual
rivers. They generally debouch in a lake situated in the middle
of the depression. The lake has generally an underground
outlet through a grotto-vault of ice several thousands of feet
high. At other places a river is to be seen, which has bored
itself a hole through the ice-sheet, down which it suddenly
disappears with a roar and din which are heard far and wide,

a

‘Auli i

SLOWLY-ADVANCING GLACIER,

At Foul Bay, on the west coast of Spitzbergen, after a photograph taken by A. Enyall,
30th August, 1872.

GLACIER WITH STATIONARY FRONT,

Udde Bay, on Novaya Zemlya, after a drawing by Hj. Théel (1875).

138 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

and at a little distance from it there is projected from the ice a
column of water, which, like a geyser with a large intermittent
jet in which the water is mixed with air, rises to a great height.

Now and then a report is heard, resembling that of a cannon
shot fired in the interior of the icy mass. It is a new crevasse
that has been formed, or if one is near the border of the ice-
desert, an ice-block that has fallen down into the sea. For, like
ordinary collections of water, an ice-lake also has its outlet into
the sea. These outlets are of three kinds, viz., ice-rapids, in
which the thick ice-sheet, split up and broken in pieces, is

WAN
MM

GREENLAND ICE FJORD.

Afver a design drawn and lithographed by a Greenland Eskimo.

pressed forward at a comparatively high speed down a narrow
steeply-sloping valley, where ice-blocks tumble on each other
with a crashing noise and din, and from which true icebergs
of giant-like dimensions are projected in hundreds and thousands ;
broad, slowly-advancing. glaciers, which terminate towards the
sea with an even perpendicular face, from which now and then
considerable ice-blocks, but no true icebergs, fall down; and
smaller stationary glaciers, which advance so slowly that the ice
in the brim melts away about as fast as the whole mass of ice
glides forward, and which thus terminate at the beach not with

yt" ICE AND ICEBERGS. 139

a perpendicular face but with a long ice-slope covered with: clay,
sand, and gravel.

The imland-ice on Novaya Zemlya is of too inconsiderable
extent to allow of any large icebergs being formed. ‘There are
none such accordingly in the Kara Sea,! and it is seldom that
even a large glacier ice-block is to be met with drifting about.

The name ice-house, conferred on the Kara Sea by a
famous Russian man of science, did not originate from the large
number of icebergs,” but from the fact that the covering of
ice, which during winter. on account of the severity of the cold
and the slight salinity of the surface-water, is immensely thick,
cannot, though early broken up, be carried away by the marine
currents and be scattered over a sea that is open even during
winter.? Most of the ice formed during winter in the Kara-Sea,
and perhaps some of that which is drifted down from the Pola:
basin, is on the contrary heaped by the marine currents against
the east coast of Novaya Zemlya, where during early summer it
blocks the three sounds which unite the Kara Sea with the
Atlantic. It was these ice-conditions which cansed the failure of
all the older north-east voyages and gave to the Kara Sea its

1 Sometimes, however, icebergs are to be met with in the most northerly
part of the Kara Sea and on the north coast of Novaya Zemlya, whither
they may drive down from Franz Josef Land or from other yet unknown
Polar lands lying farther north.

2 In most of the literary narratives of Polar journeys colossal icebergs
play a very prominent part in the author’s delineations both with the pencil
and the pen. The actual fact, however, is that icebergs occur in far
greater numbers in the seas which are yearly accessible than in those in
which the advance of the Polar travellers’ vessel is hindered by impene-
trable masses of ice. If we may borrow a term from the geography of
plants to indicate the distribution of icebergs, they may be said to be more
boreal than polar forms of ice. All the fishers on the coast of Newfound-
land, and most of the captains on the steamers between New York and
Liverpool, have some time or other seen true icebergs, but to most north-
east voyagers this formation is unknown, though the name iceberg is often
in their narratives given to glacier ice-blocks of somewhat considerable
dimensions. This, however, takes place on the same ground and with the
same justification as that on which the dwellers on the Petchora consider
Bolschoj-Kamen a very high mountain. But although no true icebergs
are ever formed at the glaciers so common on Spitzbergen and also on
North Novaya Zemlya, it however often happens that large blocks of ice
fall down from them and give rise to a swell, which may be very dangerous
to vessels in their neighbourhood. Thus a wave caused by the falling of
a piece of ice from a glacier on the 23rd (13th) of June, 1619, broke the
masts of a vessel anchored at Bell Sound on Spitzbergen, threw a cannon
overboard, killed three men, and wounded many more (Purchas, iii.,
p. 734). Several similar adventures, if on a smaller scale, I could relate
from my own experience and that of the walrus-hunters. Care is taken
on this account to avoid anchoring too near the perpendicular faces of
glaciers.

3 It may, however, be doubted whether the whole of the Kara Sea is
completely frozen over in winter,

140 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

bad report and name of ice-house. Now we know that it is not
so dangerous in this respect as it was formerly believed to be—
that the ice of the Kara Sea melts away for the most part, and
that during autumn this sea is quite available for navigation.

In general our knowledge of the Kara Sea some decades
back was not only incomplete, but also erroneous. It was be-
lieved that its animal life was exceedingly scanty, and that algze
were absolutely wanting; no soundings had been taken else-
where than close to the coast ;and much doubt was thrown, not
without reason, on the correctness of the maps. Now all this is
changed to a great extent. The coast line, bordering on the
sea, 1s settled on the maps; the ice-conditions, currents and
depth of water in different parts of the sea are ascertained, and
we know that the old ideas of its poverty in animals and plants
are quite erroneous.

In respect to depth the Kara Sea is distinguished by a
special regularity, and by the absence of sudden changes.
Along the east coast of Novaya Zemlya and Vaygats Island
there runs a channel, up to 500 metres in depth, filled
with cold salt-water, which forms the haunt of a fauna
rich not only in individuals, but also in a large number
of remarkable and rare types, as Umbellula, Elpidia, Alecto,
asterids of many kinds, &c. Towards the east the sea-bottom
rises gradually and then forms a plain lying 30 to 90 metres
below the surface of the sea, nearly as level as the surface of
the superincumbent water. The bottom of the sea in the south
and west parts of it consists of clay, in the regions of Beli
Ostrov of sand, farther north of gravel. Shells of crustacea and
pebbles are here often surrounded by bog-ore formations,
resembling the figures on page 186. These also occur over an
extensive area north-east of Port Dickson in such quantity that
they might be used for the manufacture of iron, if the region
were less inaccessible.

Even in the shallower parts of the Kara Sea the water at
the bottom is nearly as salt as in the Atlantic Ocean, and all
the year round cooled to a temperature of —2° to —2°7. The
surface-water, on the contrary, is very variable in its composition,
sometimes at certain places almost drinkable, and in summer
often strongly heated. The remarkable circumstance takes
place here that the surface water in consequence of its limited
salinity freezes to ice if it be exposed to the temperature which
prevails in the salt stratum of water next the bottom, and that
it forms a deadly poison for many of the decapoda, worms,
mussels, crustacea and asterids which crawl] in myriads among
the beds of clay or sand at the bottom.

At many places the loose nature of the bottom does not
permit the existence of any alge, but in the neighbourhood of

Iv. ] _THE KARA SEA.

Beli Ostrov, Johannesen discovered ex-
tensive banks covered with ‘‘sea-grass ”
(algz), and from the east coast of Novaya
Zemlya Dr. Kjellman in 1875. collected
no small number of algze,’ beimg thereby
enabled to take exception to the old
erroneous statements as to the nature of
the marine flora.) He has drawn up for
this work a full account of the marine
vegetation in the Kara Sea, which will
be found further on.

I shall now return to the account of our
passage across this sea. On this subject my
journal contains the following notes :

August 2nd. Still glorious weather—
no ice, The Zena appears to wish to

UMBELLULA FROM THE KARA SEA.

A. Polype stem entire, one-half the natural size.

B, Polype stem, upper part, one-and-a-half times the natural size.

141

1 Already in 1771 one of Pallas’ companions, the student Sujeff, found
large algw in the Kara Sea (Pallas, Reise. St. Petersburg, 1771—1776,

iii. p. 34).

142 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. ‘fowar.

ELPIDIA GLACIALIS (1HEEL), FROM THE KARA SEA,
Magnified three times.

A. Belly. 3B, Back,

MANGANIFEROUS IRON-ORE FORMATIONS FROM THE KARA SEA.

Half the naturalsize,

iY. PROGRESS OF THE EXPEDITION. 143

get away from the other vessels, and does not observe the
flag which was hoisted as the signal agreed upon beforehand
that her Captain should come on board, or at least bring his
little vessel within hail. The Fraser was therefore sent in
pursuit, and succeeded in overtaking her towards night.

August 3rd. In the morning Captam Johannesen came on
board the Vega. I gave him orders to take on board Dr.
Almquist and Lieutenants Hovgaard and Nordquist, and go
with them to Beli Ostrov, where they should have freedom for
thirty-six hours to study the people, animals, and plants, as they
pleased; the Zena was then, if possible, to pass through the
Sound between the island and Yalmal to Port Dickson, where
the three other vessels should be found. Almquist, Nordquist,
and Hovgaard were already quite in order for the excursion ;
they went immediately on board the Zena, and were soon,
thanks to the great power of the engine in proportion to the
size of the vessel, far on their way.

In the course of the day we met with very open and rotten
ice, which would only have been of use to us by its moderating
effect on the sea, if it had not been accompanied by the usual
attendant of the border of the ice, a thick fog, which however
sometimes lightened. Towards evening we came in sight of
Beli Ostrov. This island, as seen from the sea, forms a quite
level plain, which rises little above the surface of the water.
The sea off the island is of an even depth, but so shallow, that
at a distance of twenty to thirty kilometres from the shore there
is only from seven to nine metres of water. According toa
communication from Captain Schwanenberg, there is, however,
a depth of three to four metres close to the north shore. Such
a state of things, that is, a uniform depth, amounting near the
shore to from four to ten metres, but afterwards increasing only
gradually and remaining unchanged over very extensive areas,
is very common in the Arctic regions, and is caused by the
ice-mud-work which goes on there nearly all the year round.
Another remarkable effect of the action of the ice is that all the
blocks of stone to be found in the sea next the beach are forced
up on land. The beach itself is formed accordingly at many
places, for instance at several points in Matotschkin Sound, of a
nearly continuous stone rampart going to the sea level, while
in front of it there is a quite even sea bottom without a
fragment of stone.

August 4th. In the morning a gentle heaving indicated that
the sea was again free of ice, at least over a considerable space
to windward. Yesterday the salinity of the water was already
diminished and the amount of clay increased; now the water
after being filtered is almost drinkable. It has assumed a
yellowish-grey colour and is nearly opaque, so that t!e vessel

144 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

appears to sail in clay mud. We are evidently in the area of
the Ob-Yenise] current. The ice we sailed through yesterday
probably came from the Gulf of Obi, Yenisej or Pjasima. Its
surface was dirty, not clean and white like the surface of
glacier-ice or the sea-ice that has never come in contact with
land or with muddy river-water. Off the large rivers the ice,
when the snow has melted, is generally covered with a yellow
layer of clay, This clay evidently consists of mud, which had
been washed down by the river-water and been afterwards
thrown up by the swell on the snow-covered ice. The layer of
snow acts as a filter and separates the mud from the water.
The former, therefore, after the melting of the snow may form
upon true sea-ice a layer of dirt, containing a large number of
minute organisms which live only in fresh water.

SECTION FROM THE SOUTH COAST OF MATOTSCHKIN SOUND,

Showing the origin of Stone-ramparts at the beach.

August 5th. Still under sail in the Kara Sea, in which a
few pieces of ice are floating about. The ice completely dis-
appeared when we came north-west of Beli Ostrov. We were
several times in the course of the day in only nine metres of
water, which, however, in consequence of the evenness of the
bottom, isnot dangerous. Fog, a heavy sea, and an intermittent
but pretty fresh breeze delayed our progress.

August 6th. At three o'clock in the morning we had land
in sight. In the fog we had gone a little way up the Gulf
of Yenisej, and so had to turn in order to reach our destination,
Port Dickson. The mast-tops of the Hxpress were seen pro-
jecting over islands to the north, and both vessels soon anchored

south of an island which was supposed to be Dickson’s Island,

IV.] LAND IN SIGHT. 145

but when the Fraser soon after joined us we learned that this
was a mistake. The shore, which, seen from our first anchorage,
appeared to be that of the mainland, belonged in fact to the
pretty extensive island, off which the haven itself is situated.

After an excursion on land, in the course of which a covey
of partridges was seen, and Dr. Kjellman on the diorite rocks of
the island made a pretty abundant collection of plants, belonging
partly to species which he had not before met with in the
Arctic regions, we again weighed anchor in order to remove to
the proper harbour.

Captain Palander went before in the steam launch ia order to
examine the yet unsurveyed fairway. On the way he fell in
with and killed a bear, an exceedingly fat and large male. Like
the bear Dr. Théel shot here in 1875, he had only mosses and
lichens in his stomach, and as it is scarcely probable that the
bear in this region can catch a great many seals in summer, it
is to be supposed that his food consists prmcipally of vegetable
substances, with the addition perhaps of a reindeer or two
when he can succeed in getting hold of them. In the year 1875
we saw here an old male bear that appeared to pasture quite
peaceably in company with some reindeer, probably with a view
to get near enough to spring upon them. Bears must besides
be very common in that part of the north coast of Siberia, for
during the few days we now remained there, two more were
shot, both of them very fat.

The haven, which has now been surveyed by Lieutenant Bove,
was discovered by me in 1875 and named Port Dickson. It is
the best known haven on the whole north coast of Asia, and will
certainly in the future be of great importance for the foreign
commerce of Siberia. It is surrounded on all sides by rocky
islands, and is thus completely sheltered. The anchorage is a
good clay bottom. The haven may be entered both from the
north and from the south-west ; but in sailing in, caution should
be used, because some rocky shoals may be met with which are
not shown on Lieutenant Bove’s sketch chart, which was made
in the greatest haste. The water probably varies con-
siderably as to its salinity with the season of the year and
with ebb and flood tides, but is never, even at the surface, com-
pletely fresh. It can therefore be used in cooking only in case
of the greatest necessity. But two streams on the mainland,
one debouching north and the other south of the harbour, yield
an abundant supply of good water, in case snow water cannot be
obtained from any of the beds of snow which up to autumn are
to be found at several places along the strand escarpments in
the neighbourhood of the harbour.

At our arrival six wild reindeer were seen pasturing on Dick-
son’s Island ; one of them was killed by Palander, the others were

L

146 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP Iv.

stalked unsuccessfully. Some bears, as has already been stated,
were also seen, and everywhere among the heaps of stones there
were numerous remains of the lemming and the fox. With
these exceptions there were few of the higher animals. Of
birds we thus saw only snow-buntings, which bred among the
stone heaps both on the mainland and on the islands, a
covey of ptarmigan, a large number of birds, principally
species of Tringa and Phalaropus, but not further deter-
mined, eiders, black guillemots and burgomasters m limited
numbers, and long-tailed ducks and loons in somewhat greater
abundance. There are no “down islands,” and as there are no
precipitous shore cliffs neither are there any looneries. A
shoal of fish was seen in Lena Sound, and fish are probably
exceedingly abundant. Seals and white whales also perhaps
occur here at certain seasons of the year in no small numbers.
It was doubtless with a view to hunt these animals that a
hut was occupied, the remains of which are visible on one of the
small rocky islands at the north entrance into the harbour. The
ruin, if we may apply the term to a wooden hut which has
fallen in pieces, showed that the building had consisted of a
room with a fireplace and a storehouse situated in front, and
that it was only intended as a summer dwelling for the hunters
and fishers who came hither during the hunting season from the
now deserted stmovies? lying farther south.

T am convinced that the day will come when great warehouses
and many dwellings inhabited all the year round will be found at
Port Dickson. Now the region is entirely uninhabited as far
as Goltschicha, although, as the map reproduced here shows,
numerous dwelling-houses were to be found built along the river
bank and sea-shore beyond the mouth of the Yenisej and as far
as to the Pjaisina. They have long since been abandoned, in the
first place in consequence of the hunting falling off, but probably
also because even here, far away on the north coast of Siberia,
the old simple and unpretentious habits have given way to
new wants which were difficult to satisfy at the time when
no steamers carried on traffic on the river Yenisej]. Thus, for
instance, the difticulty of procuring meal some decades back,
accordingly before the commencement of steam communication
on the Yenisej, led to the abandonment of a simovie situated on
the eastern bank of the river in latitude 72° 25’ north.

The stmovies at the mouth of the Yenisej formed in their
time the most northerly fixed dwelling-places of the Kuropean
races.2 Situated as they were at the foot of the cold tundra,

1 Dwellings intended both for winter and summer habitation.

2 The most northerly fixed dwelling-place, which is at present inhabited
by Europeans, is the Danish commercial post Tasiusak, in north-western
Greenland, situated in 73° 24’ N.L. How little is known, even in Russia,

M ACP

OF THE

MOUTH OF THE YENISEJ

FROM

ATLAS RUSSICUS CURA ET OPERE ACADEMI®
IMPERIALIS SCLENTIARUM PETROPOLITAN.
PETROPOLI 1745.

, Mys 4 ewerowostocznov

Pye
A 4un.Maloe’
Zin. strelowo
Niz. Troickoe 2o
Vy; At =
sun. Luruchan =o .,.
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T° Zim Topowo
Se,

Kl Havin

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bal
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Spiridonowo

Zim Wolgin ny
se GLO! == QL CAR ye
; Ide Majak = Se ovis! xe
um. Szadrino stem? & ;
= LOG OG
——— = 1 NN Reus
— =, E70 Seagate
== = Lae VS
= —— ——" AS) FAN
= = ———— — Se QQ, Te
gS = W]erewo 9 = =\e ny
ES a = -) SS = “o AN
— = ouuszno 5F= a
Ss | = o 2. Staroj,=. ace 6 Gribowsko ue
[xe ae ee Zwyerewo ~ = WVaginsgKko
; Q SS Landino 2 Vrolibinskie Magazein
eg

Z. Szestakowo
Z. Nasonowo

\ Suzinskoe
: Lazangowa_
° Ae :
, thkiszke
Sy no

Frotoxvo

CleninooS
Komino ° o

epee icyno 5

letowo i

(
Zaostrowo ©\
szno |)

esi
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) ~ SLadiszino ey

148 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

exposed to continual snowstorms in winter and to close fogs
during the greater part of summer, which here is extremely
short, it seems as if they could not offer their inhabitants
many opportunities for enjoyment, and the reason why this tract
was chosen for a residence, especially in a country so rich in
fertile soil as Siberia, appears to be difficult to find. The
remains of an old simovie (Krestovsko}), which I saw in 1875
while travelling up the river along with Dr. Lundstrém and Dr.
Stuxberg, however, produced the impression that a true home
life had once been led there. Three houses with turf-covered

RUINS OF A SIMOVIE AT KRFSTOVSKOJ,

After a drawing by A. Stuxberg.

roofs then still remained in such a state that one could form an
idea of their former arrangement and of the life which had
been carried on in them. Each cabin contained a whole laby-
rinth of very small rooms; dwelling-rooms with sleeping places
tixed to the walls, bake-rooms with immense fireplaces, bathing
houses with furnaces for vapour-baths, storehouses for train-oil
with large train-drenched blubber troughs hollowed out of

of the former dwellings at the mouth of the Yenise] may be seen from
Neueste Nachrichten iiber die nordlichste Gegend von Sibirien zwischen den
Flissen Pjassida und Chatanga in Fragen und Antworten abgefasst. Mit
Finleitung und Anmerkungen vom Herausgeber (K. E. v. Baer und Gr. v,
Helmersen, Beitrige zur Kenntniss des russischen Reiches, vol. iv. p. 269.
St. Petersburg, 1841).

Iv.] SCARCITY OF RUSSIAN HOUSEWIVES. 149

. enormous tree-stems, blubber tanks with remains of the white
whale, &c., all witnessing that the place had had a flourishing
period, when prosperity was found there, when the home was
regarded with loyalty, and formed in all its loneliness the central
point of a life richer perhaps in peace and well-being than one
is inclined beforehand to suppose.

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 regions. At
least the Cossack Feodor, who in 1875 and 1876 made severa!
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 parti 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

150 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

lichens, and the plains between them yielded to Dr. Kjellman .
the following phanerogamous plants :

Cineraria frigida RICHARDS. Ranunculus hyperboreus Rorrs.
Erigeron uniflorus L, - Japponicus L.
Saussurea alpina DC, . nivalis L.
Taraxacum phymatocarpum J. VAHL. x sulphureus Sou.
Gymnandra Stelleri Ca. & SCHL. 5 affinis R. Br.
Pedicularis sudetica WILLD. Caltha palustris L.

Ss hirsuta L. Wahlbergella apetala (L.) Fr.

, Oederi VAHL. Stellaria Edw ardsil K. Br.
Eritrichium villosum BuNGE, Cerastium alpinum L.
Myosotis silvatica Horrm. Alsine arctica FENZL.
Astragalus alpinus L. » Macrocarpa FENZL,
Oxytropis campestris (lu.) DC. », TYubella We.

Dryas octopetala L. Sagina nivalis Fr.

Sieversia glacialis R. Br. Oxy ria digyna (L.) Hint,
Potentilla emarginata PursH. Rumex arcticus TRAUTV.
Saxifraga-oppositifolia L. Polygonum viviparum L,

“f bronebialis L. 5 Bistorta L.

& Hirculus L, Salix polaris Wa.

35 stellaris L. Festuca rubra L.

“ nivalis L. Poa cenisea ALL.

5 hieraciifoliaWALpsv.& Kir, ,, arctica R. Br.

= punctata L. Glyceria angustata R. Br.

E cernua L. Catabrosa algida (Sou.) FR.

- rivularis L. concinna TH. Fr.

cxspitosa L. Col podium latifolium R. Br.
Chry ‘sosplenium alternifolium L. Dupontia Fisheri R. Br.
Rhodiola rosea L, Koeleria hirsuta GAUD.,
Parrya macrocarpa R, Br. Aira ceespitosa L.
Cardamine pratensis L, Alopeecurus alpinus Sm.

6 bellidifolia L. Eriophorum angustifolium RoTH.
Eutrema Edwardsii R. Br. <A vaginatum L,
Cochlearia fenestrata R. Br. Bs Scheuchzeri Hoppe.
Draba alpina L. Carex rigida Goon.

» oblongata (R. Br.) DO. » aquatilis We.
55 corymbosa R. Br. Juncus biglumis L.
» Wahlenbergii EN. Luzula hyperborea R. Br.
»» altaica (Leven. ) Bunce. » arctica BL.
Papaver nudicaule L. Lloydia serotina (L.) REIcHENB,

Ranunculus pygmeus We.

Our botanists thus made on land a not inconsiderable
collection, considering the northerly position of the region. On
the other hand no large algze 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

1V.] SIEVERSIA GLACIALIS. 151

salt as at the bottom of the Kara Sea. Under so variable
hydrographical conditions we might have expected an ex-
ceedingly 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.

SIEVERSIA GLACIALIS R. BR.
From Port Dickson.

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 algz, 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°.

152 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

For the science of our time, which so often places the origin
of a northern form in the south, and vice versd, 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 Rathker Kr.,
Idothea entomon Lin., Idothea Sabinei KR., two species of
Lysianassida, Pontoporeia setosa STBRG., Halimedon breviculcar
Goks, an Annelid, a Moloula, Yoldia intermedia M. Sars,
Yoldia (2) arctica GRAY, and a Solecurtus.

EVERTEBRATES FROM PORT DICKSON.

One and two-thirds of natural size. 3B. Diastylis Rathkei Kr.
Magnified three times.

A. Yoldia arctica Gray.

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

—_———

Sa EXCURSION TO BELI OSTROV. 153

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 ts to say, precisely at the appointed time. Concerning this
excursion Dr. Almquist reports :

“On the 2nd August we—Hovgaard, Nordquist and I—went
on board the Zena to make an excursion to Beli Ostrov. We
were to land on the south-western headland and there undertake
botanical and zoological researches. Thereafter we were to
direct some attention to the opposite shore of Yalmal and visit
the Samoyeds living there.

“ We left the Vega at eleven o’clock forenoon. In the course
of the day we saw here and there in the south scattered ice, and
at half-past ten at night we ran imto a large belt, about 300
metres broad, of scattered ice, which lay stretched out from N.E.
to S.W. It was passed without difficulty. In the course of the
night we now and then fell in with a little scattered ice, and in
the morning with a belt of masses of ice of considerable dimen-
sions ; sounding constantly in 10 to 3} metres water we succeeded,
notwithstanding the fog and rain, in findimg the straits between
Beli Ostrov and the mainland, and on the 3rd August at eleven
o'clock forenoon we anchored a little to the east of the southern
extremity of the island. The Lena lay in 33 metres water,
about an English mile out to sea. The water was shallow for
so great a distance from.the beach that we had to leave our
boat about 300 metres out to sea and wade to land.

“Beli Ostrov consists entirely of fine sand, and only on that
part of the beach which is washed by the sea-water did we see
any stones as large as walnuts; higher up we did not find a
piece of stone even of the size of the nail. The highest point
of the island appears to be scarcely three metres above the
surface of the sea. That part of the island over which the sea
water washes, that is, the beach and the deep bays which indent
the land here and there, shows the fine sand bare, without trace
of vegetation. Where the ground rises a little, it becomes
covered with a black and white variegated covering of mosses
and lichens ; scattered among which at long intervals are small
tufts of grass. First somewhat higher up, and properly only round
the marshy margins of the numerous small fresh-water lakes and

154 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA,’ [CHAP.

in hollows and bogs, is the ground slightly green. The higher
plants are represented by only 17 species, all ‘small and stunted,!
most of them rising only some few lines above the sand. Very
few plants reached a height of 15 centimetres. No kind of
willow was found, nor any flower seen of any other colour than
green or white.

“The lichen-flora too was scanty. No species showed any
great luxuriance, and seldom did the black and white lichen-
crust produce any ‘apothecium.’ The lichen-vegetation was
most abundant on the driftwood of the beach and on the tufts
in the marshes. The larger lichens, as the reindeer and Iceland
lichens, occurred very sparingly. About 80 species were found.
The land evertebrates were so sparingly represented, that only
three diptera, one species of hymenoptera, and some insect larvee
and spiders could be collected. Only podurz were found in
great abundance ; they completely covered the whole ground at
the beach.

“Several herds of reindeer were seen, but we did not succeed
in getting within range of them. A little fish of the Cottus
family was caught by Nordquist in a ditch which was in connec-
tion with the sea. Driftwood still fresh was found in great
abundance, and farther up on land here and there lay a more
rotten stem.

“Rain and fog rendered impossible any determination of
position. During night we went across the sound and anchored
about an English mile and a half from the shore of Yalmal,
right opposite some Samoyed tents which we discovered a little
inland. In the same unfavourable weather as that of the day
before we attempted to land there, but found the water too
shallow. First pretty far to the east we succeeded in reaching
the beach at a place where the land rose out of the sea with a
steep bank about nine metres high. Above the bank, which
consisted of loose clay, we found a plain with the appearance of
a rich watered tundra, full of marshes and streams, and therefore
presenting a very green appearance. In order to meet with the
Samoyeds we now went westwards, passing several rivulets which

1 The collections made here were after our return determined by
Kjellman, who has communicated the following list:

Saxifraga stellaris L, Aira ceespitosa L.

as cernua L. Hierochloa pauciflora R. Br.

5 rivularis L. Eriophorum russeolum Fr.
Cochlearia fenestrata R. Br, * Scheuchzeri Hoprr,
Stellaria humifusa Rorrp, Carex salina Wa.

Sagina nivalis Fr. », ursina DEsv.
Arctophila pendulina (Last.) ANDs, = Luzula hyperborea R. Br.
Catabrosa algida (Sou.) Fr, : arciica BL.

Dupontia Fisheri R. Br.

“Iv.] YALMAL. 155

cut deeply into the land and had high banks, until after half an
hour’s walking we came to a broad but not very deep river, which
it was impossible to ford. We therefore returned to our boat with
the view of seeking a landing-place on the other side of the river ;
but as the Lena’s distance from land was considerable and the
breeze was freshening, the captain considered that the time at
our disposal did not permit us to undertake so long an excursion.

“So far as we may judge from our hasty visit, the vegetation
on this part of Yalmal struck us as being remarkably abundant.
The high banks especially were richly covered by phanerogamous
plants and lichens, and would have deserved a closer examination.
Our cursory observations of the plants here may however be
interesting for comparison with the flora of Beli Ostrov; we
collected and noted the higher plants! and about 40 species of
lichens. Nordquist found that the fauna resembled that of the
neighbouring island, and collected besides two species of
Coleoptera.

“ After lying 26 hours in the sound we weighed anchor again
and went westwards, following a channel with ten to sixteen
metres water. We could not find its course farther to the east,
and were compelled, although we were near the eastern extremity
of Beli Ostrov, to turn in order to pass out through the western
entrance of the sound. We saw a quantity of stranded ice on
the north coast of the island, which, seen from the sea, did not
present any dissimilarity to the part which we had visited. On

the 7th August we arrived at Port Dickson.”

From Lieutenant Hovgaard’s report on this excursion, a map
is given here of Beli Ostrov and the neighbouring coast. of
Yalmal, in which I have named the sound between the island
and the mainland after MALYGIN, one of the gallant Russian
seamen who first sailed through it nearly a century and a
half ago.

Yalmal.has been visited by Europeans so seldom, and their
observations are scattered in printed papers so inaccessible, that

it may perhaps not be out of place here to collect the most

1 These according to Dr. Kjellman’s determination are :

Saxifraga cernua L. Arctophila pendulina (La&st.) AND,

fo ceespitosa L. Catabrosa algida (Sou.) Fr.
Cochlearia fenestrata R. Br, concinna Tu. Fr.
Draba alpina L. Dupontia Fisheri R. Br.
Ranunculus sulphureus Sou. Calamagrostis lapponica L.

Es nivalis L. Carex salina We.

” pygmeus Wa, 5, Tigida Goon.

5 lapponicus L. Eriophorum russeolum FR.

* borealis TRAUTV. Luzula arcuata Su, f£. hyperborea

Stellaria Edwardsii R. Br. Rk. Br,

Salix glauca L, Lloydia serotina (L,) REICHENB.

156 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

important facts which are known regarding this peninsula, along
with the necessary bibliographical references.

First as to its name, it is sometimes also written ‘‘ Yelmert
Land,’ ? but this is quite incorrect.

“Yalmal” is of Samoyed origin, and has, according to a
private communication from the well-known philologist Dr. E.
D, Evropaus, the distinctive meaning “land’s-end.’”” YELMERT
again was a boatswain with the Dutch whale-fisher VLAMINGH,
who in 1664 sailed round the northern extremity of Novaya
Zemlya to Barents’ winter haven, and thence farther to the
south-east. Vlamingh himself at his turning-point saw no
land, though all signs showed that land ought to be found in
the neighbourhood ; but several of the crew thought they saw
land, and the report of this to a Dutch mapmaker, Dick
REMBRANTSZ. VAN NIEROP, led to the introduction of the supposed
land into a great many maps, commonly as a large island in
the Kara Sea. This island was named Yelmert Land. The
similarity between the names Yelmert Land and Yalmal, and
the doubt as to the existence of the Yelmert Island first shown
on the maps, have led to the transfer of the name Yelmert
Land to the peninsula which separates the Gulf of Obi from the
Kara Sea. It is to be remarked, however, that the name
Yalmal is not found in the older accounts of voyages from the
European waters to the Obi. The first time I met with it
was in the narrative of Skuratov’s journey in 1737, as the
designation of the most north-easterly promontory of the
peninsula which now bears that name.

Yalmal’s grassy plains offer the Samoyeds during summer
reindeer pastures which are highly valued, and the land is said
to have a very numerous population in comparison with other
regions along the shores of the Polar Sea, the greater portion,
however, drawing southward towards winter with their large
herds of reindeer. But the land is, notwithstanding this, among
the most imperfectly known parts of the great Russian empire.
Some information regarding it we may obtain from sketches of
the following journeys :

SELIFONTOV, 1737. In the months of July and August the
surveyor Selifontov travelled in a reindeer sledge along the
coast of the Gulf of Obi as far as to Beli Ostrov. About this
journey unfortunately nothing else has been published than is
to be found in Lirke, Viermalige Reise, &c., Berlin, 1835, p. 66,
and WRANGEL, Sibirische Reise, Berlin, 1839, p. 37.

? On the maps in Linschoten’s work already quoted, printed in 1601,
and in Blavii Atlas Major (1665, t. i. pp. 24, 25), this land is called “* Nieu
West Vrieslant’’ and “ West Frisia Nova,’? names which indeed have
priority zn print, but yet cannot obtain a preference over the inhabitants’
own beautiful name.

1v.] VISITS TO YALMAL. 157,

SuJEFF, in 1771, travelled under the direction of Pallas over
the southern part of Yalmal from Obdorsk to the Kara Sea, and
gives an instructive account of observations made during his
journey in PatLuas, Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des
russischen Reiches, St. Petersburg, 1771—76, III. pp. 14—35.

KRUSENSTERN, 1862. During his second voyage in the Kara
Sea, which ended with the abandonment of the ship Yermak
on the coast of Yalmal in about 69° 54’ N. L., Krusenstern
junior escaped with his crew to the shore, reaching it in
a completely destitute condition. He had lost all, and would
certainly have perished if he had not near the landing-place
fallen in with a rich Samoyed, the owner of two thousand
reindeer, who received the shipwrecked men in a very friendly
way and conveyed them with his reindeer to Obdorsk, distant
in a straight line 500, but, according to the Samoyed’s reckoning,
1,000 versts. In the sketch of Krusenstern’s travels, to which
I have had access, there is unfortunately no information regard-
ing the tribe with which he came in contact during this
remarkable journey.!

WALDBURG-ZEIL and Fryscu, 1876. A very full and exceed-
ingly interesting description of the natural conditions in the
southernmost part of the peninsula is to be found in the
accounts of Count Waldburg-Zeil and Dr. Finsch’s journey
in the year 1876.?

SCHWANENBERG, 1877. Captain Schwanenberg landed on the
north part of Beli Ostrov during the remarkable voyage which
he made im that year from the Yenisej to St. Petersburg. No
traces of men, but some of reindeer and bears, were visible.
The sea was sufficiently deep close to the shore for vessels of
light draught, according to a private communication which I
have received from Captain Schwanenberg.

THE SWEDISH EXPEDITION, 1875. During this voyage we
landed about the middle of the west coast of Yalmal. In order
to give an idea of the nature of the country, I make the follow-
ing extract from my narrative of the voyage,® which has had but
a limited circulation :

“Tn the afternoon of the 8th August I landed, along with

1 Paul von Krusenstern, Skizzen aus seinem Seemannsleben. Hirschberg
in Silesia. Farther on I intend to give a more detailed account of von
Krusenstern’s two voyages in the Kara Sea.

2 Deutsche Geogr. Blatter von Lindemann Namens d. Geogr. Gesellsch.,
Bremen. I. 1877, Il. 1878. O. Finsch, Reise nach West-Sibirien im Jahre
1876. Berlin, 1879. A bibliographical list has been drawn up by Count
von Waldburg-Zeil under the title, Litteratur-Nachweis fiir das Gebiet des
unteren Ob.

3 Nordenskiold, Redogorelse for en expedition till mynningen af Jenisej och
Sibirien ar 1875, Bih. till Kongl. Vet.-Ak. Handl, vol. iv., No. 1, p.
38-42.

158 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

Lundstrém and Stuxberg, on a headland projecting a little from
Yalmal, on the north side of the mouth of a pretty large river.
The landing place was situated in lat. 72° 18’, long. 68° 42’. The
land was bounded here by a low beach, from which at a distance
of one hundred paces a steep bank rose to a height of from six
to thirty metres. Beyond this bank there is an extensive,
slightly undulating plain, covered with a vegetation which indeed
was exceedingly monotonous, but much more luxuriant than
that of Vaygats Island or Novaya Zemlya. The uniformity of
the vegetation is perhaps caused, im a considerable degree, by

PLACE OF SACRIFICE ON YALMAL.
After a drawing by A. N. Lundstrom.

the uniform nature of the terrain. There is no solid rock here.
The ground everywhere consists of sand and sandy clay, in which
I could not find a stone so large as a bullet or even as a pea,
though I searched for a distance of several kilometres along the
strand-bank. Nor did the dredge bring up any stones from the
sea-bottom off the coast, a circumstance which, among other
things, is remarkable, because it appears to show that the strand-
ice from the Obi and Yenisej does not drift down to and melt
in this part of the Kara Sea. Nor do the sand beds contain any
sub-fossil shells, as is the case with the sand beds of the Yenisej

ont Ome

1v.] SACRIFICIAL PLACE ON YALMAL. 159

tundra. ‘Noah’s wood’ also appears to be absent here. To
judge from our observations at this place, the peninsula between
the Gulf of Obi and the Kara Sea thus differs very essentially
from the tundra lying east of the Yenisej.

“We saw no inhabitants, but everywhere along the beach
numerous traces of men—some of them barefoot—of reindeer,
dogs and Samoyed sleighs, were visible. On the top of the
strand-bank was found a-place of sacrifice, consisting of forty-
five bears’ skulls of various ages placed in a heap, a large
number of reindeer skulls, the lower jaw of a walrus, &. From
most of the bears’ skulls the canine teeth were broken out, and
the lower jaw was frequently entirely wanting. Some of the
bones were overgrown with moss and lay sunk in the earth;
others had, as the adhering flesh showed, been placed there during
the present year. In the middle of the heap of bones stood four
erect pieces of wood. Two consisted of sticks a metre in length
with notches cut in them, serving to bear up the reindeer and
bears’ skulls, which were partly placed on the points of the
sticks or hung up by means of the notches, or spitted on the sticks
by four-cornered holes cut in the skulls. The two others, which
clearly were the proper idols of this place of sacrifice, consisted
of driftwood roots, on which some carvings had been made to
distinguish the eyes, mouth, and nose. The parts of the pieces
of wood, intended to represent the eyes and mouth, had recently
been besmeared with blood, and there still lay at the heap of
bones the entrails of a newly-killed reindeer. Close beside were
found the remains of a fireplace, and of a midden, consisting of
reindeer bones of various kinds and the lower Jaws of bears.

“As the sandy slopes of the beach offered no suitab'e
breeding-place for looms, black guillemots, or other sea-fowl,
and there were no islands along the coast which could serve as
breeding-places for eiders and other species of geese which
breed in colonies, the abundant bird-life of the Polar Sea was
wanting here. At the mouth of the river, however, large
flocks of eiders and long-tailed ducks flew about, and on the
sandy banks along the shore, flocks of Calidris arenaria and
a Tringa or two ran about restlessly seeking their food. The
solitude of the tundra was broken only by a couple of larks
and a pair of falcons (Falco peregrinus) with young. Traces
of reindeer were also seen, and two fox-traps set on the strand-
bank showed that foxes occur in these regions in sufficient
numbers to be the object of capture.

“ Later in the afternoon, when some solar altitudes had been
taken, in order to determine the geographical position of the
place, we rowed back to our vessel and sailed on, keeping at
some distance from the coast, and at one place passing between
the shore and a long series of blocks of ground-ice, which had

160 _ THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

stranded along the coast in a depth of nine to sixteen metres.
During night we passed a place where five Samoyed tents were
pitched, in whose neighbourhood a large number of reindeer
pastured. The land was now quite low, and the sea had become
considerably shallower. The course was therefore shaped for the
N.W., in which direction deeper water was soon met with.
Notwithstanding the slight salinity and high temperature
(+7°7) of the surface water a Clio borealis and a large number
of Copepoda were taken at the surface.”

The excursion now described and Almquist’s and Hovgaard’s
landing in 1878 were, as far as I am aware, the only occasions
on which naturalists have visited the northern part of that
peninsula which separates the Kara Sea from the Obi. The
Norwegian hunters also visit the place seldom, the main reasons
being the inaccessibility of the shallow east coast, and the want
of harbours. They now, however, land occasionally to take in
water, and perhaps to barter the tobacco they have saved from
their rations, knives they have no use for, and old-fashioned
guns, gunpowder, lead, &e., for the products of the Samoyeds’
reindeer husbandry, hunting and fishing. At first the natives
fled when they saw the Norwegians coming, and, when they
could not make their escape, they saluted them with great
humility, falling on their knees and bending their heads to the
earth, and were unwilling to enter into any traffic with them
or to show them their goods. But since the Samoyeds observed
that the Norwegians never did them any harm, the mistrust
and excessive humility have completely disappeared. Now a
visit of Europeans is very agreeable to them, partly for the
opportunity which it offers of obtaming by barter certain
articles of necessity, luxury, or show, partly perhaps also for
the interruption thereby caused in the monotony of the tundra
life. When the walrus-hunters row or sail along that open
coast, it often happens that natives run backwards and forwards
on the shore, and by signs eagerly invite the foreigners to land ;
if they do so, and there are any wealthy Samoyeds in the
neighbourhood, there immediately begins a grand entertainment,
according to the customs of the people, with more than one
trait reminding us of the sketches from the traditionary periods
of the civilised nations.

What I have stated here is about all that we know of Yalmal,
and we see from this that a very promising, yet untouched field
for researches in ethnography and natural history here les
before future travellers to the Yenise}.

What sort of winter is there at the mouth of the Yenisej ?
We have for the present no information on this point, as no scien-
tific man has wintered there. But on the other hand we have a

1v.] “ JORDGAMMOR.” 161

very exciting narrative of the wintering of the Fin, NUMMELIN,
at the Briochov Islands in the Yenisej in lat. 70° 48’ north.

I visited the place on the 27th August 1875. It consisted
of a fishing post, occupied only in summer, and at that season of
the year very attractive, surrounded as it is by luxuriant
vegetation of grass and bushes. The houses were situated on
a sound running between the Briochov Islands, which form the
northernmost group of the labyrinth of islands which occupy
the channel of the Yenise] between 693° and 71° N. L. At the

““ JORDGAMMOR”’ ON THE BRIOCHOV ISLANDS.
After a sketch by the Author,

time of our visit the fishing was over for the season and the
place deserted. But two small houses and a number of earth-
huts (jordgammor), all in good repair, stood on the river bank
and gave evidence, along with a number of large boats drawn
up on land, and wooden vessels intended for salting fish, of the
industry which had been carried on there earlier in the summer.
It was at this place that Nummelin passed one of the severest
winters that Arctic literature has to record.*

1 I give the particulars of this wintering partly after communications _
made to me in conversation by Nummelin, partly after Géteborgs Handels-
och Sjifartstidning for the 20th and 21st November, 1877. This first and,
as far as I know, only detailed narrative of the voyage in question, was
dictated to the editor of that journal, reference being made to the log by

M

162 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

In 1876 M. Sidoroff, well known for the lively interest which
he takes in navigation in the Siberian waters, had a ship Severnoe
Sianie (the Aurora) built and fitted out at Yeniseisk, in order to
carry goods from the Yenise] to Europe. The vessel was placed
under the command of a Russian sea-captain, Schwanenberg.
Under him Nummelin served as mate, and the vessel had a
crew of eighteen men, most of whom had been exiled to Siberia for
crime. In consequence of various mishaps the vessel could not
get farther the first year than to the neighbourhood of the
mouth of the Yenisej], where it was left in winter quarters
at the place which has been named above. Nummelin and
four exiles remained on board, while Schwanenberg and the
rest of the crew returned to Yeniseisk on the 28th September.
Frost had already commenced. During the two following weeks
the temperature kept in the neighbourhood of the freezing
point; clear weather alternating with snow and rain.

On the 5th of October the crew withdrew to their winter
quarters, having previously collected driftwood and placed it
in heaps in order that they might easily find it under the snow.

On the 16th October the thermometer at eight o’clock in the
morning showed —4°5° and afterwards sank lower every day, until
after the 21st October the mercury for some days was constantly
under —10°. On the 26th October the temperature was —18’,
but in the beginning of November it rose again to— 2°. On the
6th November it sank again to—17°, but rose on the 11th to
—3°5.° On the 14th November the thermometer showed —23°5°,
on the 21st — 29°5°. Next day in the morning it stood at — 32°,
and in the evening at —37°, but these figures were arrived at
by guess, the instrument not indicating so low temperatures.
This temperature of —30° to —32°, varying with frozen
mercury, continued till the end of November, when it rose again
to—11°5°. At Christmas there was againa temperature of — 31°
and the six followimg days the mercury was frozen, with which
the new year came in. The temperature then rose again to — 20°,
but soon sank so that from the 16th January the mercury was
frozen for five days. Onthe 22nd January the reading was — 9°.
On the 26th the mercury froze again, and on the 29th the temper-
ature was—6°. During the month of February the temperature
never rose above — 24°; the mercury was frozen on the 20th, 25th,
26th, and 28th. This was the case on the Ist, 3rd, 6th, 7th,
14th, 16th, and 18th March; on the 22nd March the reading
was —7°, on the 30th—29°. April began with—31°, but the
temperature afterwards rose, so that on the 16thit reached — 11°
and varied between — 21° and —6° (the 25th). On the 2nd May the
reading in the morning and evening was — 12”, at mid-day — 2° to
Schwanenberg and Nummelin. Schwanenberg had come to Gothenburg
some days before with his Yeniseisk-built vessel.

IV.] NUMMELIN’S WINTERING. 163

—5°. On the 8th May it was + 0, on the 17th —10°5°, on the
31st +0°5°. June began with + 15°. On the 8th the reading
at mid-day was + 11°, on the morning and evening of the same
day + 2° to+3°. During the remainder of June and the month
of July the temperature varied between + 2° and + 21°.

-It was in such circumstances that Nummelin and his four
companions lived in the ill-provided house of planks on the
Little Briochov Island. They removed to it, as has been already
said, on the 5th October; on the 20th the ice was so hard frozen
that they could walk upon it. On the 26th snowstorms
commenced, so that it was impossible to go out of the house.

The sun was visible for the last time on the 21st November,
and it reappeared on the 19th January. On the 16th May the
sun no longer set. The temperature was then under the
freezing point of mercury. That the upper edge of the sun
should be visible on the 19th January we must assume a hori-
zontal refraction of nearly 1°. The islands on the Yenisej are
so low that there was probably a pretty open horizon towards
the south.

Soon after Christmas scurvy began to show itself. Numme-
lin’s companions were condemned and punished criminals, in
whom there was to be expected neither physical nor moral
power of resistance to this disease. They all died, three of
scurvy, and one in the attempt to cross from the Briochov
Islands to a simovie at Tolstomos. In their stead Nummelin
succeeded in procuring two men from Tolstoinos, and later on
one from Goltschicha. On the 11th May a relief party arrived
from the south. It consisted of three men under the mate
Meyenwaldt, whom Sidoroff had sent to help to save the vessel.
They had first to shovel away the snow which weighed it down.
The snow lay nearly six metres deep on the river ice, which
was three metres thick. When they at last had got the vessel
nearly dug out, it was buried again by a new snowstorm.

In the middle of June the ice began to move, and the river
water rose so high that Nummelin, Meyenwaldt, and four men,
along with two dogs, were compelled to betake themselves to
the roof of the hut, where they had laid in a small stock of
provisions and fuel. Here they passed six days in constant
peril of their lives.

The river had now risen five metres; the roof of the hut rose
but a quarter of a metre above the surface of the swollen river,
and was every instant in danger of being carried away by a
floating piece of ice. In such a case a small boat tied to the
roof was their only means of escape.

The whole landscape was overflowed. The other houses and
huts were carried away by the water and the drifting ice, which
also constantly threatened the only remaining building. The

M 2

164 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

men on its roof were compelled to work night and day to keep
the pieces of ice at a distance with poles.

The great inundation had even taken the migrating birds at
unawares. For long stretches there was not a dry spot for
them to rest upon, and thus it happened that exhausted ptarmigan
alighted among the men on the roof; once a ptarmigan settled
on Meyenwaldt’s head, and a pair on the dogs.

On the 23rd June the water began to fall, and by the 25th it
had sunk so low that Nummelin and his companions could leave
the roof and remove to the deserted interior of the house.

The narrative of Nummelin’s return to Europe by sea, in
company with Schwanenberg, belongs to a following chapter.

CHAPTER V.

The history of the North-East Passage from 1556 to 1878-—-Burrough, 1556
—Pet and Jackinan, 1580—The first voyage of the Dutch, 1594—Oliver
Brunel—The second voyage, 1595—The third voyage, 1596—Hudson,
1608— Gourdon, 1611— Bosman, 1625— De la Martiniere, 1653—
Vlamingh, 1664—Snobberger, 1675—Roule reaches a land north of
Novaya Zemlya—Wood and Flawes, 1676 —Discussion in England con-
cerning the state of the ice in the Polar Sea—Views of the condition of
the Polar Sea still divided—Payer and Weyprecht, 1872-74.

THE sea which washes the north coast of European Russia
is named by King Alfred (Orosius, Book I. Chaps. i. 11.) the
Quaen Sea (in Anglo-Saxon Cwen Sae),) a distinctive name,
which unquestionably has the priority, and well deserves to be
-retained. To the inhabitants of Western Europe the islands,
Novaya Zemlya and Vaygats, first became known through
Stephen Burrough’s voyage of discovery in 1556. Burrough
therefore is often called the discoverer of Novaya Zemlya, but
incorrectly. For when he came thither he found Russian
vessels, manned by hunters well acquainted with the navigable
waters and the land. It is clear from this that Novaya Zemlya
had then already been known to the inhabitants of Northern
Russia for such a length of time that a very actively prosecuted
hunting could arise there. It is even probable that in the
same way as the northernmost part of Norway was already
known for a thousand years back, not only to wandering Lapps,
but also to Norwegians and Quaens, the lands round Yugor
Schar and Vaygats were known several centuries before Bur-
rough’s time, not only to the nomad Samoyeds on the main-

1 In Bosworth’s translation this name is replaced by White Sea, an un-

necessary modernising of the name, and incorrect besides, as the White
Sea is only a bay of the ocean which bounds Europe on the north.

v.] THE MUSCOVY COMPANY. 165

land, but also to various Beorma or Finnish tribes. Probably
the Samoyeds then, as now, drove their reindeer herds up
thither to pasture on the grassy plains along the coast of the
Polar Sea, where they were less troubled by the mosquito and
the reindeer fly than further to the south, and probably the wild
nomads were accompanied then, as now, by merchants from the
more civilised races settled in Northern Russia. The name
Novaya Zemlya (New Land), indicates that it was discovered
at a later period, probably by Russians, but we know neither
when nor how.'!' The narrative of Stephen Burrough’s voyage,
which, like so many others, has been preserved from oblivion
by Hakluyt’s famous collection, thus not only forms a sketch
of the first expedition of West-Europeans to Novaya Zemlya,
but is also the principal source of our knowledge of the earliest
Russian voyages to these regions. I shall on this account go
into greater detail in the case of this voyage than in those of
the other voyages that will be referred to here.

It is self-evident that the new important commercial treaties,
to which Chancelor’s discovery of the route from England to
the White Sea led, would be hailed with great delight both
in England and in Russia, and would give occasion to a number
of new undertakings. At first, as early as 1555, there was
formed in England a company of “merchant adventurers of
England for the discoverie of landes, territories, isles, dominions,
and seigniories unknowen,’ commonly called “the Muscovy
Company.’ Sebastian Cabot, then almost an octogenarian, was
appointed governor for the term of his natural life, and a
number of privileges were conferred upon it by the rulers
both of England and Russia. At the same time negotiators,
merchants, and inquirers were sent by different ways from
England to Russia in order to confirm the amity with that
country, and more thoroughly examine the, at least to England,
new world, which had now been discovered in the East. But a
detailed account of these journeys does not enter into the plan
of this work.

With this, however, men were not content. They considered
Chancelor’s voyage as but the first step to something far more
important, namely, the opening of the North-East Passage to
China and India. While Chancelor himself the year after his
return was sent along with several merchants to the White

1 The Russian chronicles state that the land between the Dwina and the
Petchora (Savolotskaja Tchud) was made tributary under the Slavs in
Novgorod during the first half of the ninth century. A monastery is
spoken of in the beginning of the twelfth century at the mouth of the
Dwina, whence we may conclude that the land was even then partly
peopled by Russians, but we want trustworthy information as to the time
when the Russian-Finnish Arctic voyages began (compare F, Litke, Vier-
malige Reise durch das nordliche Eismeer. Berlin, 1835, p. 3).

166 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

Sea, a further attempt was planned to reach the east coast of
Asia by the same route. A small vessel, the Searchihrift, was
fitted out for this purpose and placed under the command of
Stephen Burrough.!. The most important occurrences during
the voyage were the following :—

On the =. 1556, the start was made from Ratcliffe to
Blackwall and Grays. Here Sebastian Cabot came on board,
together with some distinguished gentlemen and ladies. They
were first entertained on board the vessel and gave. liberal
presents to the sailors, alms being given at the same time to a
number of poor people, in order that they might pray for good
luck and a good voyage ; “then at the signe of the Christopher,
Master Cabot and his friends banketted, and made them that
were in the company great cheere; and for very joy that he
had to see the towardness of our intended discovery, he entered
into the dance himselfe, amongst the rest of the young and
lusty company.” At Orwell Burrough left his own vessel, in
order, at the wish of the merchants, to make the passage to
Vardoehus in the Edward Bonaventure. In the end of May
he was off the North Cape, which name Burrough says he
gave to this northernmost headland of Europe during his
first voyage.2, When Burrough left the Hdward Bonaventure
and went on board his own vessel is not stated, but on the “?
June he replied on the Searchthrift to the parting salute of
the Hdward Bonaventure. On the ** June Kola was reached,
and its latitude fixed at 65° 487.3

“On Thursday the 7 June at 6 of the clocke in the morn-

ing, there came aboord of vs one of the Russe Lodiaes, rowing
with twentie oares, and there were foure and twentie men in
her. The master of the boate presented me with a great loafe
of bread, and six rings of bread, which they call Colaches,
and foure dryed pikes, and a peck of fine otemeale, and I gave

' The voyage is described in Hakluyt, 1st Edition, p. 311. It is inserted
in the list of contents in the following. terms: ‘‘The voyage of Steven
Burrough towarde the river Ob, intending the discoverie of the north-east
passage. An, 1556.” It appears from the introduction to Hakluyt’s work
that the narrative was revised by Burrough himself. In the text Burrowe
is written instead of Burrough.

2 As I have already mentioned, von Herbertstein states that the Russians
(Istoma and others) as early as 1496 sailed round the northern extremity
of Norway in boats, which when necessary could be carried over land.
North Cape, or rather Nordkyn, was called at that time Murmanski Nos (the
Norman Cape). When Hulsius in his collection of travels gives von
Herbertstein’s account of Istoma’s voyage, he considers Swjatoi Nos on
the Kola peninsula to be North Cape (Hamel, Tradescant, St. Petersburg,
1847, p. 40).

3 This must be a slip of the pen or an error of the press; it was probab'y
intended to be 68° 48’. Kola les in 68° 51’ N. L.

v.] BURROUGH’S VOYAGE, 1556. 167

vnto the Master of the boate a combe, and a small glasse. He
declared vnto me that he was bound to Pechora, and after that
I made to drinke, the tide being somewhat broken, they gently
departed. The Master’s name was Pheother (Feodor)... .
Thursday (the * June) we weyed our ankers in the Riuer Cola,
and went into the Sea seuen or eight leagues, where we met
with the winde farre Northerly, that of force it constrained vs
to goe againe backe into the sayd riuer, where came aboord of
vs sundry of their Boates, which declared unto me that they
were also bound to the northwards, a fishing for Morse and
Salmon, and gave me liberally of their white and wheaten bread.
“As we roade in this riuer, wee saw dayly comming downe
the riuer many of their Lodias, and they that had least, had
foure and twentie men in them, and at the last they grew to
thirtie saile of them; and amongst the rest, there was one of
them whose name was Gabriel, who shewed me very much
friendshippe, and he declared vuto mee that all they were
bound to Pechora, a fishing for salmons, and morses: msomuch
that hee shewed mee by demonstrations, that with a faire wide
we had seuen or eight dayes sailing to the riuer Pechora, so
that I was glad of their company. This Gabriel promised to
giue mee warning of shoales, as he did indeede. . . . Sunday
being the one and twentieth day [of June, Ist July new style],
Gabriel gaue mee a barrell of Meade, and one of his speciall
friends gaue me a barrell of beere, which was caryed upon
mens backs at least 2 miles. F
“Munday we departed from the riuer Cola, with all the rest
of the said Lodias, but sailing before the wind they were all
too good for vs:} but according to promise, this Gabriel and his
friend did often strike their sayles, and taryed for us forsaking
their owne company. Tuesday at an EHastnortheast sunne we
were thwart of Cape St. John.2 It is to be vnderstood, that
from the Cape S. John vuto the riuer or bay that goeth to
Mezen, it is all sunke land, and full of shoales and dangers,

1'This statement is very remarkable. For it shows that the vessels,
that were then used by the Russians and Fins, were not very inferior as
compared with those of the West-Europeans, which is confirmed by the
fact, among others, that, nowhere in accounts of the voyages of the
English or Dutch in former times to Novaya Zemlya, do we find it stated
that in respect to navigation they were very superior to the Kola men.
As the Russian-Finnish lodjas of the time were probably beyond the
influence of the shipbuilding art of Western Europe, it is of importance to
collect all that is known about the way in which these vessels were built.
Several drawings of them occur in the accounts of the Dutch voyages, but
it is uncertain how far they are accurate. According to these the lodja
was klinker-built, with boards not riveted together but bound fast with
willows, as is still occasionally practised in these regions. The form of
the craft besides reminds us of that of the present walrus-hunting sloop.

2 Cape Woronov, on the west side of the mouth of the river Mesen.

168 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

you shall haue scant two fadome water and see no land. And
this present day wee came to an anker thwart of a creeke,
which is 4 or 5 leagues to the northwards of the sayd Cape,
into which creeke Gabriel and his fellow rowed, but we could
not get im: and before night there were aboue 20 saile that
went into the sayd creeke, the wind being at the Northeast.
We had indifferent good landfang. This afternoone Gabriel
came aboord with his skiffe, and then I rewarded him for the
good company that he kept with vs ouer the Shoales, with two
small iuory combes, and a steele glasse with two or three trifles

ANAM ‘
Edited

RUSSIAN ‘‘LODJA.’’
After G. de Veer.

more, for which he was not ungratefull. But notwithstand-
ing, his first company had gotten further to the Northwards.
Wednesday being Midsummer day we sent our skiffe aland to
sound the creeke, where they found it almost drie at a low
water. And all the Lodias within were on ground. (In con-
sequence of the threatening appearance of the weather Bur-
rough determined to go into the bay at high water. In
doing so he ran aground, but got help from his Russian
friends.) Gabriel came out with his skiffe, and so did sundry
others also, shewing their good will to help us, but all to no
purpose, for they were likely to have bene drowned for their

v.] BURROUGH’S VOYAGE, 1556. 169

labour, in so much that I desired Gabriel to lend me _ his
anker, because our owne ankers were too big for our skiffe
to lay out, who sent me his owne, and borrowed another also
and sent it vs.”

After much trouble Burrough succeeded in getting his vessel
off the shoal, and then sought fora better anchorage on the
other side of Cape St. John.

“Friday (Saas) at afternoone we weyed, and departed from
thence, the wether being mostly faire, and the winde at Kast-
southeast, and plied for the place where we left our cable and
anker, and our hawser, and as soone as we were at an anker the
foresaid Gabriel came aboord of vs, with 3 or foure more of
their small boats, and brought with them of their Aquauitz
and Meade, professimg unto me very much friendship, and
reioiced to see vs againe, declaring that they earnestly thought
that we had bene lost. This Gabriel declared vnto me that
they had saued both the ankers and our hauser, and after we
had thus communed, I caused 4 or 5 of them to goe into
my cabbin, where I gaue them figs and made them such cheere
as I could. While I was banketing of them, there came
another of their Skiffes aboord with one who was a Kerill
(Karelian), whose name afterwards I learned, and that he
dwelt in Colmogro, and Gabriel dwelled in the towne of Cola,
which is not far from the river's mouth. This foresaid Keril
said ynto me that one of the ankers which I borrowed was his.
I gave him thanks for the lone of it, thinking it had bene
sufficient. And as I continued in our accustomed maner, that
if the present which they brought were worth enterteinment,
they had it accordingly, he brought nothing with him, and
therfore I regarded him but litle. And thus we ended, and
they took their leaue and went ashore. At their comming
ashore, Gabriel and Keril were at vnconvenient words, and by
the eares, as I vnderstand; the cause was because the one had
better enterteinment than the other; but you shal vnderstand
that Gabriel was not able to make his party good, because
there were 17 lodias of the Keril’s company who tooke
his part, and but 2 of Gabriel’s company. The next high
water Gabriel and his company departed from thence, and
rowed to their former company and neighbours, which were
in number 28 at the least, and all of them belonging
to the river Cola. And as I vnderstood Keril made reckoning
that the hauser which was fast in his anker should have bene
his owne, and at first would not deliver it to our boat, insomuch
that I sent him worde that I would complain vpon him, where-
upon he deliuered the hauser to my company. The next day

170 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

being Saturday, I sent our boat on shore to fetch fresh water
and wood, and at their comming on shore this Keril welcomed
our men most gently, and also banketed them, and in the
meanetime caused some of his men to fill our baricoes with
water, and to help our men to beare wood into their boat ; and
then he put on his best silke coate, and his collar of pearles
and came aboorde againe, and brought his present with him:
and thus having more respect vnto his present than to his
person, because I perceiued him to be vain-glorious, I bade
him welcome and gaue him a dish of figs; and then he
declared vnto me that his father was a gentleman, and that he
was able to shew me pleasure, and not Gabriel, who was but a
priest’s sonne.” p

After Burrough has given account of a storm, during which
he lost a jolly boat, which he had purchased at Vardoehus, and
by which they were detained some time in the neighbourhood
of Cape St. John (whose latitude was fixed at 66° 50’) he
continues :—

“Saturday (the sth July) at a Northnorthwest sunne the
wind came at Kastnortheast, and then we weied, and plied to
the Northwards, and as we were two leagues shot past the
Cape, we saw a house standing in a valley, which is dainty to
be seene in those parts and by and by I saw three men on the
top of the hil. Then I iudged them, as it afterwards proued,
that they were men which came from some other place to set
traps to take vermin! for their furres, which trappes we did
perceiue very thicke alongst the shore as we went.”

The 14th to the 19th July, new style, were passed on the
coast of Kanin Nos.2 On the 19th at noon Burrough was in
lat. 68° 40' north. On Friday, the 3th July another storm
appeared to threaten.

“ And as I was musing what was best to be done, I saw a sail
come out of acreeke under the foresayd Caninoz, which was
my friend Gabriel, who forsook his harborough and company,
and came as neere us as he might, and pointed vs to the
Kastwards, and then we weyed and followed him. Saturday we
went eastsoutheast and followed Gabriel, and he brought vs
into an harborough called Morgiouets, which is 30 leagues
from Caninoz. This morning Gabriel saw a smoke on ye way,
who rowed vnto it with his skiffe, which smoke was two leagues

1 Probably mountain foxes. Remains of these fox-traps are still
frequently met with along the coast of the Polar Sea, where the Russians
have carried on hunting.

2 Kanin Nos is in 68° 30’ N. L.

v.] BURROUGH’S VOYAGE, 1556, 171

from the place where we road; and at a Northwest sunne
he came aboord again, and brought with him a Samoed,' which
was but a young man; his apparell was then strange vnto vs,
and he presented me with three young wild geese, and one
young barnacle.”

On the {, July Burrough sailed past Dolgoi Island, and the
following day entered the mouth of the Petchora, the latitude
of which was fixed at 69° 10.2 On the *" they sailed out
again over sandbanks in only five feet of water, and thanked
God that their vessel was of so light draught. The day after

ice was met with for the first time. On the aoe in lat.

70° 20’ north, they had the meeting already described with an
enormous whale.’ Somewhat later on the same day the
Searchthrift anchored in a good haven between two islands,
situated in 70° 42’ N. L.4 They were named by Burrough
St. James’s Islands.

“Tuesday, the saga we plyed to the Westwards alongst
the shoare, the wind being at Northwest, and as I was about
to come to anker, we saw a sail comming about the point
whereunder we thought to have ankered. Then I sent a skiffe
aboorde of him, and at their comming aboord, they tooke
acquaintance of them, and the chiefe man said hee had bene
in our company in the riuer Cola, and also declared vnto them
that we were past the way which should bring vs to the Ob.
This land, sayd he, is called Nova Zembla, that is to say, the
New Land; and then he came aboord himselfe with his skiffe he
told me the like . . . he made me also certaine demonstrations
of the way to the Ob. I gave hima steele glasse, two pewter
spoons, and a paire of veluet sheathed knives ; and then he
seemed somewhat the more willing to tary and shewed me as
much as he knew for our purpose; he also gave me 17
wild geese... . This man’s name was Loshak, Wednes-
day, as we plied to Eastwards, we espied another saile, which
was one of this Loshak’s company, and we bare roome and
spake with him, who in like sort tolde us of the Ob, as the other
had done... . Friday (the ““*%*) the gale of winde began to
nerease, and came Westerly withall, so that by a Northwest
suune we were at an anker among the Islands of Waigats,
where we saw two small lodias; the one of them came aboord
of us and presented me with a great loafe of bread; and they told

1 This was the first meeting between West-Europeans and Samoyeds.

® The capes which bound the mouth of the Petchora—Cape Ruski
Savorot and Cape Medinski Savorot,—are very nearly in lat. 69°.

3 See above, page 129,

4 Evidently islands near the southern extremity of Novaya Zemlya,

\

172 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [UHAP.

me they were all of Colmogro, except one man that dwelt at
Pechora, who seemed to be the chiefest among them in killing
of the Morse.t| There were some of their company on shoare
which did chase a white beare ouer the high clifs into the
water, which beare the lodia that was aboord of us killed in
our sight. This day there was a great gale of wind at North,
and we saw so much ice driving a seaboord that it was then no
going to sea.”

During the first days of August the vessel lay for the most
part in company with or in the neighbourhood of Loshak,
who gave them information about the Samoyeds, after which
Burrough visited their sacrificial places,” :

“Tuesday (the {th) August we turned for the harborough
where Loshak’s barke lay,? where, as before, we road vnder an
Island. And there he came aboord of vs and said unto me: if
God send wind and weather to serve, I will go to the Ob with
you, because the Morses were scant at these Islands of Vaigats ;
but if he could not get to the riuer of Ob, then he sayd hee
would goe to the riuer of Narainzay,* where the people were not
altogether so savage as the Samoyds of the Ob are: hee
shewed me that they will shoot at all men to the vttermost of
their power, that cannot speake their speech.”

On the “th of August much ice was seen to drift towards the
haven where the vessel lay, wherefore Burrough removed back
to the place where he had lain a few days before, and whose

latitude he now found to be 70° 25’. Loshak left him unex-.

pectedly the following day, while Burrough was taking solar
altitudes, and on the “th Burrough too weighed anchor to sail

south along the coast of Vaygats. After sailing about in these
waters for a time, and being exposed to a severe storm with an

exceedingly heavy sea, Burrough, on the 34%", determined to

turn. On thea ;, September ae arrived at Colmogro, where
he wintered with a view to continue his voyage next year to
the Obi. This voyage, however, was abandoned, because he
mstead went westwards in order to search for two of the ships

1 Probably he was of Finnish race. The Quaens in North Norway are
still the most skilful harpooners. In recent times they have found rivals
in skill with the harpoon and gun in the Lapps.

? The information Burrough obtained poe eranas the Samoyeds is given
above at page 80,

3 From the context, and the circumstance that ‘‘much ice was drifting
in the sea,” we may conclude that this haven was situated on the north
side of the island at the entrance to the Kara Port.

* Probably the river which on Massa’s map is called Narontza, and
debouches on the west coast of Yalmal.

aval BURROUGH’S VOYAGE, 1556. 173

which accompanied Chancelor, and which had been lost during
the return voyage from Archangel.

From this narrative we see that a highly developed Russian
or Russian-Finnish navigation was carried on as early as the
middle of the fifteenth century between the White Sea, the
Petchora, Vaygats, and Novaya Zemlya, and that at that time the
Russians or Finns even sailed to the Obi. The sketch, which
Burrough gives of the Russian or Russian-Finnish hunters,
shows, besides, that they were brave and skilful seamen, with
vessels which for the time were very good, and even superior to
the English in sailing before the wind. With very few alter-
ations this sketch might also be applied to the'present state of
things in these regions, which shows that they continue to stand
at a point which was then high, but is now low. Taking a
general view of matters, it appears as if these lands had rather
fallen behind than advanced in well-being during the last
three hundred years.

To judge by a letter from the Russian Merchant Company,
which was formed in London, it was at his own instance that
Stephen Burrough in 1557 sailed from Colmogro, not to Obi,

1 All the three vessels that were employed in the first English expedition
to the North-east had an unfortunate fate, viz. :

The Edward Bonaventure, commanded by Chancelor and Burrough,
sailed in 1553 from England to the White Sea, returned to England in
1554 and was on the way plundered by the Dutch (Purchas, iii. p. 250);
started again with Chancelor for the Dwina in 1555, and returned the same
year to England under Captain John Buckland ; accompanied Burrough in
1556 to the Kola peninsula; went thence to the Dwina to convey to England
Chancelor and a Russian embassy, consisting of the ambassador Ossip
Gregorjevitsch Nepeja and a suite of sixteen men; the vessel besides being
laden with goods to the value of 20,0007. It was wrecked in the neigh-
bourhood of Aberdeen (Aberdour Bay) on the 20th (10th) November.
Chancelor himself, his wife, and seven Russians were drowned, and most
of the cargo lost.

The Bona Esperanza, admiral of the fleet during the expedition of 1553.
Its commander and whole crew perished, as has been already stated, of
disease at Arzina on the coast of Kola in the beginning of 1554. The
vessel was saved and was to have been used in 1556 to carry to England
the Russian embassy already mentioned. After having been driven by a
storm into the North Sea, it reached a harbour in the neighbourhood of
Trondhjem, but after leaving that harbour-disappeared completely, nothing
being known of its fate.

The Bona Confidentia was saved like the Bona Esperanza after the dis-
astrous wintering at Arzina; was also used in conveying the Russian
embassy from Archangel in 1556, but stranded on the Norwegian coast,
every man on board perishing and the whole cargo being lost.

Of the four vessels that left the Dwina on the 2nd August, 1556, only
the Philip and Mary succeeded, after wintering at Trondhjem, in reaching
the Thames on the 28th (18th) April, 1557. (A letter of Master Henrie
Lane to the worshipfull Master William Sanderson, containing a_ brief
discourse of that which passed in the north-east discoverie, for the space
of three and thirtie yeeres, Purchas, iii. p. 249.)

174 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

but to the coast of Russian Lapland to search for the lost
vessels.! The following year the English were so occupied with
their new commercial treaties with Russia and with the fitting
out of Frobisher’s three expeditions to the north-west, that it
was long before a new attempt was made in the direction of the
north-east, namely till ARTHUR PETS’ voyage in 1580.2 He was
the first who penetrated from Western Europe into the Kara
Sea, and thus brought the solution of the problem of the
North-East Passage to the Pacific a good way forward. The
principal incidents of this voyage too must therefore be briefly
stated here.

Pet and JACKMAN, the former in the George, the latter in the
William, sailed from Harwich on the Sip<, 1580. On the
=i; they doubled the North Cape, and on the 3; July, Pet
was separated from Jackman after appointing to meet with him
at ‘‘Verove Ostrove or Waygats.” On the ¥th land was in
sight, the latitude having the preceding day been ascertained
to be 71° 38’. Pet was thus at Gooseland, on the west coast
of Novaya Zemlya. He now sailed E.S.E., and fell in with ice
on the *th July. On the #th July, land was seen, and the
vessel anchored at an island, probably one of the many small
islands in the Kara Port, where wood and water were taken
on board.

On the “th July, Pet was in the neighbourhood of land in
70° 26’. At first he thought that the land was an island, and
endeavoured to sail round it, but as he did not succeed in doing
so, he supposed it to be Novaya Zemlya. Hence he sailed in
different directions between S.W. and S.E., and was on the
“th in 69° 40° N.L. Next day there was lightning with showers
of rain. Pet believed himself now to be in Petchora Bay, and
after sighting, on the “th July, the headland which bounds the
mouth of the river on the north-east, he sailed, it would seem,
between this headland and the Selenetz Islands into the great
bay east of Medinski Savorot. Here he made soundings on
the supposition that the sound between Vaygats Island and the

1 Hamel, Tradescant der dltere, p. 106. Hakluyt, 1st Edition, p. 326,
The voiage of the foresaid M, Stephen Burrough An. 1557 from Colmogro to
Wardhouse, dc. This voyage of Burrough has attracted little attention ;
from it however we learn that the Dutch even at that time carried on an
extensive commerce with Russian Lapland. In the same narrative there
is also a list of words with statements of prices and suitable goods for
trade with the inhabitants of the Kola peninsula.

2 Two accounts of this voyage are to be found in Hakluyt’s collection
(pp. 466 and 476). A copy of Pet’s own journal was discovered some
years ago, along with other books, frozen in among the remains of
Barents’ wintering on the north-east side of Novaya Zemlya. It has not
been published, but is in the possession of Consul Rein at Hammerfest.

v.] PET’S AND JACKMAN’S VOYAGE, 1580. 175

mainland would open out at this place, but the water was found
to be too shallow, even for a boat. Pet now sailed past Yugor
Schar along the coast of Vaygats towards Novaya Zemlya,
to a bay on the west coast of Vaygats Island, where he anchored
between two small islands, which were supposed to be Woronski
Ostrov. The entrance to an excellent haven was indicated on both
sides by two crosses! On the islands there was abundance of
driftwood, and on one of them was found a cross, at the foot
of which a man was buried. Pet inscribed his name on the
cross, and likewise on a stone at the foot of the cross, “in order
that Jackman, if he came thither, might know that Pet had
been there.” In the afternoon Pet again weighed anchor,
doubled the western extremity of Vaygats Island, and con-
tinued his voyage, following all along the coast of Vaygats,
first to the north and north-east, then to the south, between
an ice-field and the land, until the ice came so close to the
shore that the vessel could make no headway, when he anchored
in a good haven by an island which lay on the east side of
Vaygats in the neighbourhood of the mainland. It was per-
haps the island which in recent maps is called Mestni Island.
Pet was thus now in the Kara Sea? The latitude given—
69° 14’—shows even, if it is correct, that he went far into the
bay at the mouth of the Kara river. Here Pet fell in with his
comrade Jackman, from whom he had parted on the coast of
Kola, and of whose voyage during the interval we know nothing.
When the vessels met they were both damaged by ice. As,
in addition, the sea to the north and east was barred by compact
masses of ice, the captains, after deliberating with the inferior
officers, determined to return. They had, also, during the
return voyage, to contend with formidable ice obstacles, until,
on the 2th August, in Lat. 69° 49° north, near the south-
eastern extremity of Vaygats they met with open water. They
sailed along the east coast of Vaygats through the Kara Port,
which was passed on the Zth August. Hence the course was
shaped for Kolgujev Island, on whose sandbanks both vessels

1 The Russians had thus landmarks on Novaya Zemlya 300 years ago.

2 It is commonly assumed that Pet sailed into the Kara Sea through
Yugor Schar, but that this was not the case is shown partly by the fact
that he never speaks of sailing through a long and narrow sound, partly
by the account of the many islands which he saw in his voyage, and partly
by the statement that coming from the south he sailed round the western-
most promontory of Vaygats Island. If we except small rocks near the
shore, there are no islands off the southern part of Vaygats Island. In
sailing east of Medinski Savorot, Pet took the land south of Yugor
Schar for Vaygats, and the soundings on the 29th (19th) July were
ae out undoubtedly in the mouth of some small river debouching
there.

176 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

ran aground, but were soon got off again without loss. The
latitude of the sandbanks was correctly fixed at 68° 48”,

On the 2%" the William was again lost sight of." On the
ogi the George anchored in Tana Fiord, on which there was
a town named Hungon.2 Two days afterwards the George
doubled the North Cape, and on the 7**“ again anchored
at Ratcliffe.

Pet and Jackman were the first north-east explorers who
ventured themselves in earnest amongst the drift-ice. In -
navigating among ice they showed good judgment and readiness
of resource, and in the history of navigation the honour falls
to them of having commanded the first vessels from Western
Europe that forced their way into the Kara Sea. It is there-
fore without justification that BARROW says of them that they
were but indifferent navigators?

With Pet and Jackman’s voyage the English North-East
Passage expeditions were broken off for a long time. But the
problem was, instead, taken up with great zeal in Holland.
Through the fortunate issue of the war of freedom with Spain,
and the incitement to enterprise which civil freedom always
brings along with it, Holland, already a great industrial and
commercial state, had begun, towards the close of the sixteenth
century, to develop into a maritime power of the first rank.
But navigation to India and China was then rendered impossible
for the Dutch, as for the English, by the supremacy of Spain
and Portugal at sea, and through the endeavours of these
countries to retain the sole right to the commercial routes they
had discovered. In order to become sharers in the great profits
which commerce with the land of silks and perfumes brought
with it, it therefore appeared to be indispensable to discover

1 Of Jackman Hakluyt says (2nd Edition, i. p. 453): ‘* William with
Charles Jackman came to a haven in Norway between Tronden and
Rostock in October, 1580, and wintered there. Thence the following
February he went with a vessel, belonging to the king of Denmark, to
Iceland, and since then nothing has been heard of him.” About that time
an English ship stranded at the Ob, and the crew were killed by the
Samoyeds. It has been conjectured that it possibly was Jackman (compare
Purchas, iii. p. 546; Hamel, p. 238). It is more probable that the
vessel which suffered this fate was that which, two years before Pet and
Jackman’s voyage, appears to have been sent out by the Muscovy Com-
pany to penetrate eastwards from the Petchora, The members of this
expedition were James Bassendine, James Woodcocke, and Richard
Brown, but we know nothing concerning it except the very sensible
and judicious rules that were drawn up for the expedition (Hakluyt, 1st
Edition, p. 406).

2 T have not been able to find any name resembling this on modern
maps.

3 A Chronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Regions. (London,
1818, p. 99.

v.] THE DUTCH NORTH-EAST EXPEDITIONS. 177

a new sea route north of Asia or America to the Eastern seas.
If such a route had been actually found, it was clear that the
position of Holland would have been specially favourable for
undertaking this lucrative trade. In this state of things we
have to seek for the reason of the delight with which the Dutch
hailed the first proposal to force a passage by sea north of Asia
to China or Japan. Three successive expeditions were at great
expense fitted out for this purpose. These expeditions did
not, indeed, attain the intended goal—the discovery of a
north-eastern sea route to Eastern Asia, but they not only
gained for themselves a prominent
place in the history of geographical
discovery, but also repaid a hundred
fold the money that had been spent
on them, in part directly through
the whale-fishing to which they
gave rise, and which was so profit-
able to Holland, and in part in-
directly through the elevation they
gave to the self-respect and national
feeling of the people. They com-
parel the achievements of their
countrymen among the ice and
snow of the Polar lands to the voy-
age of the Argonauts, to Hannibal's
passage of the Alps, and to the
campaign of the Macedonians in
Asia and the deserts of Libya
(see, for instance, BLAVIUS, Atlas
major, Latin edition, t. 1., pp.’ 24
and 31.) As these voyages
together present the grandest
attempts to solve the problem
that lay before the Vega expedi- DUICH SKIPPER.

tion, I shall here give a some- ase ena bres

what detailed account of them.

Tue First Dutcu ExpepiTion, 1594.—This was fitted out
at the expense of private persons, mainly by the merchants
BALTHASAR MucHERON, JACOB VALCKE, and FRANCISCUS
Martson. The first intention was to send out only two
vessels with the view of forcing a passage through the sound
at Vaygats towards the east, but on the famous geographer
PLANCIUs representing that the route north of Novaya Zemlya
was that which would lead most certainly to the desired goal,
other two were fitted out, so that no fewer than four vessels
went out in the year 1594 on an exploratory expedition towards
the north. Of these, two, viz. a large vessel, specially equipped,

N

178 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

it would appear, for the northern waters, called the MJercurius,
and commanded by WILLEM BARENTS,' and a common fishing
sloop, attempted the way past the northern extremity of Novaya
Zemlya. The two others, viz. the Swan of Zeeland, com-
manded by CoRNELIS CorNELISZ. Nay, and the Mereurius
of Enkhuizen, commanded by BRANDT YSBRANDTSZ. TETGALES,
were to pass through the sound at Vaygats Island.

All the four vessels left the Texel on the ¥th June, and
eighteen days later arrived at Kildum in Russian Lapland,
a place where at that time vessels, bound for the White
Sea, often called. Here the two divisions of the expedition
parted company.

Barents sailed to Novaya Zemlya, which was reached on the
“th July in 73° 25’; the latitude was determined by measuring
the altitude of the midnight sun at an island which was called
Willem’s Island. Barents sailed on along the coast in a
northerly direction, and two days afterwards reached the
latitude of 75° 54’ north. On the 7th July there was a re-
markable chase of a Polar bear. The bear was fallen in with
on land and was pierced by a bullet, but notwithstanding this
he threw himself into the water, and swam with a vigour
“that surpassed all that had been heard of the lion or other
wild animal.” Some of the crew pursued him in a boat, and
succeeded in casting a noose round his neck in order to catch
him living, with a view to carry him to Holland. But when
the bear knew that he was caught “he roared and threw him-
self about so violently that it can scarcely be described in
words.’ In order to tire him they gave him a little longer line,
rowing forward slowly the while, and Barents at intervals struck
him with a rope. Enraged at this treatment, the bear swam to
the boat, and caught it with one of his forepaws, on which
Barents said: ‘he wishes to rest himself a little.” But the
bear had another object in view, for he cast himself into the
boat with such violence that half his body was soon within it.
The sailors were so frightened that they rushed to the fore and
thought that their last hour was come. Fortunately the bear
could make no further advance, because the noose that was

1 His proper name was Willem Barentszoon ; it was also written Barentz,
Barendsz, Bernardsson, &c. Barents’ three voyages formed the subject of
a work by GreRRIT DE VEER, which was published for the first time in 1598 |
at Amsterdam in a Dutch, a Latin, and a French edition. The last-
mentioned has the following title: Vray Description de Trois Voyages des

Mer tris admirables faicts . . . par les navires d’ Hollande & Zelande
au nord . . . vers les Royaumes de China & Catay, etc. Afterwards

this work was frequently reprinted in different languages, both singly and
in DE Bry’s, Purcuas’, and other collections of Travels. See on this point
P. A. Tiele, Mémoire bibliographique sur les journauax des navigateurs Neéer-
landais. Amsterdam, 1867.

v.] CHASE OF A POLAR BEAR. £79

thrown round his neck had fastened in the rudder. A sailor
taking courage, now went aft and killed the bear with the stroke
of an axe. The skin was sent to Amsterdam. On account of
this occurrence the place was called “ Bear Cape.”

Barents sailed on towards the north and north-east, past the
place which he called Cruys Eylandt (Cross Island)? and Cape
Nassau, a name which has been retained in recent maps, to the
latitude of 77° 55’, which was reached on the a July. Here
from the mast-top an ice-field was seen, which it was impossible
to see beyond, which compelled Barents to turn. However, he
still remained in these northern regions, waiting for a better

state of the ice, till the “st when the vessel was due west

CAPTURE OF A POLAR BEAR,
After G. de Veer,

of a promontory situated in latitude 77° north, which was
named Ice Cape. Some gold-glittering stones were found here
on the ground. Such finds have played a not inconsiderable
véle in the history of Arctic voyages, and shiploads of worthless
ore have on several occasions been brought home. On the

mi Avewt while sailing among the Orange Islands, they saw 200
31st July 7 5 co) fo) ?

walruses on land. The sailors attacked them with axes and
lances, without. killing a single walrus, but they succeeded
during the attempt to kill them in striking out several tusks,
which they carried home with them.

Convinced that he could not reach the intended goal by this

1 From two large crosses which were found erected on the island. This
shows that the Russians had also explored the north part of Novaya
Zemlya before the West-Europeans.

N 2

180 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [oHaP.

northern route, Barents determined, after consulting with his
men, to turn south and sail to Vaygats. While sailmg down,
Barents, in latitude 71° north, makes the remark that he was
now probably at a place where OLIVER BRUNEL? had been
before, and which had been named by him Costinsark, evidently
the present Kostin Schar, a Russian name still in use for the
sound which separates Meschduschar Island from the main
island. It ought to be observed, however, that on old maps

1 The name Oliver Brunel occurs so often in accounts of the first voyages
to Novaya Zemlya, and the man who bore it appears to have exercised so
great an influence on the development of commercial communications with
Russia, and the sending out of exploratory expeditions to the North Polar
Sea, that I shall give a brief sketch of his life, mainly after §. Muller,
Geschiedenis der Noordsche Compagnie, Utrecht, 1874, p. 26.

Oliver Brunel was born in Brussels, and in 1565 went in a Russian
vessel from Kola to Kolmogor in order to learn the Russian language and
make himself acquainted with the trade of the region. But the English,
who of course eagerly endeavoured to prevent any intrusion on their
newly-discovered commercial territory, prevailed on the Russians to keep
him in prison for several years. In the end he was set at liberty, or rather
handed over to the rich merchants Jakov and Grigory Anikiev (Stroganov),
In consequence of this, Brunel came to take part in the commercial
expeditions sent out by this mercantile house, (which by the conquest of
Siberia acquired a world-historical importance, both by land and sea,) to
the parts of Asia bordering on Russia, whereby he became well acquainted
with the Polar Sea and the Gulf of Obi. Brunel afterwards brought about
direct communication between the Netherlands and the great commercial
house, almost sovereign de facto if not de jure in extensive countries. In
connection with this Brunel made strenuous exertions to open in earnest the
navigation of the Netherlands to the White Sea, and there found a
Netherlands factory, which was placed not on Rosen Island, which was
occupied by the English, but on the spot where the present Archangel is
situated. Brunel next took part in preparations for a Russian North-east
expedition, for which Swedish shipbuilders were received inte Stroganov’s
service. Brunel himself travelled by land to Holland to enlist men. A
number of particulars regarding these undertakings of Brunel are con-
tained in a letter of Jonn Batak to GERARD MercaTor, dated “ Arusburgi
ad Ossellam fluvium” the 20th February, 1581. The letter is printed in
the second edition of Hakluyt, 1598, i. p. 509. Scarcely however had
Brunel returned to his native country, before he altered his plan and
wished to procure for his own fatherland the honour and advantage of the
undertaking. The first attempt of the Dutch to reach China and Japan by
the north-east thus came about. Of this voyage we know only that Brunel
endeavoured without success to sail through Yugor Schar, and that his
vessel, heavily laden with furs, plates of mica, and rock-crystal, was
wrecked on the way home at the mouth of the Petchora (Beschryvinghe
vander Samoyeden Landt in Tartarien, dc. Amsterdam, 1612. S. Muller’s
Photolithographic Reproduction, 1878). The mica and rock-crystal were
undoubtedly brought from the Ural, as no useful plates of mica or large
rock-crystals are found in the region of the Petchora. Brunel then entered
the Danish service. For we know that an Oliver Brunel during the reign
of King Fredrik II. in Denmark offered to explore Greenland, and for that
purpose in 1583 obtained the right to settle in Bergen and there enjoy six
years freedom from taxes (Cf. Groenlands historiske Mindesmerker, Copen-
hagen, 1838, vol. iii. p. 666).

eae Eg

Le he a)

Poronous

y a! $ , — E Serapouc a 3
: : = : J coosce 5 E

Leetnastrona a = = : 5 af Matfeof = Socohaloada oft ;

Re ee = y E = ose! = 2 i = J" co)" : E i ¢. EE oe Ce

Pet Reicro

RUSSIAN MAP OF THE NORTH POLAR SEA FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE 177 CENTURY, PUBLISHED IN HOLLAND IN I6I2 BY ISAAC MASSA.

v.] JAN HUYGHEN VAN LINSCHOTEN. 181

Matotschkin Schar is often marked with some perversion of the
word Kostin Schar.

South of “St. Laurens Bay,’ in 702°, Barents, on the 7°
August, found upon a headland a cross erected, and in the neigh-
bourhood of it three wooden buildings, the hull of a Russian
vessel and several sacks of meal, and at the same place some
graves, all clearly remains of some Russian salmon-fishers. On
the 2th August he arrived at Dolgoi Island, where he fell in
with the two other vessels from Zeeland and Enkhuizen that
had come thither shortly before. All the four vessels sailed
back thence to Holland, arriving there in the middle of
September. The narrative of this voyage closes with the
statement that Barents brought home with him a walrus, which
had been fallen in with and killed on the drift-ice. Barents
during this journey discovered and explored the northern part of
Novaya Zemlya, never before visited by West-European seafarers.

The two other vessels, that left the Texel at the same time as
Barents, also made a remarkable voyage, specially sketched by
the distinguished voyager JAN HUYGHEN VAN LiNSCHOTEN,?

The vessels were manned by fifty men, among them two
interpreters—a Slav, CHRISTOFFEL SPLINDLER, and a Dutch
merchant, who had lived long in Russia, FR. DE LA DALE,
Provisions for eight months only were taken on board. At first
Nay and Tetgales accompanied Barents to Kilduin, which island
is delineated and described in considerable detail in Linschoten’s

work,
On the =" July Nay and Tetgales sailed from Kilduin for

2nd
Vaygats Island. ‘Three days afterwards they fell in with much
drift-ice. On the “th they arrived at Toxar, according to
Linschoten’s map an island on the Timan coast, a little west of
the entrance to Petchora. They there met with a Russian
lodja whose captain stated that he believed, after hearsay, that
the Vaygats Sound ° was continually covered with ice, and that,
when it was passed, men came to a sea which lay to the south
of, and was warmer than, the Polar Sea. Some other Russians
added, the following day, that it was quite possible to sail
through Vaygats Sound, if the whales and walruses, that

} Probably the Sachanich Bay of the Russians.

* Voyagie, ofte Schip Vaert, van Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, van by
Noorden om langes Noorwegen de Noortcaep, Laplant, Vinlant, Ruslandt

a02 tot voorby de revier Oby, Franeker, 1601. Another edition at
Amsterdam in 1624, and in abstract in Saeghman’s collection of travels in
1665. The voyage is also described in Blavii Atlas Major, 1665. Lin-
schoten was “commis” on board, a post which included both the employ-
ment of supercargo and that of owners’ commissioner.

’ That is Yugor Schar. This name also occurs, though in a somewhat
altered form, as “ Wegorscoi tzar,” on Isaac Massa’s map of 1612, which,
according to the statement of the publisher, is a copy of a Russian chart.

182 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAD, V.

destroy all vessels that seek to pass through, did not form an
obstacle; that the great number of rocks and reefs scarcely
permitted the passage of a vessel; and finally, that the Grand
Duke had ordered three vessels to attempt the passage, but
that they had all been crushed by ice.

MOSSANBVCK

JAN HUYGHEN VAN LINSCHOTEN,
Born in 1563 at Haarlem, died in 1611 at Hnkhuizen.
After a portrait in his work, Navigatio in Orientalem sive Lusitanorum Indiam,
Hagie Comitis, 1599.

On the =" July there came to Toxar hunters from the White

Sea, who spoke another language than the Russians, and
belonged to another race of men—they were evidently Finns or
Karehans. <A large number of whales were seen in the haven,
which gave occasion to aremark by Linschoten that whale-fishing

|

INK
OY

- y
\

MUS

Ue go

Yy

SS

KILDUIN, IN RUSSIAN LAPLAND, IN 1594,

After Linschoten,

184 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

ought to be profitable there. After the ice had broken up, and
crosses with inscriptions giving information of their movements
had been erected on the shore, they sailed on. On the Zst July
they sighted Vaygats. They landed at a headland marked with
two crosses, and there fell in with a native, clad in much the
same way as a Kilduin Lapp, who soon took to flight. Other
headlands marked with crosses were afterwards visited, and
places where idols were found set up by hundreds. Linschoten
also landed on that Idol Cape which was visited during the
voyage of the Vega. There were then from three to four
hundred wooden idols, which, according to Linschoten’s deserip-
tion, were very similar in appearance to those we saw. They
were so ill made, says he, that one could scarcely guess that
they were intended to represent men. The visage was very
broad, the nose projecting, there were two holes in place of the
eyes, and another hole represented the mouth. Five, six, or
seven faces were often found carved on one and the same stock
“perhaps intended to represent a whole family.” Many Russian
crosses were also erected there. Some days later they found on
the south shore of the sound a small house filled with idols,
much better made than the former, with eyes and paps
of metal. While the Duteh were employed in examining this
collection of idols, a reindeer sledge was driven forward in which
sat aman armed with a bow. When he saw the foreigners, he
called loudly, on which a number of sledges with about thirty
men drove out of a valley and endeavoured to surround the
Dutch. They now fled in haste to their boat, and when it had
left the beach the Samoyeds shot at it with their arrows, but
without hitting it. This bloodless conflict is, so far as we know,
the only one that took place between the natives and the
north-east voyagers. The latter are thus free from the great
bloodguiltiness which attaches to most of those, who in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries made voyages of discovery in
southern regions.

Some days later, on the am oe the Dutch had a friendly
meeting with the Samoyeds, who gave them very correct in-
formation concerning the state of the land and the sea, telling
them that ‘after ten or twelve days they would meet with no
more ice, and that summer would last six or seven weeks
longer.” After the Dutch had learned all they could from these
“barbarians, who had greater skill in managing their bow than
a, nautical gnomon, and could give better information regarding
their hunting than about the navigable water,” they took their
departure. When one of the sailors hereupon blew a horn, the
savages were so frightened, that they began to take to flight,
but, quieted by the assurance that the blast of the horn was
only a sign of friendship, they returned and on the beach

v.] THE SECOND DUTCH EXPEDITION, 185

saluted the departing strangers, bowing themselves to the earth
with uncovered heads and crossed hands,

On the ** August the Dutch, full of hope, sailed into the
Kara Sea, or, as they called it, the “North Tartaric Ocean.”
They soon fell in with ice, on which account on the “ they
sought protection under Mestni Island (Staten Eiland). Here
they found a sort of rock crystal resembling diamonds in all
respects except hardness, a disappointing circumstance which
was ascribed to the action of cold. Here also were seen images
and sacrificial places, but no houses and no trees.

When Nay and Tetgales sailed on, they came to an extensive
open sea, and on the “th August they believed that they were
off the mouth of the Obi. Two of its principal mouth-arms
they named, after the vessels, “Swan” and “ Mercurius,” names
which have since been forgotten. It is quite evident that the
river which the Dutch took for the Obi was the Kara, and that
the mouth-arms, Swan and Mercurius, were two small coast
rivers which debouch from Yalmal into the Kara Sea.

On the =~ August they determined to return home, taking it
for proved that, from the point which had been reached, it would
be easy to double ‘‘ Promontorium Tabin,” and thus get to China
by the north-east passage. A large number of whales were seen
raising half their bodies out of the sea and spouting jets of water
from their nostrils in the common way, which was considered a
further sign that they had an extensive ocean before them.

On the =th August, Nay and Tetgales sailed again through
Yugor Schar (Fretum Nassovicum), and the day after at three
small islands, which were called Mauritius, Orange, and
New Walcheren, they fell in with Barents, and all sailed
home to Holland, fully convinced that the question of the
possibility of a north-east passage to China was now solved.
It was shown indeed, in the following year, that this supposition
rested on quite too slight a foundation, but the voyages of Nay
and Tetgales deserve in any case an honoured place in the
history of navigation, for they extended considerably the know-
ledge of the northern regions through the discovery, or at least
through the first passage of, Yugor Schar, and, like Barents,
these seafarers must get the credit of carrying out the task
assigned to them with skill, insight, resolution, and resource.

THE SEcoND DutcH ExpepiTion, 1595.1—After the return
of the first expedition a report of the discoveries which had
been made was given in to Prince Maurice of ORANGE, JAN.
VAN OLDENBARNEVELT, Advocate of Holland, and the other
authorities at home. They were so convinced by this report

1 Accounts of this expedition are given both by De Veer and Linschoten
in the above-named works.

186 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

that the sea route to China was actually discovered, that they
immediately made arrangements to send out the following year
a flotilla of seven vessels, two from Amsterdam, two from
Zeeland, two from Enkhuizen, and one from Rotterdam, with a
view to open the new commercial communication.

The commanders of the vessels were CORNELIS NAy (Admiral),
BrANDT TETGALES (Second in Command), BARENTS, LAMBERT
GERRITSZ. OomM, THOMAS WILLEMSZ., HARMAN JANSZ.., and
Henprik HartTMAN. The lieutenants were LINSCHOTEN, JACOB
HEEMSKERK, FRANCOYS DE LA DALE, JAN CORNELISZ., RIP,

South.
vag Oo De revier ven ~ ee is |

ewepnich hoops ~~

sain
aS = al Defivrt er kervk:
Behe
g Z ; as ee be
a , uu
ly f

> ee vhaeck

Poe ‘
: fae? ob Me ucherons howe

eee

wt

e Soe be

North.

MAP OF FRETUM NASSOVICUM OR YUGOR SCHAR.
After Linschoten.

and N. Buys. Six of the vessels were laden with goods and
coin; the seventh was to return home with news when the
fleet had sailed through Vaygats Sound. The great prepara-
tions, however, occupied so much time that it was not until the
vm July that the voyage could be begun. On’ the =" August,
Kegor on the Ribatschni peninsula was sighted, and on the

29th August the fleet arrived at the Sound between Vaygats
ata the mainland, and found a great deal of ice there.

On the #55: the Dutch met with some Russians, who told

them that the winter had been very severe, but that the ice
would in a short time disappear, and that the summer would still

Yi] THE SECOND DUTCH EXPEDITION. 187

last six weeks. They also stated that the land to the north-
ward, which was called Vaygats, was an island, separated on its
north side from Novaya Zemlya; that it was visited in summer
by natives, who towards winter returned to the mainland ; that
Russian vessels, laden with goods, yearly sailed through Vaygats
Sound past the Obi to the river Gillissy (Yenisej), where they
passed the winter ; that the dwellers on the Yenisej were of the
Greek-Christian religion, &c.

On the 7742. the Dutch came in contact with the Samoyeds
south of Vaygats Sound. Their “king” received the strangers
ina very hospitable and friendly mauner, and informed them
that in three or four weeks the cold would begin; that in some
years the drift-ice did not disappear; that during winter the
whole sound and the bays and coves were frozen over, but that
the sea on both sides did not freeze ; that beyond the mouth
of the river Ob there were the mouths of two other rivers,
of which the more remote was called the ‘‘ Molconsay,” the
nearer, which was often visited by Russian trading vessels, the
Gillissy ; that the land continued beyond the Ob toa cape which
projected towards Novaya Zemlya, and that bteyond this pro-
montory there was a great sea, which extended along Tartary
to warm regions.!

When the Dutch sailed into the Kara Sea they fell in with
much ice, on which account they anchored at the island, Staten
Kiland, where during the preceding voyage rock crystal had
been found. Here two men were killed in the way that has
already been described.? Depressed by this unfortunate oc-
currence and afraid to expose their vessels, laden with valuable
goods, too late in the season, to the large quantity of ice which
dritted about in the Kara Sea, the commanders determined to
turn. The fleet returned to Holland without further adven-
ture, passing through Vaygats Sound on the 2th September.

This expedition did not yield any new .coutribution to the
knowledge of our globe. But it deserves to be noted that we
can state with certainty, with the knowledge we now possess of
the ice-conditions of the Kara Sea, that the Dutch during both
their first and second voyages had the way open to the Obi and
Yenisej. If they had availed themselves of this and continued
their voyage till they came to inhabited regions on either of
these rivers, a considerable commerce would certainly have
arisen between Middle Asia and Europe by this route as early
as the beginning of the seventeenth century.

1 These remarkable statements are found in Linschoten’s above-quoted
work printed in 1601, and cannot therefore be spurious. They thus show
that Taimur Land was inhabited by: Samoyeds, and that the geography
of this region was then well known.

* See above, p. 110.

188 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

Tart Turrp: Dutch EXPEpiTion, 1596—97.1—After the
unfortunate issue of the expedition of 1595, which had been
fitted out at so great an expense, and which had raised so
great expectations, the States-General would not grant the
necessary funds for a third voyage, but they offered instead
a great prize to the states or merchants that at their own

UNSUCCESSFUL FIGHT WITH A POLAR BEAR,
During the Second Dutch Expedition. From De Veer.

expense should send out a vessel that should by the route north
of Asia force a passage to Asia and China.? Encouraged by

1 The sketch of this voyage forms the main portion of the above men-
tioned work of De Veer. Undoubtedly the adventures during the wintering,
the first in so high a latitude, in the first place procured for De Veer’s
work the enormous popularity it enjoyed, and led to its being translated
into so many languages.

2 The resolution regarding the offer of this prize is given below :

Extract uit het Register der Resolutien van de Hoog Mogende Heeren

Staten Generael der Vereenigde Nederlanden.

Folio 158 vs 13 April 1596.

De Gedeputeerde van de Heeren Staten van Holland verclaren dat heure
principalen geadviseert hebbende op de hervattinge van het voyagie naer
China en Japan, benoorden om, deselve voyage afgeslagen hebben, ten
aenzien van de groote costen die nu twee Jaren achter den anderen om de
reyse te verzoeken te vorgeefs angewent zijn, maer dat Hare E. goetge-
vonden ende geconsenteert hebben, mede tgevolgh van de andere provincien
bij zoeverre datter eenige coopluijden aventuriers bij compagnie ofte
anderssine de voerscreven reijse op heure costen ende risique, zonder te

v.] DISCOVERY OF BEAR ISLAND AND SPITZBERGEN. 189

this offer the merchants of Amsterdam sent out two vessels,
one under the command of Willem Barents and Jacob van
Heemskerk, the other under Jan Cornelisz. Rijp. The crew
were chosen with care, unmarried men being preferred, with
the idea that wife and children would detract from the
bravery of the members of the expedition and lead them to
return home prematurely. .

On the *th May these vessels left Amsterdam. On the “th

June they saw in lat. 71° North some beautiful parhelia, which
are found delineated in De Veer’s work, and Blavii Atlas
Major.

On the th June one of the crew cried out from the deck
that he saw white swans, but on acloser examination it appeared
that they consisted of large pieces of ice, which drifted along
the edge of the pack.’ On the “th they discovered, north of

North Cape, a new island, situated in latitude 74° 30’ North.
A large bear was killed here, and on this account the island
was called Bear Island. On the #th they came in the 80th

degree of latitude to another formerly unknown land, which
they believed to be connected with Greenland. It was in fact
the large group of islands, which afterwards obtained the name
Spitzbergen. There were found here on a small island the
eggs of a species of goose—rotgansen,” which comes yearly
to Holland in great flocks, but whose breeding place was
before unknown. With reference to this, De Veer says that
it is finally proved that this goose is not, as has been hitherto
supposed, propagated in Scotland by the goose laying her eggs
from the branches of trees overhanging the water, the eggs

schepen ende tgelt van den lande, zonde begeren te verzoeken, dat men
dezelve aventuriers de reijse gevonden ende gedaen hebbende, daervan
brengende goet ende geloofflijck beschijt, tot haer luijder wedercomste,
zal vereeren mette somme van vijff en twintich duysent gulden eens.
Item daar enboven accorderen den vrijdom voor twee jaren van convoyen
der goederen die zij uit dese landen naer China off Japan zullen transpor-
teren, ende noch vrijdom voer den tyd van acht jaren van te goederen die
zij uit China ofte Japan in dese landen sullen bringen. Waerop gead-
viseert wesende hebben de Gedeputeerde van d’andere provincien hen
daarmede geconformeert, die van Seelant opt welbehagen van heure
principalen, maer die van Utrecht hebben verclart niet te consenteren
in de vereeringe van XXV™ £.

1 Every Polar traveller has at one time or other made the same or a
similar mistake. In 1861, for instance, a boat party, of whom I was one,
thought that they saw clearly sailors in sou’-westers and with white shirt-
sleeves building a cairn on a point which appeared to be at no great
distance, But the cairn was found to be a very distant mountain, the
shirt-sleeves were formed of snow-fields, the sou’-westers of pointed cliffs,
and the motion arose from oscillatory changes in the atmospheric strata.

2 Undoubtedly Anser bernicla, which is common on the west coast of
Spitzbergen. The Dutch name ought neither to be translated red goose, as
some Englishmen have done, nor confounded with rotges,

190 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

being broken in pieces against the surface of the water, and
the newly hatched young immediately swimming about.

After an unsuccessful attempt had been made to sail to the
north of Spitzbergen the vessels proceeded southwards along the

west coast. and on the 2 July came again to Bear Island.
2 Ist yi =

Here the vessels parted company, Barents sailing eastwards
towards Novaya Zemlya, Rijp northwards towards the east
coast of Spitzbergen. On the 2th July, Barents reached the

west coast of Novaya Zemlya in latitude 73° 20’ North. On

BARENTS’ AND RIJP’S VESSELS.

From De Veer.

the *th July, no further advance could be made for ice, which
still lay close to the shore. During the stay here there were
several adventures with bears, all of which came off successfully.
In consequence of ice obstacles their progress was exceedingly
slow, so that it was not until the 2th August that they reached
the Orange Islands. The following day several of the crew
ascended a high mountain, from which they saw open water
on the other side of an island. As glad at the sight of the

1 See the copy of Barents’ own map with his course laid down upon it,
which is to be found in Pontanus, Rerum et urbis Amstelodamensium
Historia (Amst. 1611), and is annexed to this work in photolithographic
facsimile.

TABULA GEOGR|
rande-TMavigationts
Tus defignatur—. |

FRETU™M

\4nes

F eer, S
Mh Phine,cuius tamen
My vers frus icra
pe dice

Skaga fiord
wglunes

Dy Ex fnuperrumis
Me fferuatronibus
/e China allatis
A eredibile ft Afi

racks Eland
be

Ls
hy

MAP SHOWING BARENTS THIRD VOYAGE,

FROM
J.1. PONTANI RERUM ET URBIS AMSTELODAMENSIUM HISTORIA. AMST. I6II.
(Closely agreeing with Barents’ own original Map, 1598)

v.] BARENTS’ WINTERING. 191

sea as the ten thousand under Xenophon, they rushed back
to the vessel to give Barents the important news. He now
did all he could to pass the north extremity of Novaya Zemlya.
He was successful in doing so, and on the #st a haven, situated
in about the latitude of 76° North, was reached with great
difficulty, but all attempts to sail eastwards from it were
unsuccessful. Finally, on the “*** Barents determined to

25th aug
return to Holland.

Now, however, it was too late. The haven was blocked with
drift-ice, which was in constant motion, several times pressed
the vessel high up between the pieces of ice, and finally broke
the rudder in pieces. It was now evident that it would be
necessary to winter, and for this purpose the requisite tools,
household articles, and provisions were landed and men sent
out to examine the neighbourhood. Reindeer tracks were seen,
and, what was more important, there were found on the beach
large tree-stems with their roots still adhering, and other wood
which the marine currents had drifted to this otherwise com-
pletely woodless region. The drift-wood was collected in large
heaps that it might not be buried under the snow in winter.
A place was chosen for a house, and the Dutch began to draw
timber to the place. The openings in the drift-ice were on

the ?th September covered with a crust of ice two inches thick,

5th Oct.
but on the orn si. the ice was again somewhat broken up, which

however was of no advantage to the imprisoned, because their
vessel was forced up so high on a block of ground ice that
it could not be got off. Bears were hunted almost daily, They
were very bold and sometimes came on board the vessel. On
the 2th October all ice was driven off as far as the eye could

see, but the vessel still lay motionless on the blocks of ground
ice, Round these the ice closed in again, to break up anew
at a greater or less distance from the beach. On the pea uaere
was still much open water visible from the beach, and on the
sth and “th March, the sea appears to have been in one
direction completely free of ice.

On the ¥st October, the crew began to remove into the house,
where they afterwards passed the winter 1596—97 with many
sufferings, dangers, difficulties, and privations which are de-
scribed in De Veer’s work. The crew, however, never lost
courage, which undoubtedly was a principal cause of most of
them being saved. The house was built on the north-east side
of Novaya Zemlya, on the shore of Barents’ Ice Haven. It
was situated far to the north of any other place where men
had previously passed the winter. The land and its animal
life was unknown, the hard frozen, almost rock-fast and yet
continually moving ice-covering, with which the sea was

mpl Milas YP

192 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

bound, was something quite novel, as also were the effects which
long continued and severe cold exerts on animate and inanimate
objects. Before the attempt was made it was not considered
at all certain that men could actually endure the severe cold
of the highest north and the winter night three or four months
long. No wonder therefore that the skill and undaunted
resolution of the Dutch Polar explorers aroused unmingled
admiration among all civilised nations, and that the narrative
of their wintering was received with unbounded interest and

[ee

AO
i) jhe

BARENTS’ HOUSE, OUTSIDE.

From De Veer.

formed the subject of innumerable writings and reproductions
both in prose and verse in almost all civilised languages. Only
a few facts from the journal of the wintering need therefore
be given here.

On the “th November the sun disappeared, and was again
visible on the a;~. These dates have caused scientific men
much perplexity, because in latitude 76° North, the upper edge
of the sun ought to have ceased to be visible when the sun’s
south declination in autumn became greater than 13°,) and
to have again become visible when the declination again became
less than that figure; that is so say, the sun ought to have
been seen for the last time at Barents’ Ice Haven on the ath

1 Qn the assumption of a horizontal refraction of about 45’,

v.] BARENTS’ WINTERING. 193

October, and it ought to have appeared again there on the ¥th
February. It has been supposed that the deviation arose from
some considerable error in counting the days, but this was
unanimously denied by the crew who wintered.1 The bears
disappeared and reappeared with the sun. Instead, foxes came
during winter to the building, and were caught for food in
numbers, many on the roof of the house. In order to pass
the time and keep up their courage, the Dutch sometimes had

BARENTS’ HOUSE, INSIDE.
From De Bry.

entertainments, at which the cheerfulness of the partakers had
to make up for the meagreness of the fare. After the return
of the sun the bears again came very close, so that there was

1 See on this point De Veer, leaf 25 and an unpaged leaf between pages
30 and 31 in Blavii Atlas Major, tom. i. That a mistake occurred in the
date is not possible, because the latitude was determined by solar observa-
tions on the 29th (19th) February, the 21st (11th) and 31st (21st) March
(see De Veer, |. 27). Besides, at the correct date, the 3rd February (24th
January), a conjunction of Jupiter and the moon was observed, whereby
the difference of longitude between Ice Haven and Venice was determined
to be 75°. However erroneous this determination may be, it shows,
however, that the date was correct.

0

194 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

a number of hunting adventures with them, all of which came
off successfully. Several bears made themselves at home in
the vessel abandoned by the crew, casting everything about,
and broke up the hatch of the kitchen, covered as it was with
deep snow. An attempt to eat bear’s liver resulted in those
that ate of it becoming very ill, and after recovery renewing
their skin over the whole body. Once during severe cold,
when pitcoal was used to warm the building, all the men in
it were like to have died of the fumes. On one or two occa-

sions, for instance on the 2th February, so much snow had

15
collected outside the door, that it was necessary to go out by the
chimney. For the preservation of their health the Dutch often
took a vapour bath in a barrel fitted up for the purpose.

On the 7 = the first small birds were seen, and on the 2th

May Barents declared that if the vessel were not got off before
the end of the month, they should return in boats, which were
therefore immediately got ready. This was, however, attended
with great difficulty, because most of the crew had during the
course of the winter become exceedingly weak, evidently from
scurvy. After the equipment of the boats had been completed
and they had been properly laden with provisions, the Dutch at
last started on the =* June.

A man had died on the sz5~. At the beginning of the boat
voyage Barents himself was very ill, and six days after, on the
“th June, he died, while resting with his companions on a
large floe, being compelled to do so by the drift-ice. On the
same day one of the crew died, and on the th July another.

On the sasuy the returning Arctic explorers at St. Lawrens’
Bay fell in with two vessels manned by Russian hunters,
whose acquaintance the Dutchmen had made ‘the year before,
and who now received them with great friendliness and pity for
their sufferings. They continued their voyage in their small
open boats, and all arrived in good health and spirits at Kola,
where they were received with festivities by the inhabitants.
It gave them still greater joy to meet here Jan Cornelisz. Rijp,
from whom they had parted at Bear Island the preceding year,
and of whose voyage we know only that he intended to sail up
along the east coast of Spitzbergen, and that, when this was
found to be impossible, he returned home the same autumn.

After the two boats, im which Barents’ companions had
travelled with so many dangers and difficulties from their winter
haven to Russian Lapland, had been left in the merchant’s yard?

1 Built along with a weigh-house intended for the Norwegians in 1582
by the first vojvode in Kola (Hamel, p. 66). In Pontanus (Rerum et
urbis Amstelodamensium Historia, Amsterodami, 1611, p. 142), there is
a drawing of the inner yard of this house, and of the reception of
shipwrecked men there.

vid JACOB VAN HEEMSKERK. 195

at Kola, as a memorial of the journey—the first memorial of
a Polar expedition was thus raised at Kola!—they went on
board Rijp’s vessel, and sailed in it to Holland, arriving there

the Se Xoewer Sixteen men had left Holland with Barents,

twelve men returned in safety to their native land, and among
them JACOB VAN HEEMSKERK, a man who during the whole
voyage had played a prominent part, and afterwards lived long
enough to see the time when the Dutch were a match at sea

April s.5. -

WG

lf iit ui
An TI

JACOR VAN HEEMSKERK,
Born in 1567 at Amsterdam, died in 1607 at Gibraltar.
Afier a contemporary engraving by N. de Clerck.

for the Spaniards. For he fell as commander of the Dutch fleet

which defeated the Spanish at Gibraltar on April 25, 1607.
During Barents’ third voyage Bear Island and Spitzbergen

were discovered, and the natural conditions of the high northern

regions during winter first became known. On the other

hand, the unfortunate issue of the maritime expeditions sent

out from Holland appears to have completely deterred from

0 2

196 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

further attempts to find a north-eastern commercial route to
China and Japan, and this route was also now less necessary,
as Houtman returned with the first Dutch fleet from the East
Indies the same year that Barents’ companions came back from
their wintering. The problem was therefore seriously taken up
anew for the first time during the present century; though
during the intervening period attempts to solve it were not
wholly wanting.

For the desire to extend the White Sea trade to Siberia,
and jealousy of the companies that had known how to procure
for themselves a monopoly of the lucrative commerce with
eastern Asia, still led various merchants now and then during
the seventeenth century to send out vessels to try whether it
was possible to penetrate beyond Novaya Zemlya. I shall
confine myself here to an enumeration of the most important
of these undertakings, with the necessary bibliographical
references.

1608. Henry Hunpson, during his second voyage, landed on
Novaya Zemlya at Karmakul Bay and other places, but did not
succeed in his attempt to sail further to the east, north of this
island. He made the voyage on account of English merchants.
A narrative of it is to be found in Purchas (i. p. 574), and an
excellent critical collection of all the original documents
relating to Hudson’s life and voyages in G. M. Asher’s
Henry Hudson the Navigator, London, 1860 (Works issued by
the Hakluyt Society, No. 26). It was west of the Atlantic
that Hudson earned the laurels which gave him for all time so
prominent a place in the history of navigation, and the sea
there also became his grave. Eastwards he did not penetrate
so far as his predecessors. I cannot therefore here find room
for any account of his voyage to Novaya Zemlya; it may
only be mentioned that two of his crew on the morning
of the 2th of June, 1608, in 75° N.L., saw a mermaid. The
following statement is taken from his journal: ‘This morning
one of the crew, as he looked over the side, saw a mermaid.
Another of his comrades came up at his call. She was
close to the vessel’s side, looking steadily at the men. Soon
after she was thrown down by a wave. From the middle
upwards her back and breast were like a woman’s. Her body
was as large as a man’s, her skin very white, and long dark
hair hung down her back. When she dived, they saw her
tail, which resembled that of a dolphin and was spotted like
a mackerel’s. The names of the men who saw her were
Thomas Hiller and Robert Rayner.” It was probably a curious
seal that gave occasion to this version of the old yarn.

1611. WrtL1AmM GourRDON, with the title “appointed chief
pilote for discoverie to Ob,” brought this year a cargo of goods

v.] DUTCH AND DANISH EXPEDITIONS. 197

to Pustosersk, and sailed thence to Novaya Zemlya. At the
mouth of the Petchora he saw 24 Jodjas, manned with ten to
16 men each, bound for “ Mangansei” east of Ob (Purchas, iii.
pp. 530, 5384). While attempting to get further information
regarding these voyages to Siberia, the Muscovy Company’s
envoy learned that, at least as a rule, the question was only of
carrying goods by sea to the bottom of Kara Bay, whence they
were transported overland to Ob, advantage being taken of two
small rivers and a lake (Purchas, iii. p. 539). But other
accounts lead us to infer that the Russian Jodjas actually sailed
to Ob, even through Matotschkin Schar, as appears from
statements in Purchas (ii. pp. 804, 805). At the same place
we find the statement, already quoted, of a Russian, who in
1584 offered for fifty roubles to act as guide overland from the
Petchora to the Ob, that a West-European ship was wrecked
at the mouth of the Ob, and its crew killed by the Samoyeds
who lived there. The Russian also said that it was an easy
matter to sail from Vaygats to the mouth of the Ob.

1612. The whaling captain JAN CORNELISZ. VAN HooRN
endeavoured to sail north of Novaya Zemlya towards the east,
but met with ice in 77° N.L., which compelled him to return
(Wiisen, p. 906).

1625. CoRNELIS BosMAN, at the instance of the Northern
Company of the Netherlands, with a vessel of 90 tons, manned
by 24 men, and provisioned for two and a half years, passed
through Yugor Schar eastwards, but fell in with so much ice in
the Kara Sea that he was compelled to seek for a harbour in
that sound. There he waited for more favourable conditions,
but was finally compelled by storm and ice to return with his
object unaccomplished. (S. Miiller, Geschiedenis dex Noordsche
Compagnie, Utrecht, 1874, p. 185.)

1653.‘ This year a Danish expedition was sent out to the
North-east. An account of the voyage was given by DE LA
MARTINIERE, surgeon to the expedition, in a work published for
the first time at Paris in 1671, with the following title: Voyage
des Pais Septentrionaux. Dans lequel se void les meurs, maniere de
vivre, & superstitions des Norwequiens, Lappons, Kiloppes, Boran-
diens, Syberiens, Samojedes, Zembliens, & Islandois, enrichi de
plusieurs figures.” This work afterwards attained a considerable

1 The year is incorrectly given as 1647 by F. von Adelung (Kritisch-
Littertirische Uebersicht, &c.).

* The following editions are enumerated: four French, Paris, 1671, 1672,
1676, and Amsterdam, 1708; six German, Hamburg, 1675, Leipzig, 1703,
1706, 1710, 1711, and 1718; one Latin, Gliickstadt, 1675; two Dutch,
Amsterdam, 1681 and 1685; one Italian, printed in Conte Aurelio degli
Anzi’s Il Genio Vagante, Parma, 1691; two English, one printed separately
in 1706, the other in Harris, Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibl., 3rd
edition, London, 1744-48, Vol. II. p. 457.

198 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

circulation, doubtless in consequence of Martiniére’s easy style,
contrasting so strongly with the common dry ship’s-log manner,
and the large number of wonderful stories he narrates, without
the least regard to truth or probability. He is the Miinchhausen
of the North-east voyages. The Norse peasants, for instance, are
said to be all slaves to the nobles, who have sovereign power
over their property, tyrannise over their inferiors, and are prone
to insurrection. The elks are said to be liable to falling sickness,
and therefore fall down in convulsions when they are hunted—
hence their name “eleend.” Sailors are said to have purchased
on the north-west coast of Norway for ten crowns and a pound

2 =, \ = Pole Arctigue « OY a

SS

FNS oe
: I MoscouZ

Ay,

{Ny

DE LA MARTINIPRE’S MAP.

of tobacco three knots of wind from the Lapps living there, who
were all magicians; when the first knot was loosed, a gentle
breeze arose, the second gave a strong gale, the third a storm,
during which the vessel was in danger of being wrecked.'
Novaya Zemlya is stated to be inhabited by a peculiar tribe,
“the Zembliens,” of whom two were taken prisoners and carried
to Copenhagen. De la Martiniere also got the head of a walrus,
which had been harpooned with great difficulty ; the animal was
drawn as a fish with a long horn projecting from its head. As

1 The story of the wind knots is taken from Olaus Magnus, De geniibus
septentrionalibus, Rome, 1555, p. 119. There a drawing of the appearance
of the kuots is also given.

v.] DUTCH EXPEDITIONS. 199

a specimen of the birds of Novaya Zemlya a penguin was
drawn and described, and finally the work closed with a rectifi-
cation of the map of the Polar Regions, which according to the
author’s ideas ought to be as represented below. Irefer to these
absurdities, because the account of Martiniére’s voyage exerted
no little influence on the older writings relating to the Arctic
Regions.

1664 and 1668. A whaling captain, WILLEM DE VLAMINGH,
sailed in 1664 round the northern extremity of Novaya Zemlya
to Barents’ winter quarters, -and thence eastwards, where one
of his men thought he saw land (“Jelmert-landt,” Witsen,
p- 902)... The same Vlamingh says that in 1668 he discovered,
twenty-five miles N.N.E. of Kolgujev, a new island three to four
miles in circumference. This island, which was described in
great detail, and named by the discoverer “ Witsen’s Island,”
has not since been seen again ( Witsen, p. 923).

1666. In this year some vessels were sent from the Nether-
lands to the north-east. There were Jews among the owners
and the seafarers were furnished with letters in Hebrew, because
it was believed that they would come in contact with some of
the lost tribes of Israel. Nothing further appears to have been
known of the voyage, which undoubtedly was without result.
(Witsen, p. 962.)

1675. A Dutch whaling captain, CoRNELIS PrERSZ. SNOB-
BERGER, visited Novaya Zemlya, on whose coast he killed three
whales and six hundred walruses. He would probably have
got still more “ fish,” if he hed not in 724° found an ore, which
appeared to contain silver, gold, and other metals. Instead of
blubber the skipper now loaded ore, which in his opinion was
precious, but afterwards on being tested at home was found to
be valueless (Witsen, p. 918).

17th Century, year not stated. Shipmaster CORNELIS ROULE
is said to have sailed in the longitude of Novaya Zemlya to 844°
or 85° N.L. and there discovered a fjord-land, along which he
sailed ten miles. Beyond that a large open sea wasseen. From
a high mountain situated on a sound, in which he rode, it
appeared that he might sail one or two watches further to the
north. He found there large numbers of birds, which were
exceedingly tame (Witsen, p.920). If we take some degrees
from the latitude stated, which is perhaps not very unreason-
able in dealing with the narratives of old whalers, which
have passed through two or three hands, Roule may, as far
back as two hundred years ago, have reached Franz-Josef’s
Land, and sailed along its coast to a very high latitude for

those regions. ;
1676. Woop and FLAWwEs were sent out from England by

1 Compare page 156.

290 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

Charles II. to sail by the north-east passage to the Pacific. For
this purpose the English Admiralty fitted out a vessel, the
Speedwell, while ‘‘as all exploratory voyages are exposed to the
possibility of disaster,” another small ship, the Prosperous, was
purchased and handed over to the expedition by private gentle-
men.! The command of the first vessel was given to Captain
Wood, the chief promoter of the undertaking, and the other
vessel was commanded by Captain Flawes. The voyage was
completely without result, as Wood did not penetrate so far,
either to the north or east, as his predecessors or as the
whalers, who appear to have at that time frequently visited
North Novaya Zemlya. Wood had previously accompanied Sir
John Narborough during a voyage through the dangerous
Magellan Straits, in the course of which he became known
as a bold and skilful seaman, but he not only wanted experi-
ence in sailing amongst ice, but also the endurance and the
coolness that are required for voyages in the high north. He
thereby showed himself to be quite unfit for the command
which he undertook. Before his departure he was unreason-
ably certain of success; with the first encounter with ice his
self-reliance gave way entirely; and when his vessel was
wrecked on the coast of Novaya Zemlya, he knew no other way
to keep up the courage of his men and prevent. mutiny than
to send the brandy bottle round.? Finally after his return
he made Barents and other distinguished seafarers in the
Arctic Regions answerable for all the skipper tales collected
from quite other quarters, which he before his departure held
to be proved undoubtedly true. This voyage would therefore
not have been referred to here, if it had not been preceded and
followed by lively discussions regarding the fitness of the Polar
Sea for navigation, during which at least a portion of the
experience which Dutch and English whalers had gained of the
state of the ice between Greenland and Novaya Zemlya was
rescued from oblivion, though unfortunately almost exclusively
in the form of unconfirmed statements of very high latitudes,
which had been occasionally reached. Three papers mainly led
to Wood’s voyage. These were :—

1. A letter, inserted in the Zransactions of the Royal Society,*

' These were James Duke of York, Lord Berkley, Sir John Williamson,
Sir John Bankes, Mr. Samuel Peeps, Captain Herbert, Mr. Dupey, and Mr.
Hoopgood (Harris, Nav. Bibl., vol. ii. p. 453).

> “All I could do in this exigency was to let the brandy-bottle go
round, which kept them allways fox’d, till the 8th July Captain Flawes
came so seasonably to our relief” (Barrow, 4 Chronological History of
Voyages into the Arctic Regions. London, 1818, p. 268).

3 “A letter, not long since written to the Publisher by an Experienced
person residing at Amsterdam,” etc. (Philosophical Transactions, vol. ix.
p- 3. London, 1674).

v.] FORMER IDEAS REGARDING NOVAYA ZEMLYA. 201

on the state of Novaya Zemlya, said to be founded on discoveries
which had been made at the express command of the Czar.
The letter was accompanied by a map, drawn by an artist
named Panelapoetski, who sent it from Moscow as a present
to the writer. The Kara Sea is said to be a freshwater mland
lake which freezes strongly in winter, and it is stated that
according to the unanimous accounts of the Samoyeds and
Tartars it is quite possible to sail north of Novaya Zemlya to
Japan.

2. Another letter was inserted in the Zvansactions of the Royal
Society, in which the statement in the former letter on the
connection of Novaya Zemlya with the mainland is repeated,
and the difficulties which Barents met with ascribed to the
circumstance that he sailed too near the land, along which the
sea is often frozen; some miles from the shore, on the other
hand, it never freezes, even at the Pole, unless occasionally.
It is also said that some Amsterdam merchants sailed more
than a hundred leagues eastward of Novaya Zemlya, and on
that account petitioned the States-General for privileges.?
However, in consequence of opposition from the Dutch East
India Company, their petition was not granted, on which the
merchants turned to Denmark. Here their proposal was
immediately received with favour. Two vessels were fitted out,
but instead of sailing to Japan, they went to Spitzbergen to
the whale-fishing. It is further stated in the letter that it
would not be unadvisable to let some persons live for a time
with the Samoyeds, in order to find out what they knew of the
matter, and that, when a more complete knowledge of the
navigable waters was acquired, the whole voyage from England
to Japan might be accomplished in five or six weeks. Were a

1 “A summary Relation of what hath been hitherto discovered in the
matter of the North-East. passage ; communicated by a good Hand” (Phil.
Trans., vol. x. p. 417. London, 1675).

? The time when the voyage was made is not stated in the letter quoted.
Harris says that he with great difficulty ascertained the year of the
successful voyage to the eastward to be 1670. He says further that the
persons who gave him this information also stated that, at the time when
this petition was given in to the States-General, it was also asserted that
there was no difficulty in sailing northwards from Spitzbergen (Greenland),
and that many Dutch vessels had actually done it. To confirm this state-
ment the merchants proposed that the logs of the Spitzbergen fleet for the
year 1655 should be examined. This was done. In seven of them it was
found recorded that the vessels had sailed to 79° N. L. Three other logs
agreed in the point that on the 1st August, 1655, 88° 56’ was observed. The
sea here was open and the swell heavy (Harris, Nav. Bibl., ii. p. 453). J.R.
Forster (Geschichte der Entdeckungen und Schiffsfahrten im Norden, Frank-
furt a. d. Oder, 1874) appears to place the voyage eastward of Novaya
Zemlya in the period before 1614. It is, however, probable that the voyage
in question is Vlamingh’s remarkable one in 1664, or that in 1666, of which
I have already given an account.

202 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

wintering necessary, it would not be attended with any danger,
if, instead of a house of thick planks standing by. itself, earth
huts were used.

3. A pamphlet, whose contents are given in the long and
peculiar title: ‘A brief Discourse of a Passage by the North-
Pole to Japan, China, ete. Pleaded by Three Experiments:
and Answers to all Objections that can be urged against a
Passage that way. As: 1. By a Navigation from Amsterdam
into the North-Pole, and two Degrees beyond it. 2. By a
Navigation from Japan towards the North-Pole. 3. By an
Experiment made by the Czar of Muscovy, whereby it appears,
that to the Northwards of Nova Zembla is a free and open Sea
as far as Japan, China, etc. With a Map of all the Discovered
Lands neerest to the Pole. By Joseph Moxon, Hydrographer
to the King’s most Exellent Majesty. London, 1674.”

The most remarkable passage in this scarce little book is the
following :—

“Being about twenty-two years ago in Amsterdam, I
went into a drinking-house to drink a cup of beer for my thirst,
and sitting by the public fire, among several people, there
happened a seaman to come in, who, seeing a friend of his
there, whom he knew went in the Greenland voyage, wondered
to see him, because it was not yet time for the Greenland fleet
to come home, and asked him what accident brought him home
so soon; his friend (who was the steer-man aforsaid in a
Greenland ship that summer) told him, that their ship went
not out to fish that summer, but only to take in the lading of
the whole fleet, to bring it to an early market. But, said he,
before the fleet had caught fish enough to lade us, we, by order
of the Greenland Company, sailed unto the north pole and back
again. Whereupon (his relation being novel to me) I entered
into discourse with him, and seemed to question the truth of
what he said; but he did ensure me it was true, and that the
ship was then in Amsterdam, and many of the seamen
belonging to her to justify the truth of it; and told me, moreover,
that they had sailed two degrees beyond the pole. I asked him
if they found no land or islands about the pole? He told me,
No, they saw no ice; I asked him what weather they_ had
there? He told me fine warm weather, such as was at
Amsterdam in the summer time and as hot.” ?

1 In more recent times the whalers have been more modest in their
statements about high northern latitudes reached. Thus a Dutchman
who had gone whale-fishing for twenty-two years, at an accidental
meeting with Tschitschagoft in Bell Sound in the year 1766, stated among
other things that he himself had once been in 81°, but that he heard that
other whalers had been in 83° and had seen land over the ice. He had
seen the east coast of Greenland (Spitzbergen) only once in 75° N. L.

v.} THE SEA AT THE POLE OCCASIONALLY NAVIGABLE, 203

In addition to these stories there were several contributions
to a solution of the problem, which Wood himself collected, as
a statement by Captain Goulden, who had made thirty voyages
to Spitzbergen, that two Dutchmen had penetrated eastward
of that group of islands to 89° N.L.; the observation that
on the coast of Corea whales had been caught with Kuropean
harpoons in them;! and that driftwood eaten to the heart
by the sea-worm was found on the coasts of the Polar
lands, &c.?

When Wood failed, he abandoned the views he had _ before
maintained, declaring that the statements on which he had
founded his plans were downright lies and delusions. But the
belief in a polar sea that is occasionally navigable is not yet
given up. It has since then been maintained by such men as
DAINES BARRINGTON,? FERDINAND VON WRANGEL, AUGUSTUS
PETERMANN,‘ and others. Along with nearly all Polar travellers
of the present day, I had long been of an opposite opinion,
believing the Polar Sea to be constantly covered with ith-
penetrable masses of ice, continuous or broken up, but I have
come to entertain other views since in the course of two

(Herrn von Tschitschagoff Russisch-kaiserlichen Admirals Reise nach dem
Hissmeer, St. Petersburg, 1793, p. 83). Dutch shipmasters too, who in the
beginning of the seventeenth century penetrated north of Spitzbergen to
82°, said that they had thence seen land towards the north (Miiller,
Geschiedenis der Noordsche Compagnie, p. 180).

1 Witsen states, p. 43, that he had conversed with a Dutch seaman,
Benedictus Klerk, who had formerly served on board a whaler, and after-
wards been a prisoner in Corea. He had asserted that in whales that were
killed on the coast of that country he had found Dutch harpoons. The
Dutch then carried on whale-fishing only in the north part of the Atlantic.
The find thus shows that whales can swim from one ocean to the other.
As we know that these colossal inhabitants of the Polar Sea do not swim
from one ice-ocean to the other across the equator, this observation must
be considered very important, especially at a time when the question
whether Asia and America are connected across the Pole was yet unsettled.
Witsen also enumerates, at p. 900, several occasions on which stone
harpoons were found in the skins of whales caught in the North
Atlantic. These harpoons, however, may as well be derived from the
wild races, unacquainted with iron, at Davis Strait, as from tribes living
on the north part of the Pacific. At Kamschatka, too, long before whale-
fishing by Europeans began in Behring’s Sea, harpoons marked with Latin
letters were found in whales (Steller, Beschreibung von dem Lande
Kamtschatka, Frankfurt und Leipzig, 1774, p. 102).

2 The account of Wood’s voyage was printed in London in 1694 by
Smith and Walford, printers to the Royal Society (according to a state-
ment by Barrington, The possibility of approaching the North Pole asserted,
2nd Edition, London, 1818, p. 34). I have only had an opportunity ot
seeing extracts from the account of this voyage in Harris and others.

3 Barrington published a number of papers on this question, which are
collected in the work whose title is given above, of which there were two
editions,

* At several places in his Mittheilungen, 1855-79.

204 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

winterings—the first in 79° 53’, that is to say, nearer the Pole
than any other has wintered in the old world, the second in
the neighbourhood of the Asiatic Pole of cold—I have seen that
the sea does not freeze completely, even in the immediate
neighbourhood of land. From this I draw the conclusion that
the sea scarcely anywhere permanently? freezes over where it is
of any considerable depth, and far from land. If this be the
case, there is nothing unreasonable in the old accounts, and
what has happened once we may expect to happen another time.

However this may be, it is certain that the ignominious
result of Wood’s voyage exerted so great a deterring influence
from all new undertakings in the same direction, that nearly
two hundred years elapsed before an expedition was again sent
out with the distinctly declared intention, which was afterwards
disavowed, of achieving a north-east passage. This was the
famous Austrian expedition of PAyER and WEYPRECHT in
1872-74, which failed indeed in penetrating far to the east-
ward, but which in any case formed an epoch in the history of
Arctic exploration by the discovery of Franz-Josef’s Land
and by many valuable researches on the natural conditions
of the Polar lands. Considered as a North-east voyage, this
expedition was the immediate predecessor of that of the Vega.
It is so well known through numerous works recently published,
and above all by Payer’s spirited narrative, that I need not go
into further detail regarding it.

But if the North-east voyages proper thus almost entirely
ceased during the long interval between Wood’s and Payer’s
voyages, a large number of other journeys for the purpose of
research and hunting were instead carried out during this
period, through which we obtained the first knowledge founded

1 That thin sheets of ice are formed in clear and calm weather, even in
the open sea and over great depths, was observed several times during the
expedition of 1868. But when we consider that salt water has no
maximum of density situated above the freezing-point, that ice is a bad
conductor of heat, and that the clear, newly-formed ice is soon covered by
a layer of snow which hinders radiation, it appears to me to be improbable
that the ice-covering at deep, open places can become so thick that it is
not broken up even by a moderate storm. Even the shallow harbour at
Mussel Bay first froze permanently in the beginning of February, and in
the end of January the swell in the harbour was so heavy, that all the
three vessels of the Swedish Expedition were in danger of being wrecked
—in consequence of the tremendous sea in 80° N.L.in the end of January !
The sea must then have been open very far to the north-west. On the
west coast of Spitzbergen the sea in winter is seldom completely frozen
within sight of land. Even at Barents’ winter haven on the north-east
coast of Novaya Zemlya, the sea during the coldest season of the year was
often free of ice, and Hudson’s statement, “that it is not surprising that
the navigator falls in with so much ice in the North Atlantic, when there
are SO many sounds and bays on Spitzbergen,” shows that even he did not
believe in any ice being formed in the open sea.

vt.] VOYAGES OF THE RUSSIANS AND: NORWEGIANS. 205

on actual observations of the natural conditions of Novaya
Zemlya and the Kara Sea. Of these voyages, mainly made by
Russians and Scandinavians, I shall give an account in the next
chapter. It was these that prepared the way for the success
which we at last achieved.

CHAPTER VI.

The North-east Voyages of the Russians and Norwegians—Rodivan
Ivanov, 1690—The great Northern Expedition, 1734-37—The sup-
posed richness in metals of Novaya Zemlya—Juschkov, 1757—Savva
Loschkin, 1760—Rossmuislov, 1768—Lasarev, 1819—Liitke, 1821-24—
Ivanov, 1822-28—Pachtussov, 1832-35—-Von Baer, 1837—Zivolka and
Moissejev, 1838-39—Von Krusenstern, 1860-62—The Origin and His-
tory of the Polar Sea Hunting—Carlsen, 1868—Ed. Johannesen, 1869-
70—Ulve, Mack, and Quale, 1870—-Mack, 1871—Discovery of the
Relics of Barents’ wintering—Tobiesen’s wintering, 1872-73—The
Swedish Expeditions, 1875 and 1876—Wiggins, 1876-—Later Voyages
to and from the Yenisej.

From what I have stated above it follows that the coast
population of North Russia carried on an active navigation on
the Polar Sea long before the English and the Dutch, and that
commercial expeditions were often undertaken from the White
Sea and the Petchora to the Ob and the Yenisej, sometimes
wholly by searound Yalmal, but most frequently partly by sea and
partly by land transport over that peninsula. In the latter case
the Russians went to work in the following way ; they first sailed
through Yugor Straits, and over the southern part of the Kara
Sea to the mouth of the Mutnaja, a river debouching on Yalmal ;
they then rowed or towed the boats up the river and over two
lakes to a ridge about 350 metres broad, which forms the
watershed on Yalmal between the rivers running west and those
running east; over this ridge the boats and the goods were
dragged to another lake, Selennoe, from which they were finally
carried down the River Selennaja to the Gulf of Obi.

These and similar accounts were collected with great difficulty,
and not without danger, by the Muscovy Company’s envoys; but

1 Compare: “The names of the places that the Russes sayle by, from
Pechorskoie Zauorot to Mongozey ” (Purchas, iii. p. 539): “The voyage of
Master Josias Logan to Pechora, and his wintering there with Master
William Pursglove and Marmaduke Wilson, Anno 1611” (doc. cit. p. 541):
“Extracts taken out of two letters of Josias Logan from Pechora, to Master
Hakluyt, Prebend of Westminster” (/oc. cit. p. 546): “ Other obseruations
of the sayd William Pursglove” (loc. cit. p. 550), The last paper contains
good information regarding the Obi, Tas, Yenisej, Pjisina, Chatanga,
and Lena.

206 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

among the accounts that have been thus preserved we do not
find a single sketch of any special voyage, on the ground of
which we could place a Russian name beside that of Willoughby,
Burrough, Pet and Barents in the older history of the North-
East Passage. The historical sources of Russia too must be
similarly incomplete in this respect, to judge from the otherwise
instructive historical introduction to Liitke’s voyage. Gallant
seamen, but no Hakluyt, were born during the sixteenth and
seventeenth century on the sheres of the White Sea, and
therefore the names of these seamen and the story of their
voyages have long since fallen into complete obscurity, excepting
some in comparatively recent times.

In the second edition of Witsen’s great work we find, at page
913, an account of an unsuccessful hunting voyage to the Kara
Sea, undertaken in 1690, that is to say, at a time when voyages
between the White Sea and the Obi and Yenisej were on the
point of ceasing completely. The account was drawn up by
Witsen from an oral communication by one of the shipwrecked
men, Rodivan Ivanov, who was for several years mate on a
Russian vessel, employed in seal-fishing on the coast of Novaya
Zemlya and Vaygats Island.

On the “" September this Rodivan Ivanov suffered ship-
wreck with two vessels on Serapoa Koska (Serapov’s Bank,)
probably situated in the Southern part of the Kara Sea, The
ice was thrown up here in winter into lofty ice-casts with
such a crashing noise that “the world was believed to be coming
to an end,” and at high water with a strong breeze the whole
island was submerged with the exception of some knolls. On
one of these the winter house was erected. It was built of clay,
which was kneaded with the blood and hair of the seal and
walrus. This mixture hardened to a solid mass, of which the
walls were built with the help of boards from the vessel.
The house thus afforded good protection not only from cold and
bad weather, but also from bears. A furnace was also built
inside the house and fired with driftwood collected on the beach.
Train oil from the captured animals was used for lighting.
There wintered here fifteen men in all, of whom eleven died
of scurvy. Want of exercise perhaps mainly conduced to bring
on this disease. For most of them did not leave the house
during the winter night, five weeks long. Those were most
healthy who had most exercise, as, for instance, the mate, who
was the youngest among the crew, and therefore had to go round
the island to collect wood. Another cause of the great mortality
was the total want of provisions brought from home. For the
first eight days their food consisted of seaweed dredged up from
the bottom of the sea, with which some meal was mixed. After-
wards they ate the flesh of the seal and walrus, and of the Polar

VI.] RODIVAN IVANOV. 207

bear and the fox. The flesh of the bear and the walrus, how-
ever, was considered wnelean, on which account it was eaten
only in case of necessity, and the flesh of the fox had an un-
pleasant flavour. Sometimes the want of food was so great
that they were compelled to eat the leather of their boots and
furs. ‘The number of the seals and walruses which they caught
was so great, “that the killed animals, laid together, would
have formed a heap ninety fathoms in length, of the same
breadth, and six feet high.”* They found, besides, on the island
a stranded whale.

In spring Samoyeds came from the mainland, and plundered
the Russians of part of their catch. Probably for fear of the
Samoyeds, the surviving hunters did not go over the ice to the
mainland, but remained on the desert island until by a fortunate
accident they were rescued by some of their countrymen engaged
in a hunting expedition. In connection with the account of this
voyage Witsen states that the previous year a Russian hunting
vessel stranded east of the Ob.

It is probable that towards the close of the sixteenth century
the Russian hunting voyages to Novaya Zemlya had already
fallen off considerably. The commercial voyages perhaps had
long before altogether ceased. It appears as if after the com-
plete conquest of Siberia the land route over the Ural mountains,
formerly regarded with such superstitious feelings, was preferred,
to the unsafe sea route across the Kara Sea, and as if the Govern-
ment even put obstacles in the way of the latter by setting

1 The stringent regulations regarding fasting of the Russians, especially
the Old Believers, if they be literally observed, form an insuperable obstacle
to the colonisation of high-northern regions, in which, to avoid scurvy,
man requires an abundant supply of fresh flesh. Thus, undoubtedly,
religious prejudices against certain kinds of food caused the failure of the
colony of Old Believers which was founded in 1767 on Kolgujev Island,
in order that its members might undisturbed use their old church books
and cross themselves in the way they considered most proper. The
same cause also perhaps conduced to the failure of the attempts which
are said to have been made after the destruction of Novgorod by Ivan
the Terrible in 1570 by fugitives from that town to found a colony on
Novaya Zemyla (Historische Nachrichten von den Samojeden und den
Lapplindern, Riga und Mietau, 1769, p. 28). This book was first printed in
French at Konigsberg in 1762. The author was Klingstedt, a Swede in
the Russian service, who long lived at Archangel.

* The statement is incredible, and probably originated in some mistake.
To form such a heap of walruses at least 50,000 animals would have been
required, and it is certain that fifteen men could not have killed so many.
If we assume that in the statement of the length and breadth, feet ought
to stand in place of fathoms, we get the still excessive number of 1,500
to 3,000 killed animals. Probably instead of 90 we should have 9, in
which case the heap would correspond to about 500 walruses and seals
killed. The walrus tusks collected weighed 40 pood, which again indicates
the capture of 150 to 200 animals.

208 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

watches at Matvejev Island and at Yugor Straits.1 These were
to receive payments from the hunters and merchants, and the
regulations and exactions connected with this arrangement
deprived the Polar Sea voyages of just that charm which had
hitherto induced the bravest and hardiest of the population
to devote themselves to the dangerous traffic to the Ob, and
to the employment of hunting, in which they were exposed to
so many dangers, and subject to so great privations.

The circumstance to which we have referred may also be the
reason why we do not know of a single voyage in this part
of the Polar Sea during the period which elapsed from the
voyage of Rodivan Ivanov to “the great Northern Expedition.”
It examined, among other parts of the widely extended north
coast of the Russian empire, the southern portion also of the
navigable waters here in question, in the years 1734, 35,
under Muravjev and Paulov, and in 1736, 37 under Malygin,
Skuratov, and Suchotin. Their main working field however did
not lie here, but in Siberia itself; and I shall give an account
of their voyages in the Kara Sea further on, when I come to
treat of the development of our knowledge of the north coast
of Asia. Here I will only state that they actually succeeded,
after untold exertions, in penetrating from the White Sea to the
Ob, and that the maps of the land between that river and the
Petchora, which are still in use, are mainly grounded on the
work of the great northern expedition, but that the bad repute
of the Kara Sea also arose from the difficulties to which these
explorers were exposed, difficulties owing in no small degree
to the defective nature of the vessels, and a number of mistakes
which were made in connection with their equipment, the choice
of the time of sailing, &c.

Like all distant unknown regions, Novaya Zemlya was of old
renowned for its richness in the noble metals. The report indeed
has never been confirmed, and probably was occasioned only by the
occurrence of traces of ore, and the beautiful gold-glancing film
of pyrites with which a number of the fossils found here are
covered; but it has, notwithstanding, given occasion to a number
of voyages to Novaya Zemlya, of which the first known is that
of the mate JUSCHKOV, in 1757. As the mate of a hunting-
vessel he had observed the stones glittering with gold and
silver, and he succeeded in convincing an Archangel tallow-
merchant that they indicated great riches in the interior of
the earth. In order to get possession of these treasures the

1 Witsen, p. 915. Klingstedt states that fifty soldiers with their wives
and children were removed in 1648 to Pustosersk, and that the vojvode
there had so large an income that in three or four years he could ac-
cumulate 12,000 to 15,000 roubles (Historische Nachrichten von den
Samojeden, &c., p. 53).

VI.] NOVAYA ZEMLYA AN ISLAND. 209

tallow-merchant fitted out a vessel, promising Juschkov at
the same time a reward of 250 roubles for the discovery.
The whole undertaking, however, led to no result, because the
discoverer of these treasures died during the passage to
Novaya Zemlya (Liitke, p. 70).

Three years after, in 1760,1 a hunting mate, Savva Loscu-
KIN, a native of Olonets, hit on the idea, which was certainly
a correct one, that the east coast of Novaya Zemlya, which was
never visited by hunters, ought to be richer in game than other
parts of the island. Induced by this idea, and probably also by
the wish to do something extraordinary, he undertook a hunting
expedition thither. Of this expedition we know only that he
actually succeeded in travelling round the whole island, thanks
to the resolution which led him to spend
on this self-imposed task two winters and
three summers. It was proved by this
journey that Novaya Zemlya is actually an
island, a fact which in the middle of last
century was still doubted by many
geographers.?

Even after the failure of Juschkov’s
- expedition the report of the richness of
Novaya Zemlya in metals still maintained
itself, and accordingly Lieutenant? Ross-
MUISLOV was sent out with second mate PRR ene
GuBIN, the Polar Sea pilot TscurrakIn, v. Buce.
and eleven men, to search for the sup-
posed treasures, and at the same time to survey the unknown
portions of the island. The vessel that was used in this Polar
Sea voyage must have been a very remarkable one. For
shortly before the start, leaks, which had to be stopped, were
discovered at many different places in it, and of its power
of sailing Rossmuislov himself says: “So long as the wind
came from the stern the large sail helped us exceedingly well,
but, as soon as it turned and became a head wind, we were
compelled to hoist another smaller sail, in consequence of
which we were driven back to the poimt from which we came.’
Rossmuislov appears to have been a very skilful man in his
profession. Without meeting with any obstacle from ice but
at all events with difficulty enough in consequence of the
unsuitableness of the vessel, he arrived at Matotschkin Sound,

AMMONITE WITH GOLD LUSTRE.
From Novaya Zemlys.

1 According to Liitke, p. 70. Hamel, Tradescant d. dltere, gives the
date 1742-44.

2 Thus on the first map in an atlas published in 1737 by the St. Peters-
burg Academy, Novaya Zemlya is delineated as a peninsula projecting from
Taimur Land north of the Pjasina.

3 Properly ‘Mate, with the rank of Lieutenant,” from which we may
conclude that Rossmuislov wanted the usual education of an officer.

]

210 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

which he carefully surveyed and took soundings in. From a

high mountain at its eastern mouth he saw on the 775% the

Kara Sea completely free of ice—and the way to the Yenisej
thus open; but his vessel was useless for further sailing. He
therefore determined to winter at a bay named Tjulanaja Guba,
near the eastern entrance to Matotschkin Sound. To this place
he removed a house which some hunters had built on the sound
farther to the west, and erected another house, the materials
of which he had brought from home, on a headland jutting out
into the sound a little more to the east. The latter I visited
in 1876. The walls were then still standing, but the flat roof,

VIEW FROM MATOTSCHKIN SCHAR.
(After a drawing by Hj. Théel. 1875.)

loaded with earth and stones, had fallen in, as is often the case
with deserted wooden houses in the Polar regions. The house
was small, and had consisted of a lobby and a room with an
immense fireplace, and sleeping places fixed to the walls.

On the oe ee Matotschkin Sound was frozen over, and some
days after the Kara Sea was covered with ice as far as the eye
could reach. Storms from the north-east, west, and north-west,
with drifting snow of such violence prevailed during the course
of the winter that one could scarcely go ten fathoms from the
house. In its neighbourhood a man was overtaken by such
a storm of drifting snow while hunting a reindeer. When he

VIL] ROSSMUISLOV’S WINTERING, 1768-9. 211

did not return after two days’ absence it was determined to note
him in the journal as having “ perished without burial.”

On the Sth April, 1769, there was a storm from the south-
west, with mist, rain, and hail as large as half a bullet. On the
sari @ dreadful wind raged from the north-west, bringing from
the high mountains a “sharp smoke-like air,’—it was certainly
afohn wind. The painful, depressing effect of this wind is generally
known from Switzerland and from north-western Greenland.
At the latter place it rushes right down with excessive violence
from the ice-desert of the interior. But far from on that
account bringing cold with it, the temperature suddenly rises
above the freezing-point, the snow disappears as if by magic
through melting and evaporation, and men and animals feel
themselves suffermg from the sudden change in the weather.
Such winds besides occur everywhere in the Polar regions in the
neighbourhood of high mountains, and it is probably on their
account that a stay in the hill-enclosed kettle-valleys is in
Greenland considered to be very unhealthy and to lead to
attacks of scurvy among the inhabitants.

The crew remained during the winter whole days, indeed
whole weeks in succession, in their confined dwellings, carefully
made tight, without taking any regular exercise in the open air.
We can easily understand from this that they could not escape
scurvy, by which most of them appear to have been attacked,
and of which seven died, among them Tschirakin. It is sur-
prising that any one of them could survive with such a mode of
life durmg the dark Polar night. The brewing of quass, the
daily baking of bread, and perhaps even the vapour-baths, mainly
contributed to this.

On the <th July the ice on Matotschkin Schar broke up, and
on the =; August the sound was completely free of ice. An
attempt was now made to continue the voyage across the Kara
Sea, and an endeavour was made for this purpose to put the vessel,
defective from the first, and now still further damaged by ice, in
repair, by stopping the leaks, as far as possible, with a mixture
of clay and decayed seaweed. “ Floating coffins” have often
been used in Arctic voyages, and many times with greater success
than the stateliest man-of-war. This time, however, Rossmuislov,
after having sailed some few miles eastward from Matotsch-
kin Sound, in order to avoid certain loss, had to return
to his winter quarters, where he fortunately fell in with a
Russian hunter, with whom he commenced his return to
Archangel. No precious metals were found, nor ‘any pearl-
mussels,” but T'schirakin confided to Rossmuislov the secret that
at a certain place on the south coast he had found a block of
stone of such extraordinary beauty that in the light of day it
shone with the most splendid fire. After Tschirakin’s death

P 2

212 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cuar.

Rossmuislov sought for the stone, but without success, and he
therefore broke out in violent reproaches of his deceased
comrade. I can, however, free him from the blame of deception ;
for, during my voyage in 1875, I found in several of the blocks
of schist in the region small veins of quartz, crossing the mass of
stone. The walls of these veins were covered with hundreds of
sharply-developed rock crystals with mirror-bright faces.
Tschirakin’s precious stone was doubtless nothing else than a
druse of this shining but valueless mineral.

Once more, nearly fifty years after Rossmuislov’s voyage, in
the year 1807, a miner, LUDLOW, was sent out to investigate more
thoroughly the supposed richness of the island in metals. He
returned without having found any ore, but with the first
accounts of the geological formation of the country; and we have
his companion PospsELOV to thank for some careful surveys on
the west coast of Novaya Zemlya.

The next expedition to the island was equipped and sent out
from the naval dockyard at Archangel in 1819 under Lieutenant
LasareEv, and had, in comparison with its predecessors, very
abundant resources. But Lasarev was clearly unfit for the task
he had undertaken, of commanding an Arctic exploratory
expedition. In the middle of summer many of his crew were
attacked by scurvy. Some few weeks after his departure from
Archangel, at a time when pools of excellent drinking-water are
to be found on nearly every large piece of drift-ice, and rapid
torrents of melted snow empty themselves everywhere along the
coast into the sea, he complains of the difficulty of procuring
fresh water, &c. The expedition accordingly was altogether
fruitless.

Of much greater importance were Captain-lieutenant (after-
wards Admiral Count) LUTKE’s voyages to Novaya Zemlya in the
summers of 1821, 1822, 1823, and 1824, voyages conducted with
special skill and scientific insight. The narrative of them forms
one of the richest sources of our knowledge of this part of the
Polar Sea. But as he did not penetrate in any direction farther
than his predecessors, an account of these voyages does not enter
into the plan of the historical part of this work. 7

Among Russian journeys the following may be noticed :—

Those of the mate IVANOV in 1822-28, during which he
surveyed the coast between the Kara river and the Petchora by
overland travelling in Samoyed sleighs.

PACHTUSSOV’S voyages in 1832-35. W. BRANpDT, merchant,

1 These remarkable voyages were described for the first time, after the
accounts of Zivolka, by the academician K.E. v. Baer in Bulletin scienti-
fique publ. par? Acad. Imp. des Sciences de St. Petersburg, t. ti. No. 9, 10,
11 (1837). Before this there does not appear to have been in St. Petersburg

any knowledge of Pachtussov’s voyages, the most remarkable which the
history of Russian Polar Sea exploration has to show.

VI.] PACHTUSSOV’S VOYAGES. 23

and Kroxov, chief of the civil service, at Archangel, sent out in
1832 an expedition with very comprehensive aims from that town,
for the purpose of re-establishing the sea-route to the Yenise},
of surveying the east coast of Novaya Zemlya, and of walrus-
hunting there. Three vessels were employed, viz., a “ carbasse ”’
manned by ten men, including the Commander-leutenant im
the corps of mates Pachtussov, who in previous voyages with
Ivanov had become well acquainted with land and people along

FRIEDRICH BENJAMIN VON LUTKE.
Born in 1797 in St. Petersburg.

the coasts of the Polar Sea;* the schooner YVenisey under
Lieutenat Krorov with ten men; and a hunting Jodja com-
manded by the hunting mate GwosDAREY. Pachtussov was to
undertake the east coast of Novaya Zemlya, Krotov to sail

1 The carbasse was named, like the vessels of Lasarev and Lutke, the
Novaya Zemlya. It was forty-two feet long, fourteen feet beam, and six
feet deep, decked fore and aft, and with the open space between protected
by canvas from breakers.

214 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

hrough Matotschkin Sound and across the Kara Sea to the
Yenisej, and Gwosdarev to carry on hunting in order to cover
part of the costs of the expedition.

Pachtussov could not penetrate into the Kara Sea, but wintered
the first time on South Novaya Zemlya in 70° 36’ N.L. and 59°
32’ E.L. (Greenwich), in an old house which he found there, and
which according to an inscription on a cross in its neighbourhood
had been built in 1759. This ruinous house was repaired with
driftwood, which was found in great abundance in that region.
A separate bath-house was built, and was connected with the
dwelling-house by a passage formed of empty barrels and
covered with canvas. Eleven days were spent in putting the
old house into such repair that it could be occupied. It was
afterwards kept so warm that the inmates could stay there in
their shirt-sleeves without freezing. The Commander, clear-
headed and specially fit for his post as he was, did not permit
his crew to fall into habits of idleness, dirt, and laziness, but
kept them to regular work, bathing and change of linen twice
a week. Every second hour meteorological observations were
taken. During the whole winter the crew remained in good
health, but in spring (March) scurvy broke out, notwithstanding ~
the precautions that were taken, and two men died of it in May.
Many times during winter the ice broke up, and at a short
distance from the land the Kara Sea was open as far as the eye
could reach. A herd of reindeer numbering about 500 head
were seen in the end of September; a number of foxes were
taken in traps, and two Polar bears were killed.
seen for the first time in spring on the 4° of May.

Next summer Pachtussov rowed up along the east coast to
71° 33 N.L. On the west bank of a river, called Savina, he
found avery good harbour. He found there the remains of a
hut, with a cross erected beside it, on which was the inscription
“ Savva Th——anov 9th June 1742,” which he considered to
belong to the time of Savva Loschkin’s voyage. After his
return from this boat journey Pachtussov went on board his
vessel and sailed along the east coast north of Matotschkin Sound
from the #" July to the 3* August without meeting with any
obstacle from ice. During this voyage he passed a very good
harbour in 72° 26’ N.L., in a bay, called Lutke’s Bay. Pach-
tussov then returned through Matotschkin Sound to the Petchora.
Even along the east coast of North Novaya Zemlya the sea
was open, but the stock of provisions, imtended at their
departure from Archangel for fourteen months, was now so
low, that the gallant Polar explorer could not avail himself
of this opportunity of perhaps circumnavigating the whole of
Novaya Zemlya.

Of the two other vessels that sailed from Archangel at the

Geese were

V1.] PACHTUSSOV’S VOYAGES, 1833-35. 215

same time as Pachtussov’s, the lodja returned heavily laden

with the spoils of the chase, but on the other hand nothing

was ever heard of the Yenise7, A concern, not without

justification, for its fate, and the desire to acquire as good

knowledge of the east coast of the North Island as had been

obtained of that of the South, gave occasion to Pachtussov’s

second voyage.

For this the Government fitted out two vessels, a schooner and

a “‘carbasse,” which were named after the two officers of the

Yenisej, Krotov and Kasakoy. The command of the former was

undertaken by Pachtussov, and. of the latter by the mate

ZivotKa. This time they wintered in 1834-35 on the south

side of Matotschkin Sound at the mouth of the river Tschirakina,

in a house built for the purpose, for which they used, besides
materials brought with them, the remains of three old huts,

found in the neighbourhood, and the wreck of Rossmuislov’s

vessel which still lay on the beach. The house was a palace in
comparison with that in which Pachtussov wintered before.
It consisted of two rooms, one 21 feet by 16 feet, intended”
for the crew (fourteen men), the other 12 feet by 10 feet,
for the officers and surgeon, with a bath-house in addition.
Matotschkin Sound was frozen over for the first time on the #th
November. The thermometer never sank below the freezing-
point of mercury, and the cold of winter could be easily borne,
because the crew wore the Samoyed dress. But the snow-
storms were so severe, that sometimes it was impossible for eight
days at a time to leave the house, which was so snowed up that
the opening in the roof for smoke had several times to be used
asa door. The house had no true chimney, but was built like a
Lapp hut. Eleven of the bears, who came in large numbers

to the hut, were killed, one of them on the roof and another in
the porch. During winter the crew were kept in constant em-
ployment in killing foxes and at other work. Their state of
health was also very good for the circumstances of the time.

Only two men died. In spring Matotschkin Sound and part of
the east coast of the North Island were surveyed by means of
sledge journeys, after which an attempt was made during summer

to circumnavigate the North Island, but without success. Light-

ning accompanied by heavy rain was observed on the #th June,

On the 4; September they sailed back to Archangel. Unfortu-

nately soon after his arrival there Pachtussov fell ill of nervous

fever and died on the ¥th November, 1835. It was a great loss,

for by his devotion to the task he had undertaken, by judgment,

courage, and endurance, he takes one of the foremost places

among the Polar explorers of all countries. Besides, few of the

older Arctic expeditions have brought home such a series of
valuable astronomical determinations of position, geodetical

216 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

measurements, meteorological and tidal observations, &c., as
Pachtussov.*

In 1837 the famous naturalist K. E. von Barr undertook a
voyage to Novaya Zemlya, accompanied by Lieutenant ZIVOLKA,
LEHMANN the geologist, RODER the draughtsman, and PHILIPPOV
the conservator.2. They visited Matotschkin Schar, penetrated
by boat to its eastern end and found the Kara Sea open, landing
afterwards at Besimannaja Bay, Nechvatova, and on an island
in Kostin Schar. The expedition thus nowhere penetrated so
far as its predecessors, but it is of importance as the first
examination of the natural history of the Polar Sea surrounding
Novaya Zemlya carried out by actual men of science. With all
the respect we must entertain for von Baer’s great name as a
scientific man, it cannot be denied that, through his papers on
the natural history of the island, grounded on a cursory inspec-
tion, a number of erroneous ideas regarding the natural
conditions of the eastern Polar Sea obtained a footing in scien-
tific literature. .

In order to complete the survey of the island the Russian
Government sent out in 1838 a new expedition under Lieu-
tenants Zivolka and MoissgJEv. They wintered in 1838-39 in
Melkaja Guba on the west coast of Novaya Zemlya in 73° 57’
N.L.; but on this occasion Pachtussov’s judgment and insight
were wanting, and the wintering was very unfortunate. Of the
twenty-five men belonging to the expedition most were attacked
during winter by scurvy; nine died, among them Zivolka him-
self. During spring, excursions for the purpose of surveying the
neighbouring coasts had to be broken off because they had not
brought snow-glasses with them—a thing that Pachtussov
did not neglect, being accustomed besides to blacken the under
eyelid as a protection against the blinding brightness of the
snow. By the expedition, however, considerable stretches of
the west coast of Novaya Zemlya were surveyed, and valuable
contributions to a knowledge of the climatic conditions of this
region obtained. These turned out to be less severe than had
been expected. During winter the thermometer never sank
below — 33°; in July there were only two nights of frost, and on
two oceasions + 18° was observed in the shade; in August there
were only three hours of frost. All this depends of course on

1 The details of Pachtussov’s voyages are taken partly from von Baev’s
work already quoted, partly from Carl Svenske, Novaya. Zemlya, &c., St.
Petersburg, 1866 (in Russian, published at the expense of M. K. Sidoroff),
and J. Spérer, Nowaja Semlii in geographischer, naturhistorischer und
volkswirthschaftlicher Beziehung, nach den (Quellen bearbeitet. Erginz-Hett.
No. 21 zu Peterm. Geogr. Mitthetlungen, Gotha, 1867.

2 Bulletin scientifique publié par 1 Académie Imp. de St. Petersburg, t. ii.
(1837), p. 315; iii. (1838), p. 96, and other places.

VI. | VON KRUSENSTERN’S VOYAGE. 217

the neighbourhood of warm marine currents and of a sea open
all the year round at a short distance from the coast.

With this unfortunate and to all appearance ill-arranged
expedition the Russian Novaya Zemlya voyages ceased for a
long time. For before the beginning of the Norwegian hunting
we have only two other Russian voyages to notice in our sketch
of the history of the North East passage.

The first of these owed its origin to the desire of the captain
of a Russian man-of-war, PAUL VON KRUSENSTERN, to under-
take a voyage in the Polar Sea in a schooner, the Yermak,
which belonged to him and which was for the time lying at the
Petchora, in order to survey the coasts lying to the eastward.
He intended himself to undertake the command, and to take

Hi : ) H) i
1 ii Wy, DD,
Nf
MH) Mg UP
nC:

qi

AUGUST KARLOVITZ ZIVOLKA.
Born in 1810 at Warsaw ; died in 1839 on Novaya Zemlya.
(After a pen-and-ink drawing communicated by Herr Paul Daschkoff.)

with him as second in command his son PAUL VON KRUSENSTERN,
lieutenant in the Russian marine. The latter was sent before
to equip the Yermak, which he did with wonderful judgment
and skill, in the best way possible, in a region where at that
time nearly every requisite for the equipment of a vessel was
wanting. The elder Krusenstern was unable to reach the place
of sailing in time, on which account the command was given to
the son.

He left the mouth of the Petchora on the ai aap 1860.
Three days after he reached the Kara port, which was completely

218 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

free of ice, as was the sea to the eastward. But the late season
of the year, the defective equipment of the Yermak, and, it
would appear, the wording of the orders he had received,
compelled him to turn after he had penetrated some distance
into the Kara Sea. On the #th September accordingly he was
again at the Petchora, without having reached his goal. The
attempt to penetrate eastwards from this river was resumed at
the instance of MICHAEL SIDOROFF, afterwards so well known
as the restless promoter of sea-communication between Siberia
and Europe. The Yermak was repaired, along with a decked
Norwegian pilot-boat, which was named the Embrio. The

PAUL VON KRUSENSTERN, JUNIOR.
Born at Revel in 1834; died at Dorpat in 1871

command was undertaken by P. von Krusenstern, junior. He
left the anchorage Kuya on the Petchora on the *? August.
On the qth August, the two small vessels sailed into Yugor
Schar, after having been long detained during their course by
storms and head-winds. Some huts erected by hunters were
seen on the right shore of the sound, and on both sides of it

Samoyed “chums” (tents of reindeer skin) and reindeer. The

vI.] ; VON KRUSENSTERN’S VOYAGE, 1862. 219

inhabitants had climbed up on the roofs and indicated their
astonishment by gesticulations. Both vessels anchored in the
neighbourhood of Vaygats Island. But a couple of hours
afterwards large masses cf ice drove with an altered current into
the harbour, forced the Yermak from its anchor and carried the
vessel into the Kara Sea. It was only with great trouble that it
was released from the ice and anchored in the eastern mouth of
Yugor Schar.

27 . . .
On the jth von Krusenstern again weighed anchor, either

MICHAEL KONSPANTINOVITSCH SIDOROFY.
Born in 1823 at Archangel.

to sail to the eastward or to search for a more secure anchorage
than that which he had been compelled for the time to make
use of. But the wind was so light that he could not hold a
course independent of the currents. It was, therefore, necessary
to moor the vessel to a large ice-field, and with this the
Yermak during the following days drifted farther and farther.
Soon the vessel was completely enclosed by the ice, and thus
rendered unmanageable. The weather was often fine, the
thermometer showed + 4°, a strong aérial reflection elevated

220 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

images of the pieces of ice at the horizon, and gave them the
most wonderful and beautiful forms. Everywhere there were
upon the ice fresh-water pools, some of which were of great
extent and of no inconsiderable depth. Thus, on the ice-field
lying nearest the vessel there were different “lakes,” one of
which was used for drinking, another for filling the water-casks,
a third to supply washing-water to the crew, and a fourth for
washing their clothes.

On the S74, the ice began to be pressed together by a light
W.S.W. wind. Convinced that the vessel would soon be nipped,
the men on board began to save the stock of provisions and the.
boats, by placing them on the ice, but the pressure soon ceased.
There fell a heavy rain, which afterwards, when the wind
changed to north-west, passed into snow. On the 774%" the
coast of Yalmal was sighted. A fathom-thick ice-floe shot
under the vessel and caused it to heel over to starboard. The
following day there was a storm from the §.S.W. with snow
The ice forcing itself forward shook the vessel several times so
violently that the crew rushed up to save the provisions, &c., on
the ice. They were now in the neighbourhood of 70° N.L. and
65° E.L. (Greenwich), almost right off the mouth of the Kara
river. The crew worked the whole day with axes and iron bars
hewing off the sharp projecting corners of the ice-blocks that
were pressed against the vessel. On the 774%" there was warm
weather with rain. The ice was in so violent motion that it
was impossible to walk upon it. On the afternoon of the same
day the Yermak sustaimed several viclent concussions, and the
hull was lifted one foot. On the ? September, a violent storm
broke out, which drove the vessel to the north-east. It was ex-
pected every moment that the vessel would be nipped, and a
tent was accordingly pitched on the ice, in order that part of the
provisions from the hold might be placed in it. Wood even was
carried to it. It was Russia’s thousand-years’ day, and it was
celebrated with a festive ball and merry songs, although they
every instant expected their vessel to be crushed by the masses
of ice that were pressed together by the fearful storm. On the
uh September, the stem of the vessel was forced five feet above
the water-line, and the whole night a continual cracking of
timbers was heard in the hull) The water rose rapidly to a
depth of two feet. Every man left the vessel and removed
to the ice, but soon after the immense ice-field on which the
tent was pitched went in pieces, while the leak in the vessel
closed, and the crew in consequence went on board again. On
the “" September, the vessel was again pressed so, that the deck
at times was bent to the form of a vault. On the +; September,
von Krusenstern called the crew together that they might
choose from their number three persons to advise with the

VI.] VON KRUSENSTERN, 1862. 221

commander on the best means of making their escape, and two
days after the vessel was abandoned, after-a meal at which the
crew were literally offered all the house afforded. They then
broke up for a journey to land, which was exceedingly difficult
on account of the unevenness of the ice. They were soon
obliged to leave the boat, which they had at first endeavoured to
drag along with them over the ice, and take the most indis-
pensable of the provisions on their own backs. On leaving the
ship a sailor had secretly got possession of so much brandy, that
during the first day’s march he had the opportunity of drinking
himself dead drunk. To carry him along was not possible, to
wait was not advisable. He was left therefore to sleep off the
drink ; and in order that he might do so as soon as possible they
took off his-clothes and left him lying upon the ice with only
his shirt on. Next day, however, he got up with his comrades
after following their track in the darkness the whole night.
Open places were often met with, which the travellers had to
cross on pieces of drift-ice rowed forward by boat-hooks. Once
when the shipwrecked men were ferrying themselves over upon
a piece of ice which was already fully loaded, six walruses were
seen in the neighbourhood. They showed a disposition to
accompany the seafarers on the piece of ice, which in that case
would certainly have sunk, and it was only after a ball had been
sent through the leader’s head that the animals gave up their
plan for resting, which gave evidence of a gregariousness as
great as their want of acquaintance with mankind. After
Krusenstern and his companions had for several days in succes-
sion drifted backwards and forwards on a piece of ice in the
neighbourhood of land, and traversed long stretches by jumping
from one piece of ice to another, they at last reached the shore
on the th September. In the immediate neighbourhood they

found an encampment, whose inhabitants (Samoyeds) gave the
shipwrecked men a friendly reception, and entertained them
with the luxuries of the reindeer herd—raw and cooked reindeer
flesh, remdeer tongues, reindeer marrow—raw fish and goose-
fat. After the meal was finished the exhausted wanderers lay
down to sleep in the Samoyed tents on the soft reindeer skins ;
“all sorrows and difficulties were forgotten ; we felt a boundless
enjoyment, as if we had come to paradise.” Thence they
travelled in reindeer sledges to Obdorsk, everywhere received in
a friendly and hospitable manner by the wild tribes on the way,
although the hospitality sometimes became troublesome, as for
instance when an Ostyak compelled von Krusenstern to drink
tea six times a day, and six cups each time, and offered him
as a special luxury an extract of tobacco in brandy."

1 Paul von Krusenstern, Skizzen aus sienem Seemannsleben. Seinen Freunden
gewidmet. Hirschberg in Silesia, without date.

222 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAD.

Krusentern’s adventurous journey across the Kara Sea is one
of the many proofs that a Polar navigator ought above every-
thing to avoid being beset. The very circumstance that the
ice-field, in which he became fixed in the neighbourhood of
Yugor Schar, could drift across to the east coast of the Kara
Sea, shows that it was for the most part open, and that a
steamer or a good sailing-vessel that year, and probably also
the preceding, might very readily have reached the mouth of
the Ob or the Yenisej, The narrative of von Krusenstern’s
journey is besides the first complete sketch we have of a passage
from west to east over the Kara Sea. Little idea could any one
then have that within a simgle decade a number of vessels
should sail free and unhindered along this route.

Soon after the two voyages I have described above, and
before they became generally known in the geographical litera-
ture of Western Europe, a new era began in the navigation of
the Kara Sea, which was brought about by the Norwegian
hunters being compelled to seek for new fields of sport on and
beyond Novaya Zemlya.

The history of the Spitzbergen hunting has not yet been
written in a satisfactory way, and is in many respects very
obscure. It is supposed that after the discovery of Spitzbergen
in 1596 by Barents, the hunting in the Polar Seas began during
BENNET’S first voyage in 1603, and that the whale-fishmg was
introduced by JoNAS PooLE in 1610. But already in the follow-
ing year Poole, whose vessel was then wrecked on the west coast -
of Spitzbergen, found in Horn Sound a ship from Hull, to
which he gave charge of saving his cargo, and two years after
the English were compelled, in order to keep foreigners from
the fishing field they wished to monopolise, to send out six
men-of-war, which found there eight Spanish, and a number of
Dutch and French vessels (Purchas, iii. pp. 462, 716, &e.).
Even in our days the accounts of new sources of wealth do not
spread so speedily as in this case, unless, along with the history
of the discovery which was written by Hakluyt, Purchas, De
Veer, &c., there had been an unknown history of discovery and
the whale-fishing, of which it may still be possible to collect
some particulars from the archives of San Sebastian, Dunkirk,
Hull, and other ports.

However this may be, it is certain that the English and
Dutch North-east voyages gave origin to a whale-fishery in the
sea round Spitzbergen, which increased by many millions the
national wealth of these rich commercial states. The fishing
went on at first immediately along the coasts, from which,
however, the whales were soon driven, so that the whale-fishers
had to seek new fishing-grounds, first farther out to sea between
Spitzbergen and Greenland, then in Davis’ Strait, and finally in

vI.] THE SPITZBERGEN HUNTING. 223

the South Polar Sea, or in the sea on both sides of Behring’s
Straits.

Spitzbergen, when the whale-fishing ceased in its neighbour-
hood, was mostly abandoned, until the Russians began to settle
there, principally for the hunting of the mountain fox and the
reindeer. Of their hunting voyages we know very little, but
that they had been widely prosecuted is shown by the remains

it

Ie

NORWEGIAN HUNTING SLOOP.
The Proeven, employed by the Swedish Expedition to the Yenisej in 1875.

of their dwellings or huts on nearly all the fjords of Spitzbergen.
They seem to have often wintered, probably because the
defective build of their vessels only permitted them to sail to
and from Spitzbergen during the height of summer, and they
could not thus take part without wintering in the autumn
hunting, during which the fattest reindeer are got; nor could
the thick and valuable fur of the winter-fox be obtained without

224 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

wintering.’ But the hunting voyages of the Russians to Spitz-
bergen have also long ceased. The last voyage thither took
place in 1851-52, and had a very unfortunate issue for most of
those who took part in it, twelve men dying out of twenty. On
the other hand, the Norwegian voyages to Spitzbergen for the
seal and walrus-hunting, begun in the end of last century, still
go on. Their history, too, is, even here in the North, very
incompletely known, at least to 1858, when the Swedish scien-
tific expeditions began regularly to visit those regions, and to
include in the narratives of their voyages more or less complete
accounts of the Norwegian hunting, an example that has since
been followed, though by no means very completely or systema-
tically, by the editors of Norwegian and foreign journals, in
the first place by Petermann’s Mittheilungen.?

Between 1860 and 1870 the game (walrus, seal, bear, and
reindeer) began to diminish in such a degree that the hunters
were compelled to seek for themselves new hunting-grounds.
They turned to the north and east, the less accessible parts of
Spitzbergen, afterwards still farther eastwards towards Novaya
Zemlya, and beyond this island to the Kara Sea, and they
penetrated farther than all their predecessors. In the history
of the North-east Passage therefore some pages must always be
devoted to the bold voyages to Novaya Zemlya of these small
hunting sloops, provisioned only for the summer.

The Norwegian hunter who first visited Novaya Zemlya was
ELLING CARLSEN, afterwards known as a member of the
Austrian Polar expedition. In 1868 he sailed in a sloop from
Hammerfest on a hunting voyage eastward, forced his way into
the Kara Sea through the Kara Port, but soon returned through
Yugor Schar, and then sailed northwards as far as Cape Nassau.
Induced by the abundance of game, he returned next year to the
same regions, and then succeeded in penetrating the Kara Sea
as far as the neighbourhood of Beli Ostrov, whence he returned
to Norway through Matotschkin Schar. Carlsen’s lead was

1 Information regarding the mode of life of the Russian hunters on the

coasts of Spitzbergen is to be found in P. A. le Roy, Relation des avantures
arrivées a quatre matelots Russes, dc. 1766 ; Tschitschagov’s Reise nach dem
Hismeer, St. Petersburg, 1793; John Bacstrom, Account of a voyage to
Npitzbergen, 1780, London, 1808 (as stated; I have not seen this work) ;
'B. M. Keilhau, Reise i Ost og Vest Finmarken, samt til Beeren-Eiland og
Spetsbergen i Aarene 1827 og 1828, Christiania, 1831; A. Erman, Archiv
fiir wissenschaftliche Kunde von Russland, Part 13 (1854), p. 260; K.
Chydenius, Svenska expeditionen till Spetsbergen 1861 (p. 435) ; Dunér and
Nordenskiéld, Svenska Expeditioner till Spetsbergen och Jan Mayen 1863 och
1864 (p. 101).

2 Before 1858 there is to be found in Petermann’s Mittheilungen only a
single notice of the Norwegian Spitzbergen hunting, the existence of
which was at the time probably known to no great number of European
geographers.

vi. J JOHANNESEN’S VOYAGE, 1869. 225

immediately followed by several Norwegian hunters, one of
whom, EpwArD JOHANNESEN, made a very remarkable voyage,
of which I will here give a brief account.

Johannesen anchored on the 31st May, 1869, at Meschdu-
schar Island, without having seen any drift-ice in the course
of his voyage. He then sailed up along the west coast of
Novaya Zemlya in nearly open water past Matotschkin Sound
to Cape Nassau, which was reached on the 19th June. Hence
he returned, following the coast toward the south, until, on the
29th June, he sailed through the Kara Port into the Kara Sea.

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ELLING CARLSEN.
born at Tromsoe in 1819.

This was passed in very open water, and after coming to its
eastern side he followed the coast of Yalmal towards the north
to Beli Ostrov. This island was reached on the 7th August, and
from it he steered south along the east coast of Novaya Zemlya
to the Kara Port, through which he returned to No orway."

The same year. the English sportsman, Mr. JOHN PALLISER ?
sailed across the Kara Sea, through Matotschkin Schar to Beli
Ostrov. He returned through ‘Yugor Schar with abundance

1 The first account of this voyage was published in Ofversigt af Svenska
Vetenskaps-akademiens forhandlingar, 1870, p. 111.
2 Athenewm, 1869, p. 498. Petermann’s Mittheilungen, 1869, p. 391.

Q

26 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

iw)

of booty? from the hunting-grounds where formerly the
walruses tumbled undisturbed among the drift-ice, and where
the white bear has not yet met his superior.”

These voyages are amongst the most remarkable that the
history of Arctic navigation can show. They at once overturned
all the theories which, on the ground of an often superficial
study of preceding unsuccessful voyages, had been set up
regarding the state of the ice east of Novaya Zemlya, and they

EDWARD HOLM JOHANNESEN.
Born in 1844, at Balsfjord Parsonage.

thus form the starting-point of a new era in the history of the
North-east Passage.

After his return to Norway Johannesen sent to the Academy
of Sciences in Stockholm a paper on his voyage in 1869, and on
his hydrographical observations in the Kara Sea, for which he
received a silver medal. This I was commissioned to send him,
and in the correspondence which took place regarding it I on
one occasion said in jest that a circumnavigation of Novaya

1 Palliser’s game consisted of 49 walruses, 14 Polar bears and 25
seals; that of the working hunters was many times greater. All the
vessels which went from Tromsoe that year captured 805 walruses, 2,302
seals, 53 bears, &c.

2 Sidoroff too started in 1869 on a north-east voyage in a steamer of his
own, the George. However, he only reached the Petchora, and the statement
that went the round of the press, that the George actually reached the Ob,
is thus one of the many mistakes which so readily find their way into the

news of the day.

VI. ] NOVAYA ZEMLYA CIRCUMNAVIGATED. 227

Zemlya would certainly entitle him to a gold medal from the
same famous scientific institution that had given him the silver
medal. I myself travelled the followimg summer, in 1870, to
Greenland, and returned thence late in autumn. I then had
the pleasure of receiving from Captain Johannesen a new paper,
afterwards inserted in the Ofversigt, of the transactions of the
Royal Academy of Sciences for the year 1871, p. 157, “ Hydro-
grafiske lakttagelser under en Fangsttour 1870 rundt om Novaja
Zemlja.” Johannesen now as on the first occasion sailed back-
wards and forwards along the west coast of Novaya Zemlya,
then through the Kara Port, which was passed on the 12th July.
He then followed the east coast of Vaygats to Mestni Island,
where he came in contact with Samoyeds, in connection with
which he makes the remark, certainly quite unexpected by
philologists, that in the language of the Samoyeds “certain
Norwegian words were recognised.” Their exterior was not
at all attractive. They had flat noses, their eyes were dread-
fully oblique, and many had also oblique mouths. The men
received the foreigners drawn up in a row, with the women
in the second rank. All were very friendly. On the 11th
August he was on the coast of Yalmal in 71° 48’ N.L., whence
he sailed over to Novaya Zemlya in order to take on board wood
and water. He anchored in the neighbourhood of Udde Bay in
73° 48’ N.L., and saw there twenty wild reindeer. Then he
sailed again over the Kara Sea to Yalmal.

During these cruisings in the Kara Sea the summer had
passed. Johannesen’s vessel was now full, but notwithstanding
this he determined, at a season of the year when the walrus-
hunters commonly return to Norway, to see whether the offered
prize could not be won into the bargain. The course was shaped
first to the north-east, then westward to the north coast of
Novaya Zemlya, which was reached on the 3rd September. The
whole sea here was open, which Johannesen, on the ground
of finding Norwegian fishing-net floats among the driftwood,
attributed to the action of the Gulf Stream. Hence he returned
to Norway, after having completed a voyage which some years
before all geographical authorities would have considered an
impossibility. I need scarcely mention that the Academy in
Stockholm redeemed the promise which one of its members had
given without the necessary authority. Johannesen was then
twenty-six years old. Son of a skilful hunter, he had from his
childhood taken part in Arctic voyages, and thus grown up in
the employment to which he had devoted himself.

The same year several other walrus-hunters also made remark-
able voyages in the Kara Sea. Captain E. A. ULVE first sailed
along the west coast of Novaya Zemlya to 76° 47’ N.L., then
back to Matotschkin Schar, through which he passed on the

Q 2

228 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [oHap,

oai€

7th and 8th August into the Kara Sea, which was completely
free of ice, with the exception of some few very scattered pieces.
After sailing backwards and forwards in different directions in
the Kara Sea, he returned through the Kara Port on the 24th
August. Captain F. E. Mack made a similar voyage. He
sailed from the 28th June to the 8th July northwards along the
west coast of Novaya Zemlya, which was free of ice between the
Petchora and the Admiralty peninsula, where fast ice was
found, and fourteen sailing vessels and two steamers were now
assembled. On the 8th and 9th June thunder was heard here.
From the Admiralty peninsula Mack sailed again, first to the
south, and then, on the 18th July, through Matotschkin Sound
into the Kara Sea, which was nearly free of ice. Captain P.
QUALE, again, and A. O, NEDREVAAG, sailing master, penetrated
through Yugor Sound into the Kara Sea, and sailed there to
75° 22’ N.L., and 74° 35’ E.L. (Greenwich),

Also in 1871 a number of walrus-hunters made remarkable
voyages in the Kara Sea. Of these, however, only one, Mack,
in the schooner Pole Star, penetrated eastwards farther than all
his predecessors. On the 14th June he sailed into the Kara
Sea through the Kara Port, but found the sea still covered with
continuous fast ice, from 1°8 to 2 metres in thickness. He
therefore turned and sailed northwards along the west coast of
Novaya Zemlya to the Gulf Stream Islands (76° 10’ N.L.),
where he remained till the 3rd of August. The temperature
of the air rose here to + 10°5. The name, which the Norwegian
walrus-hunters have given these islands, owes its origin to the
large number of objects from southern seas which the Gulf
Stream carries with it thither, as floats from the Norwegian
fisheries, with their owner's marks frequently recognisable by
the walrus-hunters—beans of Hntada gigalobium from the West
Indies, pumice-stone from Iceland, fragments of wrecked vessels,
&e. On the 3rd of August Mack passed the northernmost
promontory of Novaya Zemlya. Hence he sailed into the Kara
Sea, where at first he fell in with ice. Farther on, however, the
ice disappeared completely, and Mack on the 12th of September
reached 75° 25' N.L, and 82° 30° E.L. (Greenwich) accord-

1 Petermann’s Mittheilungen, 1871, p. 97. Along with Ulve’s, Mack’s,
and Quale’s voyages, Petermann refers to a voyige round Novaya Zemlya
by T. Torkildsen. In this case, however, Petermann was exposed to a
possibly unintended deception. Torkildsen, who visited the Polar Sea for
the first time in 1870, indeed made the voyage round Novaya Zemlya, but
only as a rescued man on Johannesen’s vessel. Torkildsen’s own vessel, the
Alfa, had been wrecked on the 13th July at the bottom of Kara Bay, after
which the skipper and six men were saved by Johannesen, yet by no
means so that Torkildsen, as 1s stated by Petermann, had the least com-
mand of the vessel that saved him. (Cf. Tromsoe Stiftstidende, 1871,

No. 23.)

Vi] CARLSEN’S VOYAGE. 229

ing to Petermann, but 81° 11’ Long. according to the Zromsoe
Stiftstidende. He returned through -Yugor Schar, which was
passed on the 26th September.1 The same year E. Johannesen,
after long endeavouring without success to make his way into
the ‘Kara Sea through the southern strait, sailed northwards
along the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, and did not leave Cape
Nassau until the 15th October.

From the same year too Petermann also publishes very
remarkable journals of the Norwegian walrus-hunting captains,
S. Topresen, H. Cu. JoHANNESEN, J. N. ISAKSEN, SOREN
JOHANNESEN, DoERMA, SIMONSEN, and E. CARLSEN ; but as none
of these gallant seamen that year penetrated to the north or
east beyond the points which their predecessors had reached,
I may be allowed with regard to their voyages to refer to
Mittheilungen for 1872 (pp. 386—391 and 395), also to the
maps which are inserted in the same volume of that journal
(pl. 19 and 20), and which are grounded on the working out by
Prof. H. Moun, of Christiania, of his countrymen’s observations.
With respect to Captain E. Carlsen’s voyage, however, it may
be stated, that in the course of it a discovery was made, which
has been represented as that of an Arctic Pompeii, remarkably
well protected against the depredation of the tooth of Time, not
indeed by lava and volcanic ashes, but by ice and snow. For
when Carlsen on the 9th September landed on the north-east
coast of Novaya Zemlya in 76° 7’ N.L., he found there a house,
10 metres long and 6 metres wide, with the roof fallen in, long
since abandoned and filled with gravel and ice. From this
frozen gravel were dug up a large number of household articles,
books, boxes, &e., which showed that they were relics of Barents’
winter dwelling, which now, almost three hundred years after
the place had been abandoned, came to the light of day, so well
preserved that they gave a lively idea of the way in which the
European passed his first winter in the true Polar regions.
When Carlsen had erected a cairn in which he placed a tin
canister containing an account of the discovery, he took on
board the most important of the articles which he had found
and returned to Norway. There he sold them at first for 10,800
crowns to an Englishman, Mr. Ellis C. Lister Kay, who after- *
wards made them over for the price he had paid for them to the
Dutch Government. They are now to be found arranged at the
Marine Department at the Hague in a model room, which is an
exact reproduction of the interior of Barents’ house on Novaya
Zemlya.”

a Stiftstidende, 1871, No. 83; Petermann’s Mittheilungen, 1872,
Ps Cf. The Three Voyages of William Barents, by Gerrit de Veer, 2nd

Edition, with an Introduction by Lieutenant Koolemans Beynen, London,
1876 (Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, No. 54).

250 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cuaP.

After Carlsen, Barents’ winter haven was visited in the year
1875 by the Norwegian walrus-hunter, M. GUNDERSEN, who
among other things found there a broken chest containing two
maps and a Dutch translation of the narrative of Pet’s and
Jackman’s voyages, and in the year 1876 by Mr. CHARLES
GARDINER, who through more systematic excavations succeeded
in collecting a considerable additional number of remarkable
things, among which were the ink-horn and the pens which the
Polar travellers had used nearly three centuries ago, and a
powder-horn, containing a short account, signed by Heemskerk
and Barents, of the most important incidents of the expedition.
Gundersen’s jind is still, as far as I know, at Hammerfest ;
Gardiner’s has been handed over to the Dutch Government to
be preserved along with the other Barents relics at the Hague.

In 1872 the state of the ice both north of Spitzbergen and
round Novaya Zemlya was exceedingly unfavourable, and several
of the scientific expeditions and hunting vessels, which that
year visited the Arctic Ocean, there underwent severe calamities
and misfortunes. Five of the best hunting vessels from
Tromsoe were lost in the ice; the Swedish expedition, which
that year started for the north, could not, as was intended, erect
its winter dwelling on the Seven Islands, but was compelled to
winter at the more southerly Mussel Bay; and the Austrian
expedition under the leadership of Payer and Weyprecht was
beset by ice a few hours after its campaign had commenced in
earnest. It is well known how this earefully equipped expedition
afterwards for two winters in succession drifted about in the
Polar Sea, until it finally came toa standstill at a previously un-
known land lying north of Novaya Zemlya, which was named
after the Austrian Emperor, Franz Josef. These two expeditions,
however, did not touch the territory of the Vega’s voyage, on
which account I cannot here take any further notice of them.’
But the same year a wintering took place on the west coast of
Novaya Zemlya, of which I consider that I ought to give a
somewhat more detailed account, both because in the course of
it one of the most gallant Polar voyagers of Norway met his

1 The sea in the neighbourhood of Spitzbergen on the east was on the
other hand very open that year, so that it was possible for the same time
to reach and circumnavigate the large island situated to the east of Spitz-
bergen, which had been seen in 1864 by Dunér and me from the top of
White Mount in the interior of Stor Fjord.

2 Nor does space permit me to give an account of various expeditions,
which indeed concerned Novaya Zemlya, but did not penetrate farther
eastward than their predecessors ; for instance, the Rosenthal expedition of
1871, in which the well-known African traveller and Spitzbergen voyager
Baron von Heuglin, and the Norwegian botanist Aage Aagaard, took part
as naturalists ; Payer and Weyprecht’s voyage of reconnaissance in the
sea between Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya in 1871, &c.

vi. ] TOBIESEN'S WINTERING ON NOVAYA ZEMLYA. 231

fate, and because it shows us various new, hitherto untouched
sides of winter life in the High North.

StveRT TOBIESEN was one of the oldest and boldest of the
Norwegian walrus-hunting skippers; he had with life and soul
devoted himself to his calling, and in it was exposed to many
dangers and difficulties, which he knew how to escape through
courage and skill. In 1864 he had sailed round the north-
eastern part of North-east Land, and had been very successful
in hunting; but as he was about to return home, his vessel was
beset by ice near the southern entrance to Hinloopen Strait,
where the same fate also overtook two other hunting sloops, one

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SIVERT KRISTIAN TOBIESEN.
Born at Tromsoe in 1821, died on Novaya Zemlya in 1873.

of them commanded by the old hunting skipper MATTILAS, who
in the winter of 1872-73 died in a tent at Grey Hook, the
other by the skipper J. AstrdM. They were compelled to save
themselves in boats, in which they rowed through Hinloopen
Strait to the mouth of Ice Fjord, where the shipwrecked crews
were met and saved by the Swedish expedition of 1864. He
passed the winter of 1865-66 happily, in a house built for the
purpose on Bear Island, and communicated to the Swedish
Academy of Sciences a series of valuable meteorological observa-
tions, made during the wintering. After 1868 he had made

1 Kongl. Svenska Vetenskaps-akademiens handlingar, 1869.

232 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

several successful voyages to Novaya Zemlya, some of which
were also remarkable from a geographical point of view, and in
1872 he was also on a hunting expedition to the same regions.
As he could not enter the Kara Sea, he sailed up along the west
coast, where in the middle of September he was beset in the
neighbourhood of the Cross Islands. Hence seven of the crew
travelled south in a boat to seek for a vessel, but Tobiesen him-
self, his son and two men, remained on board. Their stock of
provisions consisted of only a small barrel of bread, a sack of
corners and fragments of ship biscuit, a small quantity of coffee,
tea, sugar, syrup, groats, salt meat, salt fish, a few pounds of
pork, a couple of tin canisters of preserved vegetables, a little

TOBIESEN’S WINTER HOUSE ON BEAR ISLAND,
(After a sketch by the Author.)

bad butter, &e. There was abundance of wood on board and
on the land. Notwithstanding the defective equipment they
went on bravely and hopefully with the preparations for winter-
ing, gathered drift-wood in heaps on the beach, threw a tent of
sails over the vessel, threw up snow about its sides, covered the
deck with the hides of the seals and walruses that had been
captured during summer, did what could be done to bring
about good ventilation on board, &. <A large number of
bears came to the winter station at the commencement of
the wintering, affording an abundant supply of fresh bears’
flesh. So long as this lasted, the health of the party was

vi] AN ADVENTUROUS JOURNEY. 233

good, but when it came to an end at the new year, their
food for three weeks consisted mainly of ill-smelling salt bears’
flesh. Tobiesen and one of the men were now taken ill.
The cold sank to — 393°C.1. On the 29th April, 1873,
Tobiesen died of scurvy. In the month of May his son was
also attacked, and died on the 5th July. The two men also
suffered from scurvy, but recovered. They rowed south in the
month of August, and were rescued by a Russian hunting-
vessel.

The seven men, the harpooner Henrik Nilsen, Ole Andreas
Olsen, Axel Henriksen, Amandus Hansen, Nils Andreas Foxen,
Johan Andersson and Lars Larsen, who rowed away in autumn,
had an exceedingly remarkable fate. When they left the vessel
they could only take with them fourteen ship biscuits, six boxes
of lucifers, two guns, with ammunition, a spy-glass, a coffee-
pot and an iron pot, but no winter ciothes to protect them from
the cold. At first, in order to get to open water, they had to
drag the boat about seven kilometres over the ice. They then
steered southwards along the land. The journey was made
under circumstances of great difficulty and privation. The
darkness and cold increased, as did the storm, and what was
worst of all their stock of provisions was very soon consumed.
On the second day, however, they were fortunate enough to
shoot a bear; afterwards they also succeeded in killing a pair
of seals. Finally, after having partly rowed and partly sailed
about three weeks (they had no almanac with them), and tra-
velled nearly 400 kilometres, they came to two small hunting or
store houses, which the Russians had built on the north side of
Gooseland. In order to have at least a roof over their heads
the exhausted men settled there, though in the house they
found neither food, clothes, nor hunting implements. They
were all much enfeebled by hunger, thirst, cold, and the long
boat journey; their feet were swollen and partly frost-bitten.

They remained in the house three weeks, and during that
time shot a seal, two white foxes, and four reindeer, with which
they kept in their lives; but as it appeared that there were no
more reindeer to be had, and there were no more opportunities
of shooting seals or reindeer, they determined to leave the
house and endeavour to get to Vaygats Island. When they
broke up, Ole Andreas Olsen and Henrik Nilsen took the guns
and ammunition, while the other five commenced the journey
with some small sledges they had found at the house, on which
they loaded what they had of clothes and other articles. The

1 At Mussel Bay, too, during the winter of 1872-73, the greatest degree
of cold was the same; that is to say, at neither place did it reach the
freezing-point of mercury. At the Vega’s winter station, on the contrary.
it was considerably greater.

234 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

boat was left behind. Soon after they left the house Ole
Andreas Olsen and Henrik Nilsen were separated in a snow-
storm from the others who drew the sledges. The latter now
agreed to determine by lot whether they should return to the
house or continue their journey, and when the lot fell for the
latter they allowed it to settle the matter, and so went south.?

Their position was now desperate in the extreme. When
they left the house they had about half a pound of reindeer
flesh and a little blubber remaining. The weather was dread-
ful; they were badly clothed, and they wanted water. In con-
sequence they could make only very short days’ marches. At
night they buried themselves in the snow, and while the rest
slept, one man kept constant watch, to prevent the others from
being snowed up and to keep the bears at a distance. They all
held out till the sixth night. Then Amandus Hansen died.
The rest were compelled to leave him in the snow and continue
their journey as well as they could, but they had by degrees
become so weak and exhausted that, after having traversed
probably about 100 kilometres, for the most part along the
coast, they had to leave even the sledges and the most of what
they bad with them. The seventh or eighth day they caught
sight of a little pile of fuel, and the track of a sledge in the
snow. By following this track for about ten kilometres they
found a small house, inhabited by Samoyeds, who immediately
gave them a friendly reception, and entertained them in the
most hospitable way. In particular they showed much kindness
to Nils Andreas Foxen, whose toes were frost-bitten, and who
was in other respects much enfeebled.

These Samoyeds, three men, three women, and a boy, spoke
Russian. They had settled for the winter on the south part of
Gooseland to shoot the seal and the walrus. They had with
them a large barge, besides some small Samoyed boats, and were
comparatively well provided with reindeer flesh, meal, tea,
sugar, &c. Their guns were old flint-lock fowling-pieces, but
they were good shots. With these Samoyeds the four ship-
wrecked men remained the whole winter, and were tolerably
well off. When the weather permitted they assisted the
Samoyeds in capturing seals, and when the weather was bad they
passed the time as well as they could, the Samoyeds generally
employing themselves in playing cards or draughts. In order
to avoid scurvy the Samoyeds often took exercise in the open
air, and ate reindeer flesh, partly cooked and partly raw, and
drank the blood. They lived in the house until March was well
advanced, when, for want of fuel, they were obliged to hew it

1 [t is very common that the hunters in cases of importance and danger,

when it is difficult to settle what course ought to be taken, permit the
drawing of lots to determine the choice.

wa. | LOST. 235

down. Instead they removed into a tent of reindeer skin.
These Samoyeds appear to have been Christians in name,
though they must have had strange ideas of their new God.
When, for instance, they saw a seal and missed shooting it, they
shot at the sun, because they believed that God was angry
with them. They lived in a sort of marriage, but if the man
became unfriendly to the woman, or tired of her, he could
take another; they had no clocks, but, notwithstanding, had a
tolerably good idea of time by the help of the stars and the
sun; instead of analmanac they used a piece of wood, in which
for every day they cut a notch. Although they sometimes
quarrelled with and threatened one another, they were, however,
on the whole friendly, and reasonable, and showed much kind-
ness to the four shipwrecked men, whom they provided with
warm skin clothes, and during the whole time with food in
abundance, according to their circumstances, so that they did
not suffer any want.

Ole Andreas Olsen and Henrik Nilsen had, when they were
separated in the snowstorm from the sledge party, half a pound
of flesh and their guns, and nothing more. They did not
succeed in finding any game, and though they were not very
far from the house, they required three days and a half to get
back to it. In the meantime, also, these two comrades in mis-
fortune had been separated. Henrik Nilsen found the house
first, lighted a fire, roasted and ate some pieces of fox flesh that
he found remaining. Ole Andreas Olsen, who in desperation
had endeavoured to quench his thirst with sea-water, was so
weak that, when late at night he came to the boat, he could not
crawl upto the house. He had kept himself in life by eating
snow and devouring large pieces of his “ pesk,’’ which was
made of the raw hides of reindeer he had previously shot.
After having lain a while in the boat he crept up to the house,
where he found Heurik sleeping by the fire, which was not yet
quite extinguished. The following day they both began to
make arrangements for a lengthened stay in the house. But
here they found nothing, neither food, household furniture, nor
aught else. Nor did they succeed at first in getting any game ;
and for more than a fortnight they sustained life by boiling and
gnawing the flesh from the bones of the reindeer, the seal, and
the bear, that lay under the snow, remains from the Russian
hunting excursions of the preceding year. Finally, before
Christmas they succeeded in killing a reindeer. Their lucifers
were now done, but they lighted a fire by loading their guns with
a mixture of which gunpowder formed a part, and firing into
old ropes, left behind by the Russians, which they picked
asunder and dried. One of the Russian huts they tore down
and used as fuel. They had neither axe nor saw, but they split

236 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

up the fuel by means of a piece of iron, which they took from
the keel of the boat, and of which they made, by hammering
with stones, a sort of knife. Of some nails, which they also
took from the boat, they likewise forged needles by means of
stones ; they used reindeer smews for thread, and of the hides
they sewed clothes for themselves. They lived in the hut until
some time in April. During this time they shot eleven rein-
deer and a bear, so that they did not actually suffer hunger; but
in the middle of April they had powder remaining for only
three shots, and they now saw the impossibility of supporting
themselves longer at that place, wherefore they determined to
go farther south, m order, if possible, to reach Vaygats Island.
They went by land along the sea-shore, leaving the boat behind.
After the lapse of some days they came to the same Samoyeds
with whom the other four of the crew were, and they now re-
mained till the middle of June with the Samoyeds, who gave
them the same hospitable treatment as their companions in
misfortune. When at the time specified it was determined to
fetch the boat from the Russian hut, in order that they might
make their way southwards, Johan Andersson, a Swede by
birth, declared that he wished to remain with the Samoyeds,
and was not willing to accompany the other five on their
homeward journey.

The latter now dragged the boat for two days over the ice ;
but when it became too heavy they had to cut it through the
middle and leave a half behind. Of a large sealskin, which
they got from the Samoyeds, they made a stern to the other
half, which they continued to drag over the ice for three days,
until they came to open water. Then they rowed in the
truncated boat ten days, until they reached a fast ice-border at
the Vaygats Island, where they again fell in with Samoyeds.
Even by these, who could speak neither Russian nor Quaen, and
by whom they could with difficulty make themselves under-
stood, they were well received. They remained there eight
days and got good entertainment. These Samoyeds had tame
reindeer, with which they sent the shipwrecked men on their
way southwards, till they fell in with a vessel, with which four
returned to Norway. Lars Larsen now did not wish to go
home, preferrmg to remain with the Samoyed family which he
had last met with. Samoyed life, however, must not be so
pleasant after all, for in a year or two both the men who had
remained among the Samoyeds returned home. As a reward
for the hospitality which the shipwrecked walrus-hunters had
received from the Samoyeds on Gooseland, the Norwegian
Government presented them with a number of gifts, consisting
of clothes, pearls, breechloaders, with ammunition, &c., which
were handed over to them with festive speeches and toasts on

WE] THE VOYAGE OF THE PROEVEN, 1875. 237

the 17th July, 1880, During the entertainment which took
place on this occasion on the coast of Novya Zemlaya, toasts
were drunk in champagne, and it is said that this liquor was
very much relished by the Samoyeds.?

As little as Tobiesen could any other walrus-hunter make his
way, either in 1872 or 1873, into the Kara Sea, the entrances of
which were during these summers blocked by a compact belt of
ice, which extended along the east coast of Novaya Zemlya and
Vaygats Island to the mainland. In the belief of a large
number of experienced walrus-hunters, with whom I have
conversed on the subject, this belt of ice was only some few
nautical miles broad, and it is therefore probable that even in
those years there would have been no obstacle to prevent a
passage eastwards by this route in autumn.

In 1874, on the contrary, the state of the ice became very
favourable, and many walrus-hunters again as formerly sailed
in all directions across the Kara Sea, which this year was also
visited by an Englishman, Captain J. Wiccins. None of them,
however, penetrated farther to the east or north than Johannesen,
Carlsen, Mack, and others had done during the years 1869-70.

It was not until the following year that the North-east
voyages took a step forward, important both in a purely
geographical as well as a practical point of view, when I
succeeded in a walrus-hunting sloop, the Proeven, commanded
by the walrus-hunting Captain Isaksen, in sailing through
Yugor Straits, which were passed on 2nd August, and over the
nearly ice-free Kara Sea as far as to the mouth of the Yenisej.
The Proeven anchored there on the 15th August 1875, in, or
more correctly immediately off, the same splendid haven where
the Vega expedition lay at anchor from the 6th to the 10th
August, 1878. Hence I sailed under various difficulties along
with Dr. Stuxberg and Dr. Lundstrom and three men in a
Nordland boat, up the river to Saostrovsko}, where we fell in
with a steamer, in which we afterwards travelled to Yenisejsk.
On leaving Port Dickson I handed over the command to Dr.
Kjellman, who along with Dr. Théel returned by sea to Europe
across the Kara Sea and through Matotschkin Schar, which
was passed during the return voyage on the 4th to the 11th
_ September.

By this voyage of 1875 I was the first who succeeded in
penetrating from the Atlantic Ocean in a vessel to the mouths
of the great Siberian rivers. One of the objects which the old

1 The statements made here regarding the wintering of Tobiesen and
his companions are taken partly from a copy which I caused to be made of
his journal, partly from an account of the adventures of the seven hunters,
copied from Finmarksposten into Aftonbladet for 1873, No. 220. Finally,
the account of the distribution of presents to the Samoyeds is copied from
Norwegian journals into Aftonbladet for 1880, No, 197.

958 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CIIAP.

North-east voyagers had aimed at was thus at last accomplished,
and that in a way that promised to be of immense practical
importance for the whole of Siberia. The voyage was also
regarded in that light by leading men in the great empire of
the East, and our return journey from Yenisejsk ‘by Krasnojarsk,
Tomsk, Omsk, Yekaterineburg, Nischni-Novgorod, Moscow and
St. Petersburg, became therefore a journey from féte to féte.
But a number of voices were simultaneously raised, which
asserted that the success of the Proeven depended on an
accidental combination of fortunate circumstances, which would
not soon occur again. In order to show that this was not the
case, and that I might myself bring the first goods by sea to
Siberia, I undertook my second voyage to the Yenisej in 1876,
in which I penetrated with the steamer Ymer, not only to the
mouth of the river, but also up the river to the neighbourhood
of Yakovieva in 71° N.L. Hence I returned the same year by
sea to Europe. In the gulf of Yenisej a large island was
discovered, which I named after Mr. Alexander Sibiriakoff, who
defrayed the principal expenses of the expedition. Before
starting on this voyage, I visited the Philadelphia Exhibition,
and it may perhaps deserve to be mentioned, that leaving
New York on the Ist July by one of the ordinary steamers,
and going on board my own vessel in Norway, I reached
the mouth of the Yenisej on the 15th August, that is to say,
in forty-six days.

The same year Captain Wiggins also undertook a voyage to
the Yenisej, in which he penetrated with a steamer up the
river beyond the labyrinth of islands lymg between 70° and
71° N.L. The vessel wintered there, but was lost the following
spring at the breaking up of the ice.”

The voyages of the Proeven and the Ymer led to several
purely commercial voyages to the Yenise} and the Ob, of which
however I can here with the greatest brevity mention only
the following:

The Swedish steamer Fraser, commanded by the German
Captain DALLMANN, after having been fitted out at Gothenburg
on Sibiriakoff’s account, sailed in 1877 with a cargo from Bremen

1 The dates of the Ymer’s voyage are as follows:—Left the coast of
Norway on the 26th July; stay at Matotschkin Sound, through which I,
on this occasion, steamed into the Kara Sea from the 30th ‘July to the
5th August ; arrival at the Yenisej on the 15th August; arrival at the
anchorage at Goltschicha on the 16th August ; commenced the return
voyage on the 1st September, in the course of it passed Matotschkin Schar
on the 7th September.

2 Of Captain Wiggins’ voyage I know only that his original destination
was the Ob, but “that on account of currents and shoals which he
encountered at the mouth of this river, he altered his plan, and reached
the Yenisej in the beginning of September.

vI.J SCHW ANENBERG’S VOYAGE. 239

to the Yenisej] and back. The vessel left Hammerfest on the
9th August, arrived at Goltschicha on the 21st August, com-
menced the return voyage on the 14th September, and on
the 24th of the same month was back at Hammerfest.

The steamer Lowise commanded by Captain Daunt, with
a cargo of iron, olive oil, and sugar, the same year made
the first voyage from England to Tobolsk, starting from
Hull on the 18th July and arriving at Tobolsk on the 20th
September.!

Captain SCHWANENBERG sailed in a half-decked sloop, the
Utrennaja Saria, from the Yenisej] to Europe. To what has

JOSEPH WIGGINS.

been already said of this voyage, I may here add a few words
more.

Durmg the inundation in the spring of 1877, which com-
pelled the mate Nummelin to betake himself for eight days to
the roof of the fragile dwelling in which he had passed the
winter, the Yenisejsk-built vessel, the Awrora (or Sewernoe Sianie)
was lost. Schwanenberg, who soon afterwards came to the
neighbourhood, succeeded in purchasing from an Englishman,
Mr. SEEBOHM, another little vessel, which was also built at

* Deutsche Geographische Blitter, Bremen, 1870, i. p. 216, and ii. p. 35.

240 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [oHar.

Yenisejsk by Mr. Boiling for the purpose of transporting thither
the goods which I had carried in the Ymer to Korepovskoj, a
sumovie on the bank of the Yenisej in 71° 19’ N.L. The
goods however had been taken up the river by a steamer, on
which account the vessel was sold by Boiling to Mr. Seebohm, °
who made an excursion in it to the lower courses of the
Yenise} for ornithological researches. He named the vessel the
Ilis. When Mr. Seebohm no longer required it, there was at
first a proposal that it should be taken over by Captain Wiggins,
who, as has been already stated, had the year before come to

DAVID IVANOVIISCH SCHWANENBERG.

Born in Courland in 1831.

the Yenisej with a small stevmer, which wintered at the islands
in the river, and had now stranded durimg the breaking up of
the ice. He wished to carry his men on the /bis either home
or to the Ob, but the English seamen declared that they would
not for all the world’s honour and riches sail in that vessel.
Schwanenberg had thus an opportunity of purchasing the
vessel, whose name he altered to the Utrennaja Saria (the
Dawn), and to the surprise of all experienced seamen he
actually made a successful passage to Norway. The vessel
was then towed along the coast to Gothenburg, and through

v1.] THE FIRST VOYAGE FROM YENISEJSK TO EUROPE. 241

the Géta Canal to Stockholm, and finally crossed the Baltic
to St. Petersburg.

On the 13th August Schwanenberg hoisted the Russian flag
on his little vessel. During his outward passage he met, in the
mouth of the Yenisej, Sibiriakoff’s steamer the Fraser, Captain
Dallmann, who in vain endeavoured to dissuade him from pro-
secuting the adventurous voyage. He anchored at Beli Ostrov
on the 24th August, passed the Kara Port on the 30th August,
and reached Vardoe on the 11th September. The Utrennaja

: NA
SS

GUSTAF ADOLF NUMMELIN.

Born at Viborg in 1853.

Saria arrived at Christiania on the 31st October, at Gothenburg
on the 15th November, passed Motala on the 20th, reached
Stockholm on the 23rd November and St. Petersburg on the
3rd December. Everywhere in Scandinavia the gallant seamen
met with the heartiest reception. Their vessel was the first
that sailed from the town of Yenisejsk to Europe, and is still,
when this is being written, the only one.

The Dewn is 56 feet long, 14 feet beam, and draws 6 feet of
. water. Aft there is a little cabin in which there is scant space
R

242 THE VOYAGE OF THE: VEGA. (CHAP. VI.

for three men. Cooking is done in the fore: The cargo con-
sisted of a small quantity of graphite, fish, furs, and other
samples of the products of Siberias

The vessel was manned by Captain Schwanenberg, the mates

mai ns
ee
ANS {

THE SLOOP UTRENNAJA SARIA.

Nummelin and Meywaldt, and two exiled criminals, who in this
unexpected way returned to their native country. I take it for
granted that by the rare nautical exploit they took part in, they
there won forgiveness for former offences.

W

xy
Ss
eS
dane”
SY =
D

Ky
tify
Uy

se
Sees,
LE

ft

MAP
of

PORT DICKSON 7

by

“

G. Bove.
Vega Expedition the 6"10"Aug 1878.

Lat.73°so' (?)
Long 80°s5'(?)
Depth in Swedish fathoms. Height in Swedish feet. >
1 fathom ~6 feet = 1-75 metres. /,
--.------ Track of the Vega.

Scale_|:200000

——

all

7 2"

ap of CAPE BOLVAN on Waygats I

|

y

iif =i
I’ Samoyed Tent
yy cs

loaner i

Map of CAPE CHELYUSKIN by G.Bove.

CHAP. VII.] DEPARTURE FROM PORT DICKSON. 243

CHAPTER VII.

Departure from Port Dickson—Landing on a rocky island east of tha
Yenisej—Self-dead animals—Discovery of crystals on the surface of
the drift-ice—Cosmic dust—Stay in Actinia Bay—Johannesen’s dis-
covery of the island Ensamheten—Arrival at Cape Chelyuskin—The
natural state of the land and sea there—Attempt to penetrate right
eastwards to the New Siberian Islands—The effect of the mist—
Abundant dredging-yield—Preobraschenie Is]land—Separation from the
Lena at the mouth of the river Lena.

WHEN on the morning of the 9th August the Fraser and
Express sailed for the point higher up the river where their
cargo was lying, the Vega and the Lena were also ready to sail.
I, hewever, permitted the vessels to remain at Port Dickson a
day longer, in order to allow Lieutenant Bove to finish his
survey, and for the purpose of determining astronomically, if
possible, the position of this important place. In consequence
of a continuous fog, however, I had as little opportunity of
doing so on this occasion as during the voyage of 1875, which
serves to show of what sort the weather is during summer at
the place where the warm water of the Yenisej is poured into
the Arctic Ocean. It was thus not until the morning of the
10th August that the Vega and the Lena weighed anchor in
order to continue their voyage. The course was shaped for the
most westerly of the islands, which old maps place off the
estuary-bay of the Pjisina, and name Kammenni Ostrova
(Stone Islands), a name which seems to indicate that in their
natural state they correspond to the rocky islands about Port
Dickson. The sky was hid by mist, the temperature of the air
rose to + 10°4 C.; that of the water was at first + 10°, after-
wards + 8°; its salinity at the surface of the sca was inconsider-
able. No ice was seen during the course of the day. Favoured
by a fresh breeze from the south-east, the Vega could thus
begin her voyage with all sail set. Small rocky islands, which
are not to be found on the chart, soon reminded us of the
untrustworthiness of the maps. This, together with the pre-
vailing fog, compelled Captain Palander to sail forward with
great caution, keeping a good outlook and sounding constantly.
Warm weather and an open sea were also favourable for the
next day’s voyage. But the fog now became so dense, that the
Vega had to lie-to in the morning at one of the many small
islands which we still met with on our way.

Dr. Kjellman, Dr. Almquist, Lieutenant Nordquist, and J,
landed here. The bare and utterly desolate island consisted of
a low gneiss rock, rising here and there into cliffs, which were

R 2

-_

244 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

shattered by the frost and rather richly clothed with lichens.
On the more low-lying places the rock was covered with a layer
of gravel, which, through drying and consequent contraction,
had burst into six-sided “figures, mostly from 0°3 to 0°5 metre in
diameter. The interior of the figures was completely bare of
vegetation, only in the cracks there was to be seen an exceed-
ingly scanty growth of stunted mosses, lichens, and flowering
plants. Of the last-named group there were found fifteen
species, which could with success, or more correctly without
succumbing, survive the struggle for existence on the little poor
ar chipelago, protected by no mountain heights, from the storms
of the Polar Sea; but of these species, perhaps a couple seldom
develop any flowers. The mosses, too, were in great part
without fruit, with the exception of those which grew on the
margin, formed of hard clay covered with mud, of a pool, filled
with brackish water and lying close to the sea-margin. A large
number of pieces of dr iftwood scattered round this pool showed
that the place was occasionally overflowed with sea-water, which
thus appears to have been favourable to the development of the
mosses. Of lichens Dr. Almquist found a number of species,
well developed, and occurring in comparative abundance. On
the contrary, the sea, although the surrounding rocky islands
indicated a good bottom for alow, was so completely destitute of
the higher ‘alow, that only a single microscopic species was
found by Dr. Kjellman. No mammalia were seen, not even the
usual inhabitant of the desolate rocky islands of the Polar Sea,
the Polar bear, who, in regions where he has not made acquaint -
ance with the hunter’s ball or lance, in secure reliance on his
hitherto unvanquished might, seldom neglects to scrutinise the
newly arrived guests from the tops of high rocks or ice-blocks.
We saw here only six species of birds, The first of these that
attracted our attention was the snow-bunting, which had left
the more fertile mountain heights of the south to choose this
bare and desolate island in the Arctic Ocean for its breeding-
place, and now fluttered round the stone mounds, where it had
its nest, with unceasing twitter, as if to express its satisfaction
with its choice. Further, two species of waders, Zringa mari-
tima and Phalaropus fulicarius, were observed running restlessly
about the beach to collect their food, which consists of insects.

1 Namely, according to Dr. Kjellman’s determination, the following

Saxifraga oppositifolia L. Cerastium alpinum L.
Ra rivularis L. Alsine macrocarpa FENZL.
ceespitosa L. Sagina nivalis Fr.
Cardamine bellidifolia L. Salix polaris We,
Cochlearia fenestrata R. Br. Glyceria vilfoidea (ANps.) TH. FR.
Racnee ae hyperboreus Rorrr. Catabrosa algida (Sou.) FR.
Stellaria Edwardsii R. Br, Aira ceespitosa L.

Juncus biglumis L.

vu. ] THE FAUNA OF THE ROCKY ISLAND. 245

The birds that were killed often had their crops full of the
remains of insects, although living at a place where the
naturalist has to search for hours to find a dozen gnats or their
equals in size, a circumstance that tells very favourably for these
birds’ power of vision, of locomotion, and of apprehension. It
is difficult in any case to understand what it is that attracts this
insectivorous bird to one of the regions that is poorest in insect
life in the whole world. The glaucous gulls’ plunderer, the
skua, and its chastiser the bold tern, were also observed, as were a
few barnacle geese. On the other hand, no eiders were met with.
All the birds named occurred only in inconsiderable numbers, and

THE VEGA AND LENA MOORED TO AN ICE-FLOE.
On the morning of the 12th August, 1878. (After a drawing by O. Nordquist.)

there was nothing found here resembling the life which prevails
on a Spitzbergen fowl-island. Finally, it may be mentioned
that Lieutenant Nordquist found under stones and pieces of
drift-wood a few insects, among them a beetle (a staphylinid).
Dr. Stuxberg afterwards found a specimen of the same insect
species at Cape Chelyuskin itself. No beetle is found on Spitz-
bergen, though the greater portion of that group of islands is,
in respect of climate, soil, and vegetation, much better favoured
than the region now in question. This seems to me to show
that the insect fauna of Spitzbergen, exceedingly inconsiderable
and limited in numbers as it is, has migrated thither in com-
paratively recent times, and in how high a degree the migration

246 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA.’ [cHAP.

of beetles is rendered difficult by their mability to pass broad
expanses of water.

By afternoon the air had again cleared somewhat, so that we
could sail on. <A piece of ice was seen here and there, and at

night the ice increased for a little to an unpleasant extent.
Now, however, it did not occur in such quantity as to prove an
obstacle to navigation in clear weather or in known waters.

On the 12th August we still sailed through considerable
fields of scattered drift-ice, consisting partly of old ice of large
dimensions, partly of very rotten year’s ice. It formed, how-
ever, no serious obstacle to our advance, and nearer the shore
we would probably have had quite open water, but of course it
was not advisable to go too near land in the fog and unknown
waters, without being obliged. A large number of fish (Gadus
polaris) were seen above the foot of a large block of ground ice,
near which we lay-to for some hours. Next day we saw near one
of the islands, where the water was very clear, the sea-bottom
bestrewed with innumerable fish of the same species. They
had probably perished from the same cause, which often kills
fish in the river Ob in so great numbers that the water is in-
fected, namely, from a large shoal of fish having been enclosed
by ice in a small hole, where the water, when its surface has
frozen, could no longer by absorption from the air replace
the oxygen consumed, and where the fish have thus been
literally drowned. I mention this inconsiderable find of some
self-dead fish, because self-dead vertebrate animals, even fish,
are found exceedingly seldom. Such finds therefore deserve to
be noted with much greater care than, for instance, the occur-
rence of animal species in the neighbourhood of places where
they have been seen a thousand times before. During my nine
expeditions in the Arctic regions, where animal life during
summer is so exceedingly abundant, the case just mentioned
has been one of the few in which I have found remains of recent
vertebrate animals which could be proved to have died a natural
death. Near hunting-grounds there are to be seen often enough
the remains of reindeer, seals, foxes, or birds that have died
from gunshot wounds, but no self-dead Polar bear, seal, walrus,
white whale, fox, goose, auk, lemming or other vertebrate. The
Polar bear and the reindeer are found there in hundreds, the
seal, walrus, and white whale in thousands, and birds in millions.!
These animals must die a “natural” death in untold numbers
What becomes of their bodies? Of this we have for the
present no idea, and yet we have here a problem of immense

1 T can remember only one other instance of finding self-dead vertebrate
animals, viz. when in 1873, as has already been stated (p. 86), I found
a large number of dead rotges on the ice at the mouth of Hinloopen
Strait.

|
.
.
.
:

ho

vil. ] é A REMARKABLE FIND, 247

importance for the answering of a large number of questions
concerning the formation of fossiliferous strata. It is strange
in any case that on Spitzbergen it is easier to find vertebrae of
a gigantic lizard of the Trias, than bones of a self-dead seal,
walrus, or bird, and the same also holds good of more southerly
inhabited lands.

On the 13th August we again sailed past a large number of
small rocks or islands. The sea was at first pretty free of ice,
but was afterwards bestrewed with even, thin pieces of drift-ice,
which were not forced up on each other, and thus had not been
exposed in winter to any ice-pressure. This ice did not cause
any inconvenience to the navigation, but at the same time all
was wrapt in a very close mist, which soon compelled us to
anchor near the shore in a little bay. I endeavoured without
success to determine the position of the place by astronomical
observations. Along the shore there still remained nearly
everywhere a pretty. high snow and ice-foot, which in ‘the fog
presented the appearance of immense glaciers. The land be-
sides was free of ice. In respect of its seological formation and
its animals and plants it resembled completely the island I have
just described. But the sea-water here was clear and salt, and
the dredging therefore yielded to Dr. Kjellman some large alg,
and to Dr. Stuxberg a large number of marine evertebrates.

When the fog lightened, we immediately steamed on, but we
had scarcely got to sea before we were again wrapped in so close
a fog that we were compelled to lie-to ‘for the night beside a
large piece of drift-ice. The hempen tangles were used, and
brought up a very abundant yield of large, beautiful animal
forms, a large number of asterids, Astrophyton, Antedon, &c.
There was besides made here an exceedingly remarkable, and
to me still, while I write, a very enigmatical find.

For‘several years back I have been zealous for the examina-
tion of all substances of the nature of dust which fall to the
surface of the earth with rain or snow, and I have proved that a
portion of them is of cosmic origin. This inconsiderable fall of
dust is thus of immense importance for the history of the de-
velopment of our globe, and we regard it, besides, with the
intense interest which we inevitably cherish for all that brings
us an actual experience regarding the material world beyond
our globe. The inhabited countries of the earth, however, are
less suitable for such investigations, as the particles of cosmic
dust falling down here in very limited quantity can only with
dithiculty be distinguished from the dust of civilization, arising
from human dwellings, from the offal of industry, from furnaces
and the chimneys of steam-engines. The case is quite different
ou the snow and ice-fields of the High North, remote from
human habitations and the tracks of steamers. Every foreigu

MUR COAST

STAR FROM THE TAI

Antedon Eschrichtii, J.

HAIF

MU ier,

e natural size.

f th

fths o

fi

C=

Thre

CHAP. VII.]° CURIOUS CRYSTALS. 249

grain of dust can here be easily distinguished and removed,
and there is a strong probability that the offal of civilization
is here nearly wholly wanting. It is self-evident from this
that, I would not be disposed to neglect the first opportunity
for renewed investigations in the direction indicated, which
our involuntary rest at the drift-ice field offered.

Immediately after the Vega lay-to, I therefore went down on
the ice in order to see whether here too some such metalliferous
dust, as I had before found north of Spitzbergen, was not to be
found on the surface of the ice. Nothing of the kind, however,
was to be seen. On the other hand, Lieutenant Nordquist
observed small yellow specks in the snow, which I asked him to
collect and hand over for investigation to Dr. Kjellman. For I
supposed that the specks consisted of diatom ooze. After exa-
mining them Dr. Kjellman however declared that they did not
consist of any organic substance,
but of crystallised grains of sand.
I too now examined them more
closely, but unfortunately not until
the morning after we had left the
ice-field, and then found that the
supposed ooze consisted of pale
yellow crystals (not fragments of
crystals) without mixture of foreign
matter. The quantity of crystals,
which were obtained from about iS) ate A
three litres of snow, skimmed from — found on the ice off the Taimur coast,
the surface of the snow on an ‘Magnified thirty to forty times.
area of at most 10 square metres,
amounted to nearly 02 gram. The crystals were found only
near the surface of the snow, not in the deeper layers.
They were up to 1 mm. in diameter, had the appearance
shown in the accompanymg woodcut, and appeared to
belong to the rhombic system, as they had one perfect
cleavage and formed striated prisms terminated at either
end by truncated pyramids. Unfortunately I could not make
any actual measurements of them, because after being kept
for some time in the air they weathered to a white non-
crystalline powder. They lay, without being sensibly dissolved,
for a whole night in the water formed by the melting of the
snow. On being heated, too, they fell asunder into a tasteless
white powder. The white powder, that was formed by the
weathering of the crystals, was analysed after our return—21
months after the discovery of the crystals—and was found to
contain only carbonate of lime.

The original composition and origin of this substance appears
to me exceedingly enigmatical. It was not common carbonate

250 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

of lime, for the crystals were rhombohedral and did not show
the cleavage of calcite. Nor can there be a question of
its being arragonite, because this mineral might indeed fall
asunder ‘of itself,” but in that case the newly-formed powder
ought to be crystalline. Have the crystals originally been a
new hydrated carbonate of lime, formed by crystallising out
of the sea-water in intense cold, and then losing its water

at a temperature of 10° or 20° above the freezing-point ? In

such a case they ought not to have been found on the surface of

the snow, but lower down on the surface of the ice. Or have
they fallen down from the inter-planetary spaces to the surface
of the earth, and before crumbling down have had a composition
differing from terrestrial substances in the same way as various
chemical compounds found im recent times in meteoric stones ?
The occurrence of the crystals in the uppermost layer of snow
and their falling asunder in the air, tell in favour of this view.
Unfortunately there is now no possibility of settling these
questions, but at all events this discovery is a further incitement
to those who travel in the High North to collect with extreme
care, from snow-fields lying far from the ordinary routes of com-
munication, all foreign substances, though apparently of trifling
importance.

As this question can be answered with the greatest ease and
certainty by investigations in the Polar regions, I shall here, for
the guidance of future travellers, enumerate some discoveries
of a like nature which have been made by me, or at my instance.

1. In the beginning of December, 1871, there happened at
Stockholm an exceedingly heavy fall of snow, perhaps the
heaviest which has taken place in the memory of man. Several
persons perished in the snow in the immediate neighbourhood
of Stockholm. During the last days of the snowfall I had
about a cubic metre of snow collected and melted in a vessel.
It left a residue of black powder, which contained grains of
metallic iron that were attracted by the magnet.

2. In the middle of March, 1872, a similar investigation was
made by my brother, Karu NorDENSKIOLD, in a remote forest
settlement, Evois, in Finland. Here, too, was obtained, on
the melting of the snow, a small residuum, consisting of a
black powder containing metallic iron.

3. On the 8th August and 2nd September of the same year,
I examined, north of Spitzbergen, in 80° N.L., and 13° to 15°
H.L., the layer of snow that there covered the ice. The nature
of this layer is shown by the accompanying woodcut, in which
1, is new-fallen snow; 2, a layer of hardened old snow, eight
mim. in thickness; 3, a layer of snow conglomerated to a
crystalline granular mass; and 4, common granular hardened
snow. Layer 3 was full of small black grains, among which

“~

vit] COSMIC DUST, 251

were found numerous metallic particles that were attracted by
the magnet, and were found to contain iron, cobalt, and possibly
nickel also.

4. On the melting of 500 gram. hail, which fell in Stockholm
in the autumn of 1873, similar metallic particles containing
cobalt (nickel) were obtained, which, in this case, might possibly
have come from the neighbouring roofs, because the hail was
collected in a yard surrounded by houses roofed with sheet-iron
painted red. The black colour of the metallic particles enclosed
in the hail, their position in the hail, and finally, the cobalt
they contained, however, indicate in this case too, a quite
different origin.

5. In a dust (kryokonite), collected on the inland ice of
Greenland in the month of July, 1870,
there were also found mixed with it grains
of metallic iron, containing cobalt. The
main mass consisted of a crystalline, double-
refracting silicate, drenched through with an
ill-smelling organic substance. The dust
was found in large quantities at the bottom
of innumerable small holes in the surface of
the inland ice. This dust could scarcely be
of yoleanic origin, because by its crystalline
structure it differs completely from the
class-dust that is commonly thrown out of
volcanoes, and is often carried by the wind
to very remote regions, as also from the [essccstellentss
dust which, on the 30th March, 1875, fell serene ene |
at many places in the middle of Scandinavia, Pig kote!
and which was proved to have been thrown. aan copper
out by volcanoes on Iceland. For, while Parr or tHe sow ox
kryokonite consists of small angular double- = f'st.
refracting crystal-fragments without any One-half the natural size.
mixture of particles of glass, the volcanic
Haga-dust! consists almost wholly of small microscopic glass
bubbles that have no action on the polarisation-planes of the
light that passes through them.

to

1T use this name because the ash-rain of March 1875 was first observed
at Haga palace near Stockholm, and thus at the outer limit of the known
area of distribution of the dust. It was first through the request which
in consequence of this observation was published in the newspapers, that
communications regarding singular observations in other quarters should
be sent to the Swedish Academy of Sciences, that it became known that
a similar rain had about the same time taken place over a very large part
of middle Sweden and Norway. The dust however did not fall evenly,
but distributed in spots, and at several different times. The distance
from Stockholm of the volcanoes, where the outbreak tovk place, is nearly
2000 kilometres,

252 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

Similar investigations have since been made, among others,
by M. TissaNDIER in Paris, and during Nargs’ English Polar
Expedition.

It may appear to many that it is below the dignity of science
to concern one’s self with so trifling an affair as the fall of a
small quantity of dust. But this is by no means the case. For
I estimate the quantity of the dust that was found on the ice
north of Spitzbergen at from 01 to 1 milligram per square
metre, and probably the whole fall of dust for the year far
exceeded the latter figure. But a milligram on every square
metre of the surface of the earth amounts for the whole globe
to five hundred million kilograms (say half a million tons) !
Such a mass collected year by year during the geological ages,
of a duration probably meomprehensible by us, forms too im-
portant a factor to be neglected, when the fundamental facts of
the geological history of our planet are enumerated. A con-
tinuation of these investigations will perhaps show, that our
globe has increased gradually from a small beginning to the
dimensions it now possesses ; that a considerable quantity of the
constituents of our sedimentary strata, especially of those that
have been deposited in the open sea far from land, are of cosmic
origin ; and will throw an unexpected light on the origin of the
fire-hearths of the volcanoes, and afford a simple explanation of
the remarkable resemblance which unmistakably exists between
plutonic rocks and meteoric stones.?

On the 14th August, when the fog had lightened a little, we
got up steam, but were soon compelled to anchor again in a bay
running into Taimur Island from the north side of Taimur
Sound, which I named Actinia Bay, from the large number of
actinia Which the dredge brought up there. It is, besides, not
the only place in the Kara Sea which might be named from
the evertebrate life prevailing there, so unexpectedly abundant.

Unfavourable weather detained us in Actinia Bay, which
is a good and well-protected haven, till the 18th August,
during which time excursions were made in various directions,
among others farther into Taimur Sound, where a variable
strong current was found to prevail. The Sound is too shallow
to be passed through by large vessels. The rocks round Taimur
Sound consist of gneiss strata, which form low ridges that
have been so shattered by the frost that they have been con-
verted into immense lichen. clad stone mounds. Between these
stretch extensive valleys and plains, now free of snow, if we

1 Namely, by showing that the principal material of the plutonic and
volcanic rocks is of cosmic origin, and that the phenomena of heat, which
occur in these layers, depend on chemical changes to which the cosmic
sediment, after being covered by thick terrestrial formations, is subjected.

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Vit. | THE FLORA OF TAIMUR LAND. 253

except a snow-drift remaining here and there in the hollows.
The plains. were all covered with a very green continuous
vegetation, which however on a closer examination was found
to be not a true turf, but a mixture of grasses, allied plants, and
a large number of different kinds of mosses and lichens. Actual
flowers were found here only sparingly. In this respect the
coast tundra shows a remarkable difference from the coast lands
on Vaygats Island and Novaya Zemlya. On the other hand, the
abundance of luxuriant lichens and mosses was striking. The
mosses along the beach and the borders of the snow-drifts
remaining here and there bore fruit in abundance. Animal life
on land was scanty; some few reindeer were seen, a mountain
fox was killed, and a lemming caught.

Only the following birds were seen: owls (Strix nyctea) rather
numerous, of which one was killed; a species of falcon, which
was hunted unsuccessfully ; snow buntings, breeding very gene-
rally in the stone mounds ; a covey of snow ptarmigan, of which
some young birds were shot ; six species of waders, the most
common birds of the region, of which a large number were
shot ; two kinds of gulls (Larus glaucus and tridactylus) ; Lestris
parasitica and Buffon, the latter the more common of the two;
Anser bernicla, very common; and finally the long-tailed duck
(Harelda glacialis) in great flocks swimming in the Sound.
Bird life, viewed as a whole, was still scanty here, in comparison
with that which we were accustomed to see in the northern
regions west of Novaya Zemlya.

In the sea the higher animal life was somewhat more abun-
dant. A walrus had been seen during the passage from the
Yenisej, and on the ice drifting about in the Sound a number of
seals, both Phoca barbata and Phoca hispida, were observed.

1 Dr. Kjellman has given the following list of the flowering plants
collected by him in this region :—

Cineraria frigida RICHARDs. Poa arctica R. Br.
Potentilla emarginata Purs#. . Arctophila peudulina (Last.) ANDs.
Saxifraga stellaris L. f. comosa. Catabrosa algida (Sol.) Fr
5 nivalis L. Colpodium latifolium R. Br.
+ cernua L. Dupontia Fisheri R. Br.
f rivularis L. Pleuropogon Sabini R. Br.
Chrysosplenium alternifolium L. Aira ceespitosa L.
Cardamine bellidifolia L. Hierochloa pauciflora R. Br.
Draba corymbosa R. Br. Calamagrostis lapponica (We.) Hv.
Papaver nudicaule L. Alopecurus alpinus Sm.
Ranunculus pygmeus We. Eriophorum angustifolium RorTH.
3 hyperboreus Rorrs, ry Scheuchzeri Hoppe.
a sulphureus Sou. Carex aquatilis WG.
Stellaria Edwardsii R. Br. » Tigida Goon.
Cerastium alpinum L. Juncus biglumis L.
Alsine macrocarpa FENZL. Luzula hyperborea R. Br.

Salix polaris We. 7 arctica Bi

254 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar,

This gave rise to the supposition that at the sea-bottom animal
life was richer, which was also confirmed by the dredging yield.
Nowhere was seen on our arrival any trace of man, but a cairn
now indicates the place, off which the Vega and the Lena were
anchored.

GRASS FROM ACTINIA BAY.
Pleuropogon Sabini, R. Br.

In this sea never before visited by any vessel, however, we
were nearly coming in contact with a countryman. For while
we lay at anchor in Taimur Sound, Captain Edward Johannesen
came into the neighbourhood of the same place with his sailing

-

Vike] SOLITUDE ISLAND. 255

vessel Nordland from Tromsoe. He had left Norway on the 22nd
May 1878, had come to Gooseland in Novaya Zemlya on the 6th
June, and had reached the northernmost point of that island
on the 22nd July. Here loud thunder was heard on the 26th
July. On the 10th August he steered eastwards from Novaya
Zemlya across the Kara Sea between 76° and 77° N.L. in open
water. On the 16th he had the Taimur country in sight.
Here he turned, and steered first to the west, then to the north.
In 77 31’ N.L. and 86° E.L. from Greenwich he discovered and
circumnavigated a new island, which was named ‘“‘ Ensamheten ”
(Solitude). The island was free of snow, but not overgrown with
grass. ‘The animals that were seen were some bears and bearded
seals, terns, fulmars, ivory gulls, flocks of black guillemots, and
a “bird with a rounded tail and long bill,” probably some wader.
On the north-east side of the island a strong northerly current
prevailed. The remote position and desolate appearance of the
island gave occasion to the name proposed by Johannesen.
Hence Johannesen sailed with a great bend to the north, which
brought him to 78° N.L., back to the northern extremity of
Novaya Zemlya, and thence on the 12th September to Norway.
During the return voyage across the Kara Sea also scarcely any
ice was met with.

An exceedingly persistent fog prevailed during the whole
of the time we remained here, but at last on the 18th it heht-
ened a little. We immediately weighed anchor and steamed
along the western shore of Taimur Island. It is surrounded by
a large number of islands that are not given on the map, and
possibly Taimur Island itself is divided by sounds into several
parts. During our voyage, however, the fog that was still very
close hindered us from mapping, otherwise than in a very loose
way, the islands, large and small, between and past which the
Vega searched for a passage. So much we could in any case see,
that the northern extremity of Taimur Island does not run so
far north as the common maps show.

Ice we met with only in small quantity, and what we saw was
very rotten fjord or river ice. I scarcely believe that in the
course of the day we met with a single piece of ice large enough
to flense a seal upon. We had as yet seen no true old drift-ice
such as is to be met with north of Spitzbergen. In respect
to the nature of the ice, there is a complete dissimilarity between
the Kara Sea and the sea north and east of Spitzbergen. Another
striking difference is the scarcity of warm-blooded animals
which prevails in this region, hitherto exempted from all hunting.
In the course of the day we had not seen a single bird—something

1 H. Mohn. Die Insel Einsamkeit, &c., with a map (Petermann’s Mitthei-
ungen, 1879, p. 57).

256 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. VII.

which never before happened to me during a summer journey in
the Arctic regions—and scarcely any seals.

On the 19th August we continued to sail and steam along
the coast, mostly in a very close fog, which only at intervals
dispersed so much that the he of the coast could be made out.
In order that they might not be separated, both vessels had
often to signal to each other with the steam-whistle. The sea
was bright as a mirror. Drift-ice was seen now and then, but
only in small quantity and very rotten; but in the course of the
day we steamed past an extensive unbroken ice-field, fast to the
land, which occupied a bay on the west side of the Chelyuskin
peninsula. The ice, of which it consisted, appeared in the mist
immensely rough and high, although in fact it was- nearly as
rotten as that of which the narrow belts of ice were formed
which we now and then met with out at sea.

The fog prevented all view far across the ice, and I already
feared that the northernmost promontory of Asia would be so
surrounded with ice that we could not land upon it. But soona
dark, ice-free cape peeped out of the mist in the north-east. A
bay open to the north here cuts into the land, and in this bay
both the vessels anchored on the 19th August at 6 o'clock p.m.

We had now reached a great goal, which for centuries had
been the object of unsuccessful struggles. For the first time a
vessel lay at anchor off the northernmost cape of the old world.
No wonder then that the occurrence was celebrated by a display
of flags and the firing of salutes, and, when we returned from our
excursion on land, by festivities on board, by wine and toasts.

As on our arrival at the Yenisej, we were received here too by
a large Polar bear, who, even before the vessel anchored, was
seen to go backwards and forwards on the beach, now and then
turning his glance and his nose uneasily out to sea in order to
investigate what remarkabie guests had now for the first time
come to his kingdom. <A boat was put off to kill him. Bruse-
witz was the chosen shot; but on this occasion the bear took care
not to form any closer acquaintance with our guns. The firing ©
of the salute put him so thoroughly to flight, that he did not, as
bears are wont, return the following day.

The north point of Asia forms a low promontory, which a bay
divides into two, the eastern arm projecting a little farther to
the north than the western. <A ridge of hills with gently slop-
ing sides runs into the land from the eastern point, and appears
within sight of the western to reach a height of 300 metres.
Like the plains lying below, the summits of this range were
nearly free of snow. Only on the hill-sides or in deep furrows
excavated by the streams of melted snow, and in dales in the
plains, were large white snow-fields to be seen. A low ice-foot
still remained at most places along the shore. But no glacier

THE VEGA AND LENA SALUTING CAPE CHELYUSKIN

(After a drawing by A. Hovygaard.,)

258 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

rolled its bluish-white ice-masses down the mountain sides, and
no inland lakes, no perpendicular cliffs, no high mountain
summits, gave any natural beauty to the landscape, which was
the most monotonous and the most desolate I have seen in the
High North. \

As on the island off which we lay at anchor on the 11th
August, the ground was everywhere burst asunder into more or
less regular six-sided figures, the interior of which was usually
bare of vegetation, while stunted flowering-plants, lichens and

VIEW AT CAPE CHELYUSKIN DURING THE STAY OF THE EXPEDITION.
(After a drawing by A. Hovgaard.)

mosses, rose out of the cracks. At some few places, however,
the ground was covered with a carpet of mosses, lichens, grasses
and allied plants, resembling that which I previously found at
Actinia Bay. Yet the flowering-plants were less numerous here,
and the mosses more stunted and bearing fruit less abundantly.
The lichen flora was also, according to Dr. Almquist’s examina-
tion, monotonous, though very luxuriant. The plants were
most abundant on the farthest extremity of the Cape. It
almost appeared as if many of the plants of the Taimur country
had attempted to migrate hence farther to the north, but meet-

ing the sea, had stood still, unable to go farther and unwilling

VII. ] THE NORTHERNMOST BEETLE. 259

to turn. For here Dr. Kjellman found on a very limited area
nearly all the plants of the region. The species which were
distinctive of the vegetation here were the following : Saxifraga
oppositifolia L., Papaver nudicaule L., Draba alpina L.,
Cerastium alpinum L., Stellaria Edwardsii R. Br., Alsine
macrocarpa FENZL., Aira cespitosa L., Catabrosa algida (SOL.) FR.,
and Alopecurus alpinus SM. The following plants occurred less
frequently: Hritrichium villosum BUNGE, Saxifraga nivalis L.,
S. cernua L., S. rwularis L., S. stellaris L., S. cespitosa L., S.
flagellaris WILLD., 8, serpyllifolia Pursu., Cardamine bellidifolia
L., Cochlearia fenestrata R. Br., Oxyria digyna (L.) Hiw., Salia
polaris WG., Poa flexuosa WG., and Luzula hyperborea R. Br.
There were thus found in all only twenty-three species of
inconsiderable fiowering-plants, among them eight species
belonging to the Saxifrage family, a sulphur-yellow poppy,
commonly cultivated in our gardens, and
the exceedingly beautiful, forget-me-not-
like Eritrichium. That the vegetation
here on the northernmost point of Asia
has to contend with a severe climate is
shown, among other things, as Dr. Kjell-
man has pointed out, by most of the
flowering-plants there having a special
tendency to form exceedingly compact
half-globular tufts.

The only insects which occurred here in
any large number were podure, but some
flies were also seen, and even a beetle, the
before-mentioned Staphylinid. Of birds,

THE BEETLE LIVING FARTHEST

there were seen a large number of sand- TO THE NORTH.
pipers, an exceedingly numerous flock Miler rere Dickson
of barnacle geese—evidently migrating to Magnified twelve times.

more southerly regions, perhaps from some

Polar land lying to the north of Cape Chelyuskin—a loom, some
kittiwakes and ivory gulls, and remains of owls. Mammalia
were represented by the bear already mentioned, and by the
reindeer and the lemming, whose traces and dung were seen on
the plains. In the sea, a walrus, several rough seals (Phoca
hispida), and two shoals of white whales were seen.

All rivers were now dried up, but wide, shallow river-beds
indicated that during the snow-melting season there was an
abundant flow of water. The rush of snow rivulets and the cry
of birds then certaily cause an interruption in the desolation
and silence which were now spread over the clay beds of the
plains, nearly bare of all vegetation. Probably, however, a little
farther into the country, in some valley protected from the winds
of the Polar Sea, we might find quite different natural condi-

Ss 2

DRABA ALPINA L., FROM CAPE CHELYUSKIN.

Natural size.

|

CHAP. VII. ] ABUNDANT MARINE LIFE. 261

tions, a more abundant animal life, and a vegetable world, in
summer, as rich in flowers as that which we meet with in the
valleys of Ice Fjord or the ‘“‘ Nameless Bay” (Besimannaja Bay).
We saw no trace of man here. The accounts, which were
current as early as the sixteenth century, relating to the nature
of the north point of Asia, however, make it probable that the
Siberian nomads at one time drove their reindeer herds up
hither. It is even not impossible that Russian hunters from
Chatanga may have prosecuted the chase here, and that Chelyus-
kin actually was here, of which we have evidence in the very
correct way in which the Cape, that now rightly bears his name,
is laid down on the Russian maps.!

The rocks consist of a clay-slate, with crystals resembling
chiastolite and crystals of sulphide of iron interspersed. At the
Cape itself the clay-slate is crossed by a thick vein of pure white
quartz. Here, according to an old custom of Polar travellers, a
stately cairn was erected.

In order to get a good astronomical determination of the
position of this important point I remained there until the
20th August at noon. The Zena was ordered to steam out
to dredge during this time. Eight minutes north of the
bay, where we lay at anchor, heavy and very close ice was
met with. There the depth of the sea increased rapidly.
Animal life at the sea-bottom was very abundant, among other
things in large asterids and ophiurids.

According to the plan of the voyage I now wished to steam
from this point right eastwerds towards the New Siberian
Islands, in order to see if we should fall in with land on the
way. On the 20th and 21st we went forward in this direc-
tion among scattered driftice, which was heavier and less
broken up than that which we had met with on the

1 This has been doubted by Russian geographers. Von Baer for instance
says :—

‘Dariiber ist gar kein Zweifel, dass dieses Vorgebirge nie umsegelt
ist, und dass es auf einem Irrthum beruhte, wenn Laptew auf einer Seefahrt
die Bucht, in welche der Taimur sich miindet, erreicht zu haben glaubte.
Seine eigenen spiteren Fahrten erwiesen diesen Irrthum. Die Vergleichung
der Berichte und Verhiltnisse lisst mich aber auch glauben, dass selbst zu
Lande man das Ende dieses Vorgebirges nie erreicht habe; sondern
Tscheljuskin, um dieser, man kann wohl sagen, grasslichen Versuche
endlich iiberhoben zu seyn, sich zu der ungegriindeten Behauptung ent-
schloss, er habe das Ende gesehen, und sich iiberzeugt, Sibirien sei nach
Norden iiberall vom Meere umgrinzt,”’ [statement by von Baer in Neueste
Nachrichten iiber die nérdlichste Gegend von Siberien; von Baer and von
Helmersen, Beitrdge zur Kenntniss des Russischen Reiches. 1V. St. Petersburg,
1841, p. 275]. Inthe following page in the same paper von Baer indeed
says that he will not lay any special weight on Strahlenberg’s statement that
Siberia and Novaya Zemlya hang together, but he appears to believe that
they are connected by a bridge of perpetual ice.

262 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

other side of Taimur Land, but without meeting with any
serious obstacles. We fell in also with some very large ice-
floes, but not with any icebergs. We were besides again
attended by so close a mist that we could only see ice-fields
and pieces of ice in the
immediate neighbourhood
of the vessel. Besides
species of Lestris and
kitttwakes we now also
saw looms, birds that are
almost wanting in the Kara
Sea. Johannesen was of
opinion that the presence
of these birds showed that
the sea is not completely
frozen over in winter,
because it is not probable
that the loom in autumn
and spring would fly across
the frozen Kara Sea to
seek in this distant region
their food and their breed-
ing-haunts.

The night before the
22nd we steamed through
pretty close ice. The whole
day so thick a fog still
prevailed that we could
not see the extent of the
ice-fields in the neigh-
bourhood of the vessel.
Towards noon we were,
therefore, compelled to
take a more southerly
course. When we found
that we could not advance
in this direction, we lay-
to at a large ice-floe, wait-
ing for clear weather, until

OPHIURID FROM THE SEA NORTH OF €APE Bs =
pears in the afternoon the fog
Ophiacantha bidentata, Rerz. again lightened somewhat,
One and one-third of the natural size. so that we could continue

our voyage. But it was
not long before the fog again became so thick that, as the
sailors say, you could cut it with a knife. There was now
evidently a risk that the Vega, while thus continuing to “ box the
compass” in the ice-labyrinth, in which we had entangled our-

Vil. | OPTICAL ILLUSIONS. 263

selves, would meet with the same fate that befell the Zegetthof:
In order to avoid this, it became necessary to abandon our
attempt to sail from Cape Chelyuskin straight to the New
Siberian Islands, and to endeavour to reach as soon as possible
the open water at the coast.

When it cleared on the morning of the 23rd, we therefore
began again to steam forward among the fields of drift-ice, but
now not with the intention of advancing in a given direction,
but only of getting to open water. The ice-fields we now met
with were very much broken up, which was an indication that
we could not be very far from the edge of the pack. But
notwithstanding this, all our attempts to find penetrable ice in an
easterly, westerly, or southerly direction were unsuccessful. We
had thus to search in a northerly direction for the opening by
which we had sailed in. This was so much the more unpleasaut
as the wind had changed to a pretty fresh N.W. breeze, on
which account, with the Vega’s weak. steam-power, we could
make way only slowly. It was not until 6.30 p.m. that we at
last came to the sack-formed opening in the ice through which
we had sailed in at noon of the previous day.

One can scarcely, without having experienced it, form any
idea of the optical illusions, which are produced by mist, in
regions where the size of the objects which are visible through
the fog is not known beforehand, and thus does not give the
spectator an idea of the distance. Our estimate of distance
and size in such cases depend wholly on accident. The obscure
contours of the fog-concealed objects themselves, besides, are
often by the ignorance of the spectator converted into whimsical
fantastic forms. During a boat journey in Hinloopen Strait I
once intended to row among drift-ice to an island at a distance
of some few kilometres. When the boat started the air was
clear, but while we were employed, as best we could, in shoot-
ing sea-fowl for dinner, all was wrapt in a thick mist, and
that so unexpectedly, that we had not time to take the bearings
of the island. This led to a not altogether pleasant row by
guess among the pieces of ice that were drifting about in
rapid motion in the sound. All exerted themselves as much as
possible to get sight of the island, whose beach would afford
us a safe resting-place. While thus occupied, a dark border
was seen through the mist at the horizon. It was taken for
the island which we were bound for, and it was not at first
considered remarkable that the dark border rose rapidly, for we
thought that the mist was dispersing and in consequence of that
more of the land was visible. Soon two white snow-fields, that
we had not observed before, were seen on both sides of the land,
and immediately after this was changed to a sea-monster, re-
sembling a walrus-head, as large asa mountain. This got life

264 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

and motion, and finally sank all at once to the head of a common
walrus, which lay on a piece of ice in the neighbourhood of the
boat ; the white tusks formed the snow-fields and the dark-brown
round head the mountain. Scarce was this illusion gone when
one of the men cried out “ Land right a head—high land!” We
now all saw before us a high Alpine region, with mountain peaks
and glaciers, but this too sank a moment afterwards all at once to
a common ice-border, blackened with earth. In the spring of
1873 Palander and I with nine men made a sledge journey round
North-east Land. In the course of this journey a great many
bears were seen and killed. When a bear was seen while we
were dragging our sledges forward, the train commonly stood
still, and, not to frighten the bear, all the men concealed them-
selves behind the sledges, with the exception of the marksman,
who, squatting down in some convenient place, waited till his
prey should come sufficiently within range to be killed with
certainty. It happened once during foggy weather on the ice at
Wahlenberg Bay that the bear that was expected and had been
clearly seen by all of us, instead of approaching with his usual
supple zigzag movements, and with his ordinary attempts to nose
himself to a sure insight into the fitness of the foreigners for
food, just as the marksman took aim, spread out gigantic wings
and flew away in the form of a small ivory gull. Another time
during the same sledge journey we heard from the tent in which
we rested the cook, who was employed outside, cry out: “ A bear !
a great bear! No! a reindeer, a very little reindeer!” The
same instant a well-directed shot was fired, and the bear-rein-
deer was found to be a very small fox, which thus paid with
its life for the honour of having for some moments played the
part of a big animal. From these accounts it may be seen
how difficult navigation among drift-ice must be in unkownn
waters.

On the two occasions on which the vessel was anchored to
ice-floes the trawl-net was used, and the hempen tangles. The
net was drawn forward slowly with the ice which was drifting to
the north-west before a fresh S.E. breeze which was blowing
at the time. The yield of the trawling was extraordinarily
abundant ; large asterids, crinoids, sponges, holothuria, a
gigantic sea-spider (Pycnogonid), masses of worms, crustacea, &c.
It was the most abundant yield that the trawl-net at any one time
brought up during the whole of owr voyage round the coast of Asia,
and this from the sea off the northern extremity of that
continent.

Among the forms collected here we may specially refer to
the large sea-spider, of which a drawing is given (p. 265)
and three specimens of small stalked crinoids. The depth
varied between 60 and 100 metres. The temperature of the

a
a

VIL. J A SEA SPIDER. 265

water was at the surface + 0° to—0°6; at the bottom — 1°4 to
1°6; its salinity was considerable, both at the bottom, where it
was very nearly equal to that of the other great oceans, and at
the surface, where it was indeed about a fifth-part less, but

SEA SPIDER (PYCNOGONID) FROM THE SEA EAST OF CAPE CHELYUSKIN.
Half the natural size.

yet much greater than that of the surface-water.in the Kara
Sea.

It is singular that a temperature under the freezing-point
of pure water should be advantageous for the development
of an animal life so extremely rich as that which is found here,

266 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

and that this animal life should not suffer any harm from the
complete darkness, which during the greater portion of the
year prevails at the bottom of the ice-covered sea.

When we got out of the ice we steamed towards the land,
which was sighted on the 25rd at 8.45 p.m. The land was low
and free from snow; the depth of the sea at a distance of ten
kilometres from the coast varied between thirteen and fifteen
metres. The coast here stretched from north to south. We
followed it at a distance of seven to ten kilometres. A north-
westerly breeze here carried the vessel, without the help of
steam, rapidly forward over a completely smooth sea.

On the 24th August we still sailed along the land towards
the south. The depth of the sea now increased to thirty-three
metres at a distance of ten kilometres from land. The land rose
gradually, and some distance from the coast beautiful mountain
chains were seen, which, judging by the eye, rose to a height
of from 600 to 900 metres. They were, like the plains along
the coast, quite free from snow. Only in the clefts of the
mountains there remained some few collections of snow or ice,
which at two places appeared to form true glaciers, which however
terminated at a considerable height above the sea. The snow-
free slopes between the foot of the movntain and the shore
bank, thirty to sixty metres high, formed an even plain, covered
by a brownish-green turf, probably of the same nature as that
we saw on Taimur Island.

During the forenoon we had splendid clear weather, and
often we could see from the vessel no trace of ice. We saw a
large number of walruses, and to judge by the fire which this
sight kindled in the eyes of our hunters, it will not be long
till the Norwegian hunting voyages are extended to the sea
north and east of the north point of Asia. We saw besides a
large number of looms and black guillemots, the former
accompanied by young of the year, as large as rotges.
About noon we sighted ‘land ahead to larboard.” It was
evidently Preobraschenie Island. I determined to land on it
for a few hours to carry on researches in natural history, and
to fix the position of the place by astronomical observations, if
the weather should permit. The distance of this high-lying
island was however greater than we expected. So that it was
not until six o’clock in the evening that we could anchor off
its south-west side, near the almost perpendicular face of cliffs
abounding in sea-fowl.

During the last two days we had been sailing over a region,
which on recent maps is marked as land. This shows that a
considerable change must be made on the map of North Siberia,
and I shall therefore quote here the observations on which the
determination of our course is grounded.

VII. | PREOBRASCHENIE ISLAND. 267

Observed
Latitude. : Longitude.
(Ee [LOANS W705) ire ae eee 1C Sas 2 Od: 17-2!
On board the Vega’ at noon of the 21st Aug. 77° 25’ 109° 12’

Zonde5. 10 . oe: iG 3.
23rd ,, 76°48’ ean hg
2ath va, OF 113° 33’

At the last mentioned point we lad land to starboard of us
at an estimated distance of 4’. Preobraschenie Island lay
8. 21° W. 17-5’ off. It is on the ground of these data and of
the courses recorded in the log, that the track of the Vega
has been laid down on the map, and no doubt can arise that the
position of the east coast of Taimur peninsula, as indicated by
us, is in the main correct.

Preobraschenie Island forms a pretty even grassy plain, lying
from thirty to sixty metres above the sea-level, which in the
north-west terminates towards the sea with an almost per-
pendicular rocky wall, but to the south-east sinks gradually
down to two sand-banks which run far out to sea. At the
time of our visit the island was free of snow and covered with
a carpet of mosses mixed with grass, which was exceedingly
abundant, especially on the south-west slopes of the island, pro-
tected as they were from the north winds. Here we encountered
anew the Arctic animal world in all its profusion. The ledges
of the perpendicular shore-cliffs of the island formed the
breeding-place of numberless looms and kittiwakes, to which a
few black guillemots attached themselves. Along the farthest
margin of the beach waders ran busily backwards and forwards
in order to collect their food. At the summits of the cliffs
a flock of glaucous gulls were breeding, and on the slopes
of the low land the white mountain owl was seen lying in wait
for its prey, quiet and motionless for hours, but as usual it was
wary and shy, so that it was only with difficulty that the hunter
could get within range of it. At some places there extended
between the foot of the “loomery”’ and the sea a stone-bestrewn
beach, which at high water was mostly covered by the sea, and
at low water was full of shallow salt-water pools. Here had
settled two Polar bears that were soon killed, one by Lieutenant
Brusewitz, the other by Captain Johannesen. The bears had
evidently been on the hunt for looms, which along with their
young, large as rotges and already able to swim, were swimming
in the pools of water at the foot of the “loomery,” and above all
perhaps they were lying in wait for birds which by some accident

1 According to an observation with an artificial horizon on land.
2 According to an observation on board. The observations for longitude
that were made some hours before or after noon, are reduced to noon.

268 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

happened to fall down from the breeding-place. In the sea no
small number of seals were seen, and but a few hours before
our arrival at the island we had sailed past herds of walrus.
Vegetation was much more luxuriant and richer in species
than at Cape Chelyuskin, and naturally bore a more southern
stamp, not only in consequence of the more southerly position
of the island, but also on account of its shores being washed

PREOBRASCHENIE ISLAND.
(After a sketch by O. Nordquist.)

by the water of the Chatanga river, which is warm during
summer.

1 The following 65 species were collected here by Dr. Kjellman :-—

Saussurea alpina DC. Saxifraga stellaris L. f. comosa.
Gymnandra Stelleri Cuam. & e nivalis L.

ScHLECHT, . hieraciifolia WaLpsT. &
Pedicularis hirsuta L. Kir.
Eritrichium villosum Bunce. +f punctata L,
Myosotis silvatica Horrm. 3 cernua L.
Phaca frigida L. “7 rivularis L.

Dryas octopetala L. ceespitosa L,

”
Sieversia glacialis R. Br. Chrysosplenium alternifolium L.
Potentilla emarginata PursH. Eutrema Edwardsii R. Br.
Saxifraga oppositifolia L. Parrya macrocarpa R. Br.

o bronchialis L. Cardamine bellidifolia L.

3 flagellaris WILLD, Cochlearia fenestrata R. Br.

. Hirculus L, Draba alpina L.

BS serpyllifolia PursH. Papaver nudicaule L.

VII. | PARTING OF THE VEGA AND THE LENA. 269

Unfortunately, on account of the advanced season of the year
I could only allow the Vega to remain a few hours off this
interesting island, and at 10.30 p.m. accordingly the anchor was
weighed and our voyage along the coast resumed.

On the 25th, 26th and 7th August we had for the most
part calm, fine weather, and the sea was completely free of ice.
The temperature of the water again rose to +5°°8, and its
salinity diminished considerably. But the depth now decreased
so much, that, for instance, on the night before the 26th we had
great difficulty in getting past some shoals lying west of the
delta of the Lena, off the mouth of the Olonek.

It had originally been my intention to let the Vega separate
from the Lena at some anchorage in one of the mouth-arms of
the Lena river. But on account of the shallowness of the
water, the favourable wind and the ice-free sea, that now lay
before us to the eastward, I determined to part from the Lena
in the open sea off Tumat Island. This parting took place on
the night between the 27th and 28th August, after Captain
Johannesen had been signalled to come on board the Vega, to
receive orders, passport,’ and letters for home. As a parting
salute to our trusty little attendant during our voyage round
the north point of Asia some rockets were fired, on which we
steamed or sailed on, each to his destination.

During our passage from Norway to the Lena we had been
much troubled with fog, but it was only when we left the
navigable water along the coast to the east of Cape Chelyuskin
that we fell in with ice in such quantity that it was an obstacle

Ranunculus pygmeus Wa. Glyceria angustata R. Br.
- hyperboreus Rorrs. . vilfoidea (ANps.) TH. Fr.
s nivalis L. Arctophila pendulina (Lasr.) AND.
a: sulphureus Sou. Catabrosa algida (Soz.) Fr,
Caltha palustris L. Colpodium latifolium R. Br.
Wahlbergeila apetala (L.) Fr. Dupontia Fisheri R. Br.
Stellaria humifusa Rorrs. Aira cespitosa L.
55 Edwardsii R. Br. Hierochloa pauciflora R. Br.
Cerastium alpinum L. Alopecurus alpinus Sm.
Alsine macrocarpa FENZL. Eriophorum angustifolium Ror.
» Tubella Wea. 9 russeolum Fr,
Sagina nivalis Fr. Pe Scheuchzeri Hoppe.
Oxyria digyna (L.) HI. Carex ursina DEsv.
Polygonum viviparum L, » aquatilis We,
Salix arctica PALL. Juncus biglumis L.
5, reticulata L. Luzula hyperborea R. Br.
» polaris Wa. 3 arctica BL.
Poa arctica R. Br. Lloydia serotina (L.) REICHENB,

,, pratensis L.

1 Before our departure, I had through the Swedish Foreign Office obtained
from the Russian Government letters patent in which the Russian authorities
with whom we might come in contact were instructed to give us all the
assistance that circumstances might call for,

270 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

to our voyage. If the coast had been followed the whole time,
if the weather had been clear and the navigable water sufficiently
surveyed, so that it had been possible to keep the course of
the vessel near the land, the voyage of the Vega to the mouth
of the Lena would never have been obstructed by ice, and I am
convinced that this will happen year after year during the close
of August, at least between the Yenise] and the Lena, For
I believe that the place where ice-obstacles will perhaps be met
with most frequently will not be the north point of Asia, but
the region east of the entrance to the Kara Sea.

CHAPTER VIII.

The voyage of the Fraser and the Express up the Yenisej and their return
to Norway—Contract for the piloting of the Lena up the Lena river—
The voyage of the Lena through the delta and up the river to Yakutsk
—The natural state of Siberia in general—The river territories—The
fitness of the land for cultivation and the necessity for improved com-
munications—The great rivers, the future commercial highways of
Siberia—Voyage up the Yenisej in 1875—Sibiriakoff’s Island—The
tundra—The primeval Siberian forest—The inhabitants of Western
Siberia: the Russians, the Exiles, the “ Asiatics’’—Ways of travelling
on the Yenisej: dog-boats, floating trading stores propelled by steam
—New prospects for Siberia.

I HAVE mentioned in the Introduction that the Vega during
the first part of the voyage was accompanied by three other
vessels, which together with the principal vessel of the Expedi-
tion stood at my disposal and under my orders, and I have stated
in passing that their voyages too deserve a place in the history
of navigation. Now, when we were parted from the vessel
which had accompanied the Vega farthest in her route eastwards,
it may be the proper place to give a brief account of the close
of the voyages of the Mraser, the Express, and the Lena, and
give reasons for what I have said of the importance of these
voyages.

On the 9th August at 10 a.m., after Mr. Serebrenikoff had
gone on board the Hzpress to take command, as Sibiriakoff’s
commissioner, of the two vessels bound for the Yenisej, the
Fraser, with the Express in tow, started from Port Dickson for
the river. The voyage passed without other adventures than
that in consequence of unacquaintance with the navigable
waters the vessel sometimes gently grounded. On the 11th
August Korepovsko] was reached, the same place where I laid up
in 1876 the goods which I had brought with me in the Ymer.
Here my old friend from my voyages of 1875 and 1876, the

vul. ] NAVIGATION OF THE YENISEJ. efit

Cossack Feodor, was taken on board. He however proved now
as unskilful a pilot as before. Notwithstanding his experience
in 1876, when he several times ran the Ymer aground, he had
not yet got a clear idea of the difference between the build of
an ocean vessel and of the common flat-bottomed Yenisej
lighters, and his conception of the responsibility of a pilot was
expressed by his seeking, when he was allowed to take his own
course, to forget in the arms of sleep all dangers and difficulties.
Mr. Serebrenikoff and the captains of the vessels were there-
fore themselves compelled by means of frequent soundings,
which were commonly made from a steam launch in advance, to

THE STEAMER ‘‘ FRASER.’

endeavour to find out the proper course. The navigable water
between the level islands covered with bushy thickets and rich
grassy meadows was often very narrow, but appears to have
been pretty deep, as, even when the vessels went forward with-
out the guidance of a skilful pilot, there was a depth of from
5 to 30 metres; and after a fisher, who knew the river better
than Feodor, had been taken on board, it was found possible to
go at full speed between the more southerly of the Briochov
Islands! in a depth of 30 to 50 metres. On 14th August the
vessels reached Tolstojnos, where a very well preserved simovie
is situated about 70° 10’ N.L., 370 kilometres south of Port

! With this name, for want of another, I denote all the innumerable
islands which lie in the Yenisej between 69° 45’ and 71° N.L.

272 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

Dickson. On the 15th August they anchored in a good haven
at Saostrovskoj, a simovie lying 100 kilometres farther up the
river at the limit of trees, where the goods were to be discharged
and another cargo taken on board. After a jetty had been
constructed on the 16th, the landing of the goods began on the
17th, and was finished on the 20th. “The Fraser went still farther
up the river to Dudino, in order to load various goods laid up
there—tallow, wheat, rye, and oats. On the 2nd September
the steamer returned to Saostrovsko}, where in the meantime
the Express had taken on board her cargo.

Dudino is a church village, situated at the point where the
river Dudinka flows into the Yenisej. Here live two priests, a
smotritel (a police official), a couple of exiles, some Russian
workmen, and a number of natives, as well as the owner of the
place, the influential merchant SoTNikorr. This active and
able man is in an economical point of view ruler over the whole
of the surrounding region, all whose inhabitants are in one way
or other dependent upon him. He exchanges grain, brandy,
sugar, tea, iron goods, powder and lead, cloth and leather, for
furs, fish, mammoth-ivory, &c.; and these goods are sent by
steamer to Yenisejsk to be forwarded from thence to China,
Moscow, St. Petersburg, &e. Among other things he is also the
owner of very thick coal-seams in the Noril Mountains lying
about 60 kilometres from Dudino. This simple and unostenta-
tious man has been very obliging to all the scientific men who
have visited the region. His dwelling, situated in the neighbour-
hood of the limit of trees, is probably the stateliest palace of
the Siberian tundra, admired by natives from far and near. It
is built of large logs, consists of two stories, has a roof painted
green, many windows with decorated frames painted white and
blue; the rooms are warm, provided with carpets of furs, pot-
flowers in the windows, numerous sacred pictures, photographs,
and copper_ engravings.

On the 7th “September all was ready for ‘departure. The
Fraser and Express weighed anchor to commence the return
voyage down the river. “At Tolstojnos two days after they met
the steamer Moskwa! of Bremen, Canin Dallmann, having on

1 The Moskwa was the first steamer which penetrated from the Atlantic to
the town of Yenisejsk. The principal dates of this voyage may therefore
be quoted here.

Baron Knoop, along with several Russian merchants, had chartered in
1878 a steamer, the Louise ; but this vessel stranded on the coast of Nor-
way. The Zaritza, another Norwegian steamer, was chartered instead to

carry the Louise's goods to their destination. But this vessel too stranded
at the mouth of the Yenisej, and was abandoned by the crew, who were
rescued by asmall steamer, the Moskwa, which accompanied the Zaritea. Tn
this steamer Captain Dallmann, the Bremen merchant Helwig Schmidt, and

Ehlertz, an official in the Russian finance office, now travelled up the river.
The Moskwa had a successful voyage, arriving on the 4th September at

VIL] FIRST EXPORTS BY SEA FROM SIBERIA. 273

board the crew of the Norwegian steamer Zaritza, Captain Brun,
which had stranded at the mouth of the Yenisej] and been
abandoned by the crew. In the case of this stranding, however,
the damage done had not been greater than that, when the
Fraser fell in with the stranded Zaritza, it could be pumped dry,
taken off the shoal, and, the engine having first been put in
order, carried back to Norway. On the 19th September all the
three vessels arrived at Matotschkin Sound, where they lay
some days in Beluga Bay in order to take in water and trim
the cargo and coal; after which on the 22nd of the same month
they sailed through the sound to the west, and on the 26th
anchored at Hammerfest in good condition and with full cargoes}
The goods, which now for the first time were carried from the
Yenisej to Europe, consisted of about 600 tons—tallow, wheat,
rye and oats. The goods imported into Siberia consisted mainly
of 16 tons nails, 8 tons horseshoes, 4 tons horsenails, 16% tons
bar iron, 33 tons tobacco, 60 tons salt, 24 casks petroleum, an
iron lighter in pieces with the necessary adjuncts of anchors, &c.?

Before I begin to give an account of the voyage of the Lena
I must briefly mention the steps which Mr, Sibiriakoff took for
her safety during her voyage from the mouth of the river, where
she was to part from the Vega, to her proper destination, the town
of Yakutsk. It is naturally very difficult for a vessel to seek
her way without a pilot through an extensive delta completely
unknown in a hydrographic respect, and crossed by a large
number of deeper or shallower river arms, Mr. Sibiriakoff had
therefore arranged that a river pilot should meet the Lena at the
north point of the delta, and had through Mr. Kolesoff negoti-
ated with him the following contract, which I reproduce here in
full, because it gives in several respects a very graphic picture
of various social relations in these remote regions. The copy of
the contract which has been communicated to me when
translated runs thus :—

At Yakutsk, in the year one thousand eight hundred and
seventy-eight on the 18th February, I, the undersigned Yakut

Goltschicha, passing Turuchansk in consequence of a number of delays
only on the 24th September, reaching Podkamenaja Tunguska on the Ist
October, and on the 14th of the same month its destination, a winter
harbour on the Tschorna river, some miles north of Yenisejsk. (Fabrt auf
dem Yenissej von der Miindung bis Yenisejsk im Sommer 1878; Petermann’s
Mittheilungen, 1879, p 81.)

1 The particulars of the voyages of these vessels are taken from a copy
which I have received of Captain Emil Nilsson’s log.

2 The goods carried by me and by Wiggins to the Yenisej in 1876,
and those which Schwanenberg carried thence in 1877, were properly only
samples on a somewhat large scale, I have no knowledge of the goods
which the Zaritza had on board when she ran aground at the mouth of
the Yenise}.

TT

274 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

AFONASI FEODOROFF WINOKUROFF, have concluded the follow-
ing contract with IvAN PLATONOWITSCH KOLESOFF, merchant
of the second guild in the town of Yakutsk.

1. I, Winokuroff bind myself as pilot to carry the vessel of
Professor Nordenskiold’s expedition up the river Lena from the
village Tas-Ary, which lies about 150 versts below the village
Bulun. From Tumat Island, which is situated in the north-
eastern part of the Lena delta, I bind myself for the piloting of
the same vessel to procure at my own cost among the inhabitants
of the place a pilot who knows well the deepest channel of the
Lena river as far as the village Tas-Ary. This pilot the chief
of the expedition shall discharge at the village Tas-Ary.

2. As I am not master of the Russian language I bind my-
self to bring along with me a Yakut interpreter, who knows the
Russian language and is able to write. In May of this year, I,
Winokuroff, with the interpreter sball travel from the town
of Yakutsk down the Lena river to Tumat Island and there
along with the interpreter wait for the expedition.

3. During the passage down the river Iam bound to hire
among the inhabitants of the regions a competent guide, who
shall accompany us in my own boats to the island by the
deepest channel in the Lena delta. During the passage from
the village Tas-Ary I shall take soundings and record the depth
of the fairway.

4. Between the village Bulun and Tumat Island, I bind
myself to seek for two places for the wintering of the vessel,
which are quite suitable for the purpose, and protected from ice.
I shall further lay before the commander of the expedition a
journal containing everything which I can find that it would be
advantageous to know for the safety of navigation and for the
wintering of the vessels, also accounts of the places which are
dangerous or unsuitable for navigation.

5. On my arrival at Tumat Island I shall make it my first
duty to find a deepand convenient haven for the seagoing vessels
on the western side of the island. For this purpose I bind myself
to have with me two boats, which, if necessary, shall be given
over to the expedition. At the haven when found I bind myself
to erect on some eminence near the shore of the island, which
can be seen from Cape Olonek, a signal tower of driftwood or
earth, like a Cossack mound, not lower than seven feet. On
this foundation I shall raise a pyramidal frame of three or more
thick logs, on the top of which I shall fix a flagstaff with a
pulley block for the flag. The flag is to be flown at least 42
feet from the ground. I shall guard the landmark thus erected
until the river freezes. For this purpose Herr Kolesoff has
provided me with a ready-made flag, a pulley block and a line.
And when the nights become dark I shall light two or three

VIII. CONTRACT WITH A PILOT. 275

large fires or hang up lanterns on the landmark itself, so that
these fires or lanterns may be seen from the sea.

6. From the village Tas-Ary I shall carry the vessel of the
expedition to the town of Yakutsk, inasmuch as I shall show
the proper fairway on the Lena river. The interpreter shall be
at my side during the whole journey.

7. During the whole time from the day when I start from
Yakutsk, up to the close of my time of service in Nordenskidld’s
expedition we, I, Winokuroff, and my interpreter, must be always
sober (never intoxicated), behave faithfully and courteously, and
punctually comply with the captain’s orders.

8. For all these obligations Herr Kolesoff has to pay me 900
roubles.

9. After the arrival of the expedition at Yakutsk I will not
be allowed to leave the ship without the permission of the chief,
but shall still remain on board. If the captain finds it necessary
that I accompany him back to the mouth of the Lena, I shall
conform to his wish in consideration of an extra fee of 300
roubles. During this latter passage I am not bound to have
with me any interpreter.

10. -If the arrival of the expedition at Tumat Island is delayed
by any circumstance to the month of November, I have the
right to betake myself along with my interpreter to Yakutsk
and here to produce to Herr Kolesoff an official certificate given
by Commandant Baschleff or any other local official that I had
erected a landmark on Tumat Island and remained there until the
river was frozen over, and that I did not leave until the expedi-
tion was no longer to be expected. Then Herr Kolesoff on the
ground of this contract must settle with me by paying me the
whole sum of 900 roubles, together with 200 roubles for
my return journey.

11. If the vessel of the expedition arrive at Tumat Island so
late that the voyage becomes impossible, we, I and my interpreter,
shall winter with the expedition until the river becomes open
in 1879. And in this case we, I and my interpreter, shall
live at our own expense, and serve the expedition as belonging
to its crew. After the commencement of navigation in 1879
I shall conduct the vessel from the wintering station to the town
of Yakutsk. On this account I have to receive, besides the 900
roubles coming to me, 800 roubles more. If during this voyage
too it should be necessary to accompany the vessels from
Yakutsk back to the mouth of the Lena, I shall do that, and
receive on that account 300 roubles. But if the vessels
winter at Yakutsk, I shall be free during winter, and only
during next year’s voyage, if so required, accompany them
to the mouth of the Lena. In that case I have to receive 390
roubles.

T 2

276 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

12. Of this sum agreed upon Herr Kolesoff shall pay me in
advance on the conclusion of this contract 300 roubles, in the
month of May at my departure 150 roubles, and at the village
Bulun 250 roubles, for my payment to my companions and pilot
and other expenses. The balance shall be:paid to me after
my return to Yakutsk.

13. In the month of May, at the time for starting, if I be pre-
vented by illness from betaking myself to Tumat Island, I shall
repay to Herr Kolesoff the sum paid to me at the conclusion of
this contract, with the exception of the money I have paid to
the interpreter as pocket-money and for the boats. Should I
not be able to repay the sum, I, Winokuroff, shall work out the
amount not repaid at Herr Sibiriakoff’s gold mines.

14, All this are we, the two contracting parties, bound to
observe in full and without infringement. '

A note to the copy further informs us that to this contract
the Yakut Afonasii Feodoroff Winokuroff had, in place of his
signature, attached his own seal, which the Yakut Alexu
Zassimott Mironoff had engraved, and that the conditions had
been approved by the merchant Ivan Kolesoff, and the whole
registered at the police-office of the Yakutsk circle.

The contract had been entered into with the friendly co-ope-
ration of the Governor and Bishop of Yakutsk, who were much
interested in the proposed voyage. The latter knew the coast -
of the Polar Sea from his own experience. But notwithstanding
all this, the affair was attended with no better success than that
the pilot celebrated the receipt of the large sum of money by
getting thoroughly intoxicated, and while in that state he broke
one of the bones of the fore-arm. He was thus unable ever to
reach the appointed rendezvous, and Johannesen was allowed to
manage by his own hand, as best he could, his little steamer.

After the Lena had parted with the Vega during the night
between the 27th and 28th August, she steamed towards land,
and came the same day to the ‘northernmost cape of the Lena
delta, situated in 73° 47’ N.L1 It was here that the pilot’s’
landmark was to have been erected, but there was no pilot here,
and no flagstaff was visible. In order to fall in with this land-
mark Johannesen sailed forty kilometres westward along the
shore, but as his search in this direction was not attended with
success, he turned back to the first-mentioned place and landed
there. On the shore stood a very old hut, already completely
filled with earth. It probably dated from some of the expe-
ditions which visited the region in the beginning of the century.

1 According to Johannesen’s determination. On Wrangel’s map the
latitude of this cape is given as 73° 30°. Johannesen found the longitude
to be 125° 31’ instead of 127°.

VIII. ] SEARCHING FOR THE LANDMARK. 277

Wild reindeer were seen in large numbers. As according to the
contract which has been quoted the landmark was to be visible
from Cape Olonek, Johannesen steamed once more to the west,
running as close 1o the land as possible. But as the water here
became shallower and shallower without any signal-tower being
visible, Johannesen had to find his way himself through the
delta; and for this purpose he determined to search for the
easternmost arm of the river, which, on the maps, is drawn
as being very broad, and also appears to have been made use of
by the vessels of “the great northern expeditions.” +

THE STEAMER ‘‘LENA.”’

Forty kilometres east of the northern extremity of the Lena
delta Johannesen encountered three sandbanks, which he sailed

1 According to Latkin (Petermann’s Mittheilungen, 1879, p. 92), the Lena
delta is crossed by seven main arms, the westernmost of which is
called Anatartisch. It debouches into the sea at a cape 58 feet high
named Ice Cape (Ledjanoi), Next come the river arm Bjelkoj, then Tumat,
at whose mouth a landmark erected by Laptev in 1739 is still in existence.
Then come the other three main arms, Kychistach, Trofimov, and Kisch-
Jach, and finally the very broad eastmost arm, Bychov. Probably some of
the smaller river arms are to be preferred for sailing up the river to this
broad arm, which is fouled by shoals,

278 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

round. After passing these the water became deeper, so that
he could advance at a distance of five kilometres from land.
On the 1st September Johannesen anchored in a bay on the
mainland in the neighbourhood of the Bychov mouth, whence
on the 3rd September, at 2.30 a.m., he continued his course up
the river, but by 10 o'clock the Lena. was aground. The water
was falling, and did not begin to rise until an hour after mid-

night. It was not, therefore, until 8 a.m. the following day
that the Lena was cot off, and that with great difficulty. The
sailing through the delta was rendered difficult by the maps,
which were made 140 years ago, being now useless. For the

HANS CHRISTIAN JOHANNESEN,.

Captain of the ‘‘Lena.”” Born in 1846.

delta has undergone great alterations since then. Where at
that time there were sandbanks, there are now large islands,
overgrown with wood and grass. At other places again whole
islands have been washed away by the river.

While the vessel was aground nine Tunguses came on board
They rowed im small boats, which were made of a single tree
stem, hollowed out, and could just carry a man each. Johan-
nesen endeavoured in vain to induce some of the Tunguses to
pilot the steamer ; he did not succeed in explaining his “wish to
them, notwithstanding all the attempts of the Russian inter-
preter, a proof of the slight contact these Tunguses had had

Vul. | A THANKSGIVING SERVICE. ys)

with the rulers of Siberia, and also of the difficulty and un-
willingness with which the savage learns the language of the
civilised nations.

It was not until the 7th September that the delta was finally
passed, and the Zena steamed in the river proper, where the
fairway became considerably better. Johannesen says in his
account of the voyage that it is improbable that any of the
western arms of the Lena are of importance, partly because the
mass of water which flows in an easterly direction is very
considerable in comparison with the whole quantity of water in
the river, partly because the western and northern arms which
Johannesen visited contained only salt water, while the water
in the eastern arm was completely free from any salt taste. On
the 8th, early in the morning, the first fixed dwelling-place on
the Lena, Tas-Ary, was reached. Here the voyagers landed to
get information about the fairway, but could not enter into
communication with the natives, because they were Tunguses.
In the afternoon of the same day they came to another river
village, Bulun. Impatient to proceed, and supposing that it
too was inhabited wholly by “ Asiatics,’! Johannesen intended
to pass 1t without stopping. But when the inhabitants saw the
steamer they welcomed it with a salute from all the guns that
could be got hold of in haste.2 The Lena then anchored. Two
Crown officials and a priest came on board, and the latter
performed a thanksgiving service.

Even at that remote spot on the border of the tundra the
Asiatic comprehended very well the importance of vessels from
the great oceans being able to reach the large rivers of Siberia,
I too had a proof of this in the year 1875. While still rowing
up the river in my own Nordland boat with two scientific men
and three hunters, before we got up with the steamer Alexander
we landed, among others, at a place where a number of Dolgans
were collected. When they understood clearly that we had
come to them, not as brandy-sellers or fish-buyers from the
south, but from the north, from the ocean, they went into com-
plete ecstasies. We were exposed to unpleasant embraces from
our skin-clad admirers, and finally one of us had the misfortune
to get a bath in the river in the course of an attempt which the
Dolgans in their excitement made to carry him almost with
violence to the boat, which was lying in the shallow water some
distance from the shore. At Dudino, also, the priests living
there held a thanksgiving service for our happy arrival thither.
Two of them said mass, while the clerk, clad in a sheepskin
caftan reaching to his feet, zealously and devoutly swung an

1 A common name used in Siberia for all the native races,
* This has been incorrectly interpreted as if they shot at the vessel.

280 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

immense censer. The odour from it was at first not particularly
pleasant, but it soon became so strong and disagreeable that 1,
who had my place in front of the audience, was like to choke,
though the ceremony was performed in the open air. Soon the
clerk was completely concealed in a dense cloud of smoke, and
it was now observed that his skin cloak had been set fire to at
the same time as the incense. The service, however, was not
interrupted by this incident, but the fire was merely extin-
guished by a bucket of water being thrown, to the amusement
of all, over the clerk.

At nine in the morning the Zenxa continued her voyage up
the river with the priest and the Crown officials on board, but
they had soon to be landed, because in their joy they had
become dead drunk. On the 13th September Schigansk was
reached, and samples of the coal found there were taken
on board, but these proved unserviceable,t and on the 21st
September the Zena reached Yakutsk. The first vessel which,
coming from the ocean, reached the heart of Siberia was
received with great goodwill and hospitality, both by the
authorities and the common people. But when Johannesen did
not find here Sibiriakoft’s representative, Kolesoff, he continued
his voyage up the river, until, on the 8th October, he came to
the village Njaskaja, 220 versts from Vitim, in about 60° N.L.
Here he turned back to Yakutsk and laid up the steamer in
winter quarters a little to the south of that town.

Both the Fraser and Hapress and the Lena had thus fully
answered the purposes intended before the departure of the
expedition, and their voyages will always form an important
link in the chain of the attempts through which navigation in
the Siberian Polar Sea has been opened.

In order to give an idea of the influence which this sea-route
may have on the commerce of the world, and the new source of
fortune and prosperity which thereby may be rendered accessible
to millions, I shall in a few words give an account of the nature
of the territory which by means of this sea-communication
will be brought into contact with the old civilised countries
of Europe.

If we take Siberia in its widest sense, that is to say, if we
include under that name not only Siberia proper, but also the
parts of High Asia which lie round the sources of the great
Siberian rivers, this land may very well be compared in extent,

1 A coal seam is often unfit for use near the surface, where for centuries
it has been uncovered and exposed to the action of the atmosphere, while
farther down it may yield very good coal. It is probable besides that the
layers of shale, which often surround the coal seams, have in this case
been mistaken for the true coal. For those who are inexperienced in coal-
mining to make such a mistake is the rule and not the exception.

vit.] IMPORTANCE OF THE SEA-ROUTE TO SIBERIA. 281

climate, fertility, and the possibility of supporting a dense
population, with America north of 40° N.L. Like America,
Siberia is occupied in the north by woodless plains. South of
this region, where only the hunter, the fisher, and the reindeer
nomad can find a scanty livelihood, there lies a widely extended
forest territory, difficult of cultivation, and in its natural condi-
tions, perhaps, somewhat resembling Sweden and Finland north
of 60° or 61° N.L. South of this wooded belt, again, we have,
both in Siberia and America, immeasurable stretches of an

YAKUTSK IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
(After Witsen.)

exceedingly fertile soil, of whose power to repay the toil of the
cultivator the grain exports during recent years from the fron-
tier lands between the United States and Canada have afforded
so striking evidence. There is, however, this dissimilarity
between Siberia and America, that while the products of the
soil in America may be carried easily and cheaply to the
harbours of the Atlantic and the Pacific, the best part of
Siberia, that which les round-the upper part of the courses of
the Irtisch-Ob and the Yenisej, is shut out from the great

oceans of the world by immense. tracts lying in front of it, and

282 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. | CHAP.

the great rivers which in Siberia cross the country and appear
to be intended by nature to form not only the arteries for its
inner life, but also channels of communication with the rest of
the world, all flow towards the north and fall into a sea which,
down to the most recent times, has been considered completely
inaccessible.

Of these rivers the double river, Ob-Irtisch, with its numerous
affluents, occupies an area of more than 60,000 geographical

YAKUTSK IN OUR DAYS,

(After a recent Russian drawing.)

square miles, the Yenisej-Angara, not quite 50,000, and the
Lena, somewhat over 40,000. As the map of the river system

1 In order not to write without due examination about figures which
have been written about a thousand times before, I have, with the help of
Petermann’s map of North and Middle Asia in Stieler’s Hand-Atlas, cal-
culated the extent of the areas of the Siberian rivers, and found them
to be :—

Square Geographical

kilometres. square miles.
River area of the Ob (with the Tas)... 3,445,000 62,560
¥ . » Yenisej tae Meee 2,712,000 49,250
Lena... 2,395,000 43,500

Of these areas 4,966,000 square kilometres, or about 90,000 geographical
square miles, lie south of 60° N.L.

7
’

MAP of the RIVER SYSTEM of SIBERIA.

Scale 1:20,000,000.

B80

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/

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MARION, eos?
<3
Pee

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Y Samara

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Gas Bigsreve Uschersh, Y

i

SS

= a PS J
_/ MAND SCHURDY /

fale tip ae <

Avadse Wateasn, ; ‘
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a in Stielers Hand-Atlas , 1880.

Vil. ] THE RIVER SYSTEM OF SIBERIA.” 233

of Siberia, which accompanies this work, shows, but a small part
of these enormous territories lies north of the Arctic Circle, and
only very inconsiderable portions of it are occupied by woodless
tundra, which is explained by the fact that the greater part of
the coast-land bordering on the Arctic Ocean is drained by
small rivers of its own, and therefore cannot be considered to
belong to the river territories now in question. If we draw the
northern boundary of the land that may be cultivated with
advantage at 60° N.L., there remains a cultivable area of
90,000 geographical square miles. Perhaps a third part of this
is occupied by rocky country which is wooded, and probably
capable of being cultivated only with considerable difficulty,
but the rest consists for the most part of easily cultivated
grassy plains, with little wood, and covered with the most
luxuriant vegetation. The soil, in many places resembling
the black earth or ¢scherno-sem of Russia, recompenses with
abundant harvests even the slightest labour of cultivation.
Notwithstanding this, these regions now support only an exceed-
ingly sparse population, but many, many millions may without
ditticulty find their subsistence there when once cultivation has
developed the rich natural resources of the country.

It is a circumstance specially fortunate for the future develop-
ment of Siberia that its three great rivers are already navigable
for the greater part of their course. The Ob is navigable from
Biisk (523° N.L.), and the Irtisch at least from Semipalitinsk
(50° 18’ N.L). The Yenesej, again, which, after leaving the
region of its sources in China, crosses with its two main arms
the whole of Siberia from north to south, from the forty-sixth to
the seventy-third degree of latitude, and thus. traverses a terri-
tory which corresponds in length to the distance between Venice
and the North Cape, or between the mouth of the Mississippi
and the north part of Lake Winnipeg, and is already navigable
by nature from the sea to Yenisejsk. To this town goods are
already transported down both the main arms from Minusinsk
and the region of Lake Baikal. It is said that the Angara
might be made quite navigable during its whole course at an
expenditure trifling in comparison with the advantages that
would thus be gained, as well as its continuation, the ‘Belenga,
in its lower part between the Chinese frontier and Lake Baikal.
In this way a river route would be opened for the conveyance of
the products of North China and South Siberia to a sea which
an ordinary steamer would cross in five or six days to the White
Sea or the North Cape. A similar communication with the
Atlantic may be opened on the double river Ob-Irtisch with
Western Siberia and High Asia as far as to Chinese Dsungaria,
where the Irtisch begins its course as a small river, the Black
Irtisch, which falls into Lake Saisan, and rises south of the

284 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

Altai Mountains in the neighbourhood of the Selenga, the
source-river of the Yenisej. At several places the river terri-
tories of the Ob and the Yenesej nearly reach hands to one
another through affluents, which rise so close to each other that
the two river systems might easily be connected by canals.
This is also the case with the affluents of the Yenesej and the
Lena, which at many places almost meet, and the Lena itself
is, according to Latkin’s statement, navigable from the village
of Kotschuga to the sea. We see from this how extraordinarily
advantageous is the natural system of interior communication
which Siberia possesses, and at the same time that a communica-
tion by sea between this country and the rest of the world is pos-
sible only by the Arctic Ocean. It is on this that the enormous
importance of the navigation of the Siberian Polar Sea depends.
If this can be brought about, Siberia, with an inconsiderable
expenditure in making canals, will not only become one of the
most fortunate countries of the globe in respect of the possi-
bility of the cheap transport of goods, but the old proposal of a
north-eastern commercial route to China may even become a
reality. If, on the other hand, navigation on the Polar Sea
be not brought about, Siberia will still long remain what it is
at present—a land rich in raw materials, but poor in all
that is required for the convenience and comfort with which the
civilised man in our days can with difficulty dispense.

Many perhaps believe that the present want of commercial
communication may be removed by a railway running across
Russia and Southern Siberia. But this is by no means the
case. On the contrary, communication by sea 1s an indispens-
able condition of such a railway being profitable. For it can
never come in question to carry on a railway the products of
the forest or the field over the stretch of three to five thousand
kilometres which separates the fertile river territory of the Ob-
Irtisch from the nearest European port. Even if we suppose
that the railway freight, inclusive of all costs, could be reduced
to a farthing the kilometre-ton, it would in any case rise, from
the grain regions of Siberia to a harbour on the Baltic, to from
41. to nearly 7/. per ton. So high a freight, with the costs of
loading in addition, none of the common products of agriculture
or forestry can stand, as may easily be seen if we compare this
amount with the prices current in the markets of the world
for wheat, rye, oats, barley, timber, &c. But if the Siberian
countryman cannot sell his raw products, the land will continue
to be as thinly peopled as it is at present, nor can the
sparse population which will be found there procure themselves
means to purchase such products of the industry of the present
day as are able to bear long railway carriage. In the absence of
contemporaneous sea-communication the railway will therefore

Vill.] NATURAL CONDITIONS OF SIBERIA. 285

be without traffic, the land such as it is at present, and
the unprosperous condition of the European population
undiminished,

In order to give the reader an idea of the present natural
conditions, and the present communication on a Siberian river
I shall, before returning to the sketch of the voyage of the
Vega, give some extracts from notes made during my journey
up the Yenesej in 1875, reminding the reader, however, that
the natural conditions of the Ob-Irtisch and the Lena differ
considerably from those of the Yenisej, the Ob-Irtisch flowing
through lower, more fertile, and more thickly peopled regions,
the Lena again through a wilder, more beautiful, but less
cultivated country. -

When one travels up the river from Port Dickson, the broad
sound between Sibiriakoff’s Island and the mainland is _ first
passed, but the island is so low that it is not visible from the
eastern bank of the river arm which is usually followed in
sailing up or down the river. The mainland, on the other hand,
is at first high-lying, and in sailing along the coast it is possible
to distinguish various spurs of the range of hills, estimated to
be from 150 to 200 metres high, in the interior. These are
free of snow in summer, A little south of Port Dickson they
run to the river bank, where they form a low rock and rocky
island projecting into the river, named after some otherwise
unknown Siberian Polar trapper, Yefremov Kamen.

Sibiriakoff’s Island has never, so far as we know, been visited
by man, not even during the time when numerous simovies were
found at the mouth of the Yenesej. For no indication of this
island is found in the older maps of Siberia, although these, as
appears from the fac-simile reproduced at page 147, give the
names of a number of simovies at the mouth of the Yenisej,
now abandoned. Nor is it mentioned in the accounts of the
voyages of the great northern expeditions. The western strand
of the island, the only one I have seen, completely bore the
stamp of the twndra described below. Several reindeer were
seen pasturing on the low grassy eminences of the island, giving
promise of abundant sport to the hunter who first lands
there.

Still at Yefremov Kamen we saw in 1875 three Polar bears
who appeared to pasture in all peacefulness among the rocks,
and did not allow themselves to be disturbed by the enormous
log-fire of driftwood we lighted on the strand to make our
coffee. Here were found for the last time during our journey
up the river actual marine animals: Appendicularia, Clio,
medusz, large beroids, &c. Large bushy plants were still com-
pletely wanting, but the vegetable world already began to
assume a stamp differing from the Arctic Ocean flora proper. A

‘

286 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP

short distance south of Yefremov Kamen begins the veritable
tundra, a woodless plain, interrupted by no mountain heights,
with small lakes scattered over it, and narrow valleys crossing
it, which often make an excursion on the apparently level plain
exceedingly tiresome.

As is the case with all the other Siberian rivers running from
south to north,! the western strand of the Yenisej, wherever it
is formed of loose, earthy layers, is also quite low and often
marshy, while on the other hand the eastern strand consists of
a steep bank, ten to twenty metres high, which north of the

RIVER VIEW ON THE YENISEJ.
(From a drawing by A. N. Lundstrim.)

limit of trees is distributed in a very remarkable way into
pyramidal pointed mounds. Numerous shells of crustacea
found here, belonging to species which still live in the Polar
Sea, show that at least the upper earthy layer of the tundra

1 For the northern hemisphere it is a general rule that where rivers
flow through loose, earthy strata in a direction deviating considerably
from that of the parallels of latitude, the right bank, when one stands
facing the mouth of the river, is high, and the left low. The cause
of this is the globular form of the earth and its rotation, which gives
rivers flowing north a tendency towards the east, and to rivers flowing
south a tendency to the west. This tendency is resisted by the bank,
but it is gradually eaten into and washed away by degrees, so that the
river bed, in the course of thousands of years, is shifted in the direction
indicated.

VIII] THE TUNDRA. 287

was deposited in a sea resembling that which now washes the
north coast of Siberia.?

The tundra itself is in summer completely free of snow, but
at a limited depth from the surface the ground is continually
frozen. At some places the earthy strata alternate with strata
of pure, clear ice. It is in these frozen strata that complete
carcases of elephants and rhinoceroses have been found, which
have been protected from putrefaction for hundreds of thousands
of years. Such jinds, however, are uncommon, but on the
other hand single bones from this primeval animal world occur
in rich abundance, and along with them masses of old drift-
wood, originating from the Mammoth period, known by the
Russian natives of Siberia under the distinctive name of
“ Noah’s wood.” Besides there are to be seen in the most
recent layer of the Yenesej twndra, considerably north of the
present limit of actual trees, large tree-stems with their roots
fast in the soil, which show that the limit of trees in the
Yenesej region, even during our geological period, went further
north than now, perhaps as far as, in consequence of favourable
local circumstances, it now goes on the Lena,

On the slopes of the steep #wndra bank and in several of the
tundra valleys there is an exceedingly rich vegetation, which
already, only 100 kilometres south of Yefremov Kamen, forms
actual thickets of flowering plants, while the tundra itself is
overgrown with an exceedingly scanty carpet, consisting more of
mosses than of grasses. Salices of little height go as far
north as Port Dickson (73° 30’ N.L,), the dwarf birch (Betula
nana, Li.) is met with, though only as a bush creeping along the
ground, at Cape Schaitanskoj (72° 8’ N.L.) ; and here in 1875, on
the ice-mixed soil of the twndra, we gathered ripe cloudberries.
Very luxuriant alders (Alnaster fruticosus, LEDEB.) occur already
at Mesenkin (71° 28’ N.L.), and the Briochov Islands (70° to
71° N.L.), are in several places covered with rich and luxuriant
thickets of bushes. But the limit of trees proper is considered
to begin first at the great bend which the river makes in

1 As specimens of the sub-fossil molluse fauna of the tundra some of
the common species are delineated on page 288. These are :—-

1. Mya arenaria, Lin. 3 of natural 9. Fusus fornicatus, Reeve. 5.
size. 10. Fusus tornatus, Gould. 3.

2. Mya truncata, Lin. var. Udde- 11. Margarita elegantissima, Bean.
vallensis, Forbes. 3. Natural size.
3. Saxicava pholadis, Lin. 2. 12. Pleurotoma plicifera, Wood.
4, Tellina lata, Gmel. 3. Natural size.
5. Cardium ciliatum, Fabr. 4. 13. Pleurotoma pyramidalis, Strom.
6. Leda pernula, Mil. var. buccata, 13.
Steenstr. Natural size. 14. Trichotropis borealis, Brod. 14.

7. Nucula expansa, Reeve. Nat.size. 15. Natica helicoides, Johnst. Nat.
8. Fusus Kréyeri, Moll, 4. size.

AoReESIERGREN, Na AER IEON,

SUB-FOSSIL MARINE CRUSTACEA FROM THE TUNDRA.

“CHAP. VIITJ A PRIMEVAL FOREST. 289

69° 40’ N.L.,a little north of Dudino. Here the hills are
covered with a sort of wood consisting of half-withered. grey,
moss-grown larches (Larix sibirica), which seldom reach a
height of more than seven to ten metres, and which much less
deserve the name of trees than the luxuriant alder bushes
which grow nearly 2° farther north. But some few miles south
of this place, and still far north of the Arctic Circle, the pine
forest becomes tall. Here begins a veritable forest, the greatest
the earth has to show, extending with little interruption from
the Ural to the neighbourhood of the Sea of Ochotsk, and from
the fifty-eighth or fifty-ninth degree of latitude to far north
of the Arctic Circle, that is to say, about one thousand kilo-
metres from north to south, and perhaps four times as much
from east to west. It is a primeval forest of enormous extent,
nearly untouched by the axe of the cultivator, but at many
places devastated by extensive forest fires.

On the high eastern bank of the Yenisej the forest begins
immediately at the river bank. It consists principally of pines :
the cembra pine (Pinus Cembra, L.), valued for its seeds, enor-
mous larches, the nearly awl-formed Siberian pine (Pinus
sibirica, LEDEB.), the fir (Pinus obovata, TURCZ.), and scattered
trees of the common pine (Pinus sylvestris, L.). Most of these
already north of the Arctic Circle reach a colossal size, but in
such a case are often here, far from all forestry, grey and half-
dried up with age. Between the trees the ground is so covered
with fallen branches and stems, only some of which are fresh,
the others converted into a mass of wood-mould held together
only by the bark, that there one willingly avoids going forward
on an unbroken path. If that must be done, the progress made
is small, and there is constant danger of breaking one’s bones
in the labyrinth of stems. Nearly everywhere the fallen stems
are covered, often concealed, by an exceedingly luxuriant bed of
mosses, while on the other hand tree-lichens, probably in con-
sequence of the dry inland climate of Siberia, occur sparingly.
The pines, therefore, want the shaggy covering common in
Sweden, and the bark of the birches which are seen here
and there among the pines is distinguished by an uncommon
blinding whiteness.

The western bank of the Yenesej consists, like the imnumer-
able islands of the river, for the most part of lowlying and
marshy stretches of Jand, which at the season of the spring
floods are overflowed by the river and abundantly manured with
its mud. In this way there is formed here a fertile tract of
meadow covered partly with a grassy turf untouched by the
scythe, partly with a very peculiar bush vegetation, rising to a
height of eight metres, among which there are to be found a
number of families of plants well known by us in Sweden, as

U

29°) THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

Impatiens, Urtica, Sonchus, Heracleum, &c., but in gigantic
forms unknown at home. Often a dense thicket of a willow
(Salix vitellenia, L.), whose straight, branchless stems resemble
at a distance the bamboo woods of the south, alternates with
level, grassy carpets of a lively green and small streams in such
a way as gives the whole the appearance of the most smiling
park carefully kept free of fallen branches and dry grass. It is
the river water which in spring has played the gardener’s part
in these parks, seldom trodden by the foot of man and endlessly
rich in the most splendid greenery. Near the river there are
also to be found carpets of a uniform green, consisting of a
short kind of Equisetum, unmixed with any other plants, which
forms a “ gazon,” to which no nobleman’s country seat can show
a match. The drawback is, that a stay im these regions during
summer is nearly rendered impossible by the enormous number
of mosquitoes with which the air is infested.

A table drawn up by Dr. ARNELL, to be found in Redogérelse
Jor de svenska expeditionerna till mynningen af Senise] dr 1876,1
shows the distribution of the most important varieties of trees.
From it we see that on the Yenesej the birch (Betula odorata,
Becust.), the fir (Pinus obovata, Turcz.), the larch (Pinus
lariz, L.), and the juniper (Juniperus communis, L.), go to
69° 35’ N.L. (that is to say to the latitude of Tromsoe) ; the
sallow (Salix caprea, L.) to 68° 55’; the bird’s cherry (Prunus
padus, L.), and the Siberian pine (Pinus sibirica, LEDEB.), to
66° 30’; the aspen (Populus tremula, L.) to 65° 55’ (the latitude
of Haparanda) ; the pine (Pinus sylvatica, L.) to 65° 50’, &e.

In the middle of the forest belt the wood appears to cover
the whole land without interruption, there being, unless
exceptionally, no open places. But towards the north the forest
passes into the treeless tundra through bare spots occurring
here and there, which gradually increase, until trees grow only
in valleys and sheltered places, and finally disappear completely.
Similar is the passage of the forest to treeless regions (steppes),
which at first are here and there bestrewed. with more or less
detached groups of broad-leaved trees, until they wholly dis-
appear, and the land forms an endless plain, out of whose fertile
soil the warm summer sun calls forth a great variety of
luxuriant vegetable forms, whose many-hued flowers, often
large and splendid, clothe the fields with the richest splendour
of colour. Here is the true homeland of many of the show-
plants in the flower-gardens of Europe, as, for instance, the
peony, the Siberian robinia, the blue iris, &c.

If the Siberian wooded belt forms the most extensive forest
in the world, this flower-steppe forms the world’s greatest
cultivable field, in all probability unequalled in extent and

1 Bihang till Vet. Akad. Handl. Bd, iv. No. 11, p. 42.

VIII. ] RUSSIAN HOUSES, : 291

fertility. Without manure and with an exceedingly small
amount of labour expended on cultivation, man will year by
year draw forth from its black soil the most abundant harvests.
For the present, however, this land, with its splendid capabili-
ties for cultivation, has an exceedingly scanty population; and
this holds good in a yet higher degree of the forest belt, which
is less susceptible of cultivation. At a considerable distance
from the rivers it is for the most part an unknown land, where
the European seldom or never sets his foot, and where only the
native nomad or hunter wanders about. These forests, how-
ever, are by no means so rich in game as might be expected,
perhaps because the mosquitoes in summer are unendurable by
warm-blooded animals.

The main population in the forest belt consists of native nomad
or hunting tribes, of which Samoyeds, Ostyaks, Tunguses, and
Yakuts are the most numerous. Only along the rivers do we
find Russian villages and peasant settlements, placed there for
trading with the natives, for fishing, and at some places for
washing gold. Not till we come to the middle of the country
is the Russian population more numerous ; here it spreads out in
a broad belt over the whole of the immense expanse between
the Ural and the Angara.

In the farthest north the Russian dwelling-places consist of
single cabins built of logs or planks from broken-up lighters,
and having flat, turf-covered roofs. Such carvings and orna-
ments as are commonly found on the houses of the well-to-do
Russian peasant, and whose artistic outlines indicate that the
inhabitants have had time to think of something else than the
satisfaction of the wants of the moment, are here completely
wanting; but further south the villages are larger, and the
houses finer, with raised roofs and high gables richly ornamented
with wood-carvings. A church, painted in bright colours,
generally shows that one of the inhabitants of the village has
become rich enough to be at the expense of this ornament to
his native place. The whole indicates a degree of prosperity,
and the interiors of the houses, if we except the cockroaches,
which swarm everywhere, are very clean. The walls are orna-
mented with numerous, if not very artistic, photographs and
lithographs. Sacred pictures, richly ornamented, are placed in
a corner, and before them hang several small oil-lamps, or small
wax-lights, which are lighted on festive occasions. The sleep-

1 Provisions and wares intended for trade with the natives are trans-
ported on the Yenisej, as on many other Siberian rivers, down the stream
in colossal lighters, built of planks like logs. It does not pay to take
them up the river again, on which account, after their lading has been
taken out of them, they are either left on the bank to rot or broken up for
the timber.

Lina

292 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. (CHAP.

ing place is formed of a bedstead near the roof, so large that it
occupies a half or a third of the room, and at such a height
from the floor that one can stand upright under it. There
a tropical heat commonly prevails, the occupant of the bed
accordingly enjoying an almost constant sweat-bath, which does
not prevent him from going out immediately into the open air
at a temperature at which mercury freezes. Food is cooked in
large baking ovens, which are fired daily for that purpose, and
at the same time heat the cabin. Fresh bread is baked every
day, and even for the poora large tea-urn (samovar) is an almost
indispensable household article. The foreigner is certain to
receive a hearty and friendly welcome when he crosses the

SIBERIAN RIVER BOAT.
Used by the Norwegian traveller Chr. Hansteen on the river Angara.

threshold, and if he stays a short time in the cabin he will
generally, whatever time of the day it be, find himself drink-
ing a glass of tea with his host. The dress everywhere closely
resembles the Russian: for the rich, wide velvet trousers stuck
into the boots, a shirt showily embroidered with silver thread,
and a large caftan often lined with fur; for the poor, if not too
ragged, the same cut, but the cloth inferior, dirty, and torn.
During winter, however, for going out of doors, the Samoyed
pesk is said to be common to high and low, Russian and native,
settled and nomad.

In my journey up the Yenesej in 1875 I met with only a

VI. ] RUSSIAN EXILES. 293

few persons in these regions who had been exiled thither for
political reasons, but on the other hand very many exiled
criminals of the deepest dye—murderers, thieves, forgers, in-
cendiaries, &e. Among them were also some few Fins and
even a Swede, or at least one who, according to his own state-
ment in broken Swedish, had formerly served in the King’s
Guard at Stockholm. Security of person and property was in
any case complete, and it was remarkable that there did not
appear to be any proper distinction of caste between the
Russian-Siberian natives and those who had been exiled for
crime. There appeared even to be little interest in ascertaining
the crime—or, as the customary phrase appears to be here, the
‘misfortune ””—which caused the exile. On making inquiry on
this point I commonly got the answer, susceptible of many
interpretations, “for bad behaviour.” We found a peculiar sort
of criminal colony at Selivaninskoj, a very large village situated
on the eastern bank of the Yenesej in about the latitude of
Aavasaksa. My journal of the expedition of 1875 contains the
following notes of my visit to this colony.

The orthodox Russian church, as is well known, is tolerant
towards the professors of foreign religions—Lutherans, Catholics,
Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, Shamans, &c.; but, on the
other hand, in complete correspondence with what took place
in former times within the Protestant world, persecutes sectaries
within its own pale, with temporal punishments here upon earth
and with threatenings of eternal in another world. Especially
in former times a great many sectaries have been sent to Siberia,
and therefore there are sometimes to be found there peculiar
colonies enjoying great prosperity, exclusively inhabited by the
members of a certain sect. Such is the Skopt colony at Selivan-
inskoj, in connection with which, however, it may be remarked
that the nature of the religious delusion in this case accounts
for the severity of the law or the authorities. For, on the
ground of a text in the Gospel of Matthew interpreted in a
very peculiar way, all Skoptzi subject themselves to a mutilation,
in consequence of which the sect can only exist by new prose-
lytes; and remarkably enough, these madmen, notwithstanding
all persecution, or perhaps just on that account, actually still
gain followers. A large number of the Skoptzi were Fins from
Ingermanland, with whom I could converse without difficulty.
They had, through industry and perseverance, succeeded in
creating for themselves a certain prosperity, were hospitable and
friendly, and bore their hard fate with resignation. They would
not themselves kill any warm-blooded animal, for it was “a sin
to kill what God had created ;” which did not hinder them from
catching and eating fish, and from selling to us, who in any
case were lost beings, a fine fat ox, on condition that our own

294 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. VIII.

people should slaughter it. Their abstinence from some
kinds of animal food had besides the good result of inducing
them to devote themselves to the cultivation of the soil.
Round about their cabins accordingly there were patches of land
growing potatoes, turnips, and cabbage, which at least that year
yielded an abundant crop, though lying under the Arctic circle.
Farther south such plots increase in size, and yield rich crops,
at least, of a very large potato. There is no proper cultivation of
grain till we come to Sykobatka, situated in 60° N.L., but in a
future, when forests and mosses are diminished, a profitable
agriculture will be carried on far to the northward.

WASSER LR

OSTYAK TENT.
After a Fhotograph.)

Along with the dwellings of the Russians, the tents of the
natives, or, as the Russians call them, “the Asiatics,” are often
to be met with. They have the same shape as the Lapp ‘ ‘kota.”
The Samoyed tent is commonly covered with reindeer skins, the
Ostyak tent with birch bark. In the neighbourhood of the
tent there are always large numbers of dogs, which during
winter are employed for “ general carrying purposes, and in
summer for towing boats up “the river—a means of water trans-
port which greatly astonished the Norwegian sailors with whom
[ travelled up the river in 1875. To see people travelling in a
boat drawn by dogs appeared to them more remarkable than

AHHH AUTH NA
WH

TOWING WITH DOGS ON THE YENISEJ,

(After a drawing by Hj. Theéel.)

The boat Luna with the Swedish Land Expedition of 1876 on board,

293 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA, [CHAP.

the Kremlin of Moscow, or the bells of Kiev. For such a
journey a sufficient number of dogs are harnessed to a long line,
one end of which is fastened to the stem of the boat. The dogs
then go along the level bank, where they make actual foot-
paths. The boat being of light draught is kept afloat at a
sufficient distance from land partly by means of the rudder
which is managed by a person sitting in the stem of the boat,
and partly by poling from the fore. Small boats are often
hollowed out of a single tree-stem, and may notwithstanding,
thanks to the size which some of the pines attain in those

FISHING BOATS ON THE OB.
(After a Photograph.)

regions, be very roomy, and of a very beautiful shape. The
dogs strongly resemble the Eskimo dogs in Greenland, which
are also used as draught animals.

Most of the natives who have come into close contact with the
Russians are said to profess the Christian religion. That many
heathen customs, however, still adhere to them is shown, among
other things, by the following incident: At a simovie where we
landed for some hours on the 16th Sept. we found, as is common,
a burying-place in the forest near the dwelling houses. The

corpses were placed in large coffins above ground, at which

VIII. ] SIBERIAN GRAVES. 297

almost always a cross was erected. In one of the crosses a
sacred picture was inserted, which must be considered a further
proof that a Christian rested in the coffin. Notwithstanding
this, we found some clothes, which had belonged to the departed,
hanging on a bush beside the grave, together with a bundle con-
taining food, principally dried fish. At the graves of the richer
natives the survivors are even said to place along with food
some rouble notes, in order that the departed may not be alto-
gether without ready money on his entrance into the other
world.

GRAVES IN THE PRIMEVAL FOREST OF SIBERIA.
(After a drawing by Hj. Théel.)

Right opposite the village Nasimovskoj is a gold-digger’s
deserted ‘‘residence,’” named Yermakova after the first con-
queror of Siberia. The building owed its origin to the discovery
of sand-beds rich in gold, occupying a pretty extensive area
east of the Yenisej, which for a time had the repute of being
the richest gold territory in the world. Here in a short
time enormous fortunes were made; and accounts of the
hundreds of poods which one or another yearly reaped from
the sand-beds, and the fast reckless life led by those to whom
fortune dealt out the great prizes in the gold-digging lottery,
still form a favourite topic of conversation in the region. A

248 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

rise in the value of labour and a diminished production of the
noble metal have, however, since led to the abandonment of a
large number of the diggings that formerly were most produc-
tive e; others now scarcely pay the expense of the working.
Many of the gold-diggers who were formerly rich, in the
attempt to win more have been impoverished, and have dis-
appeared ; others who have succeeded in retaining their ‘ pood
of gold” —that is the mint unit which the gold-diggers prefer
to use in their conversation—have removed to Omsk, Krasno-
jarsk, Moscow, Petersburg, Paris, &. The gold-diggers’ resi-
dences stand, therefore, now deserted, and form on the eastern
bank of the river a row of half-decayed wooden ruins surrounded
by young trees, after which in no long time only the tradition
of the former period of prosperity will be found remaining. In
one respect indeed the gold-diggers have exerted a powerful
influence on the future of the country. For it was through
them that the first pioneers were scattered in the wilderness,
the first seed sown of the cultivation of the region.
In 1875 there were only two steamers on the Yenisej. These
were neither passenger nor cargo boats, but rather movable
commercial stores, propelled by steam. The fore-saloon formed
a shop provided with a desk, and shelves on which were to be
seen cloths, iron wares, guns, ammunition, tobacco, tea, matches,
sugar, brightly coloured copper engravings or lithographs, &c.
In the after-saloon was enthroned, among brandy casks, pur-
chased furs, and other precious or delicate wares, he who had
the command on board, a kind and friendly merchant, who evi-
dently did not concern himself much with the work of the
sailors, but rather with trade and the making of bargains, and
who was seldom called by the crew captain (Kapitan), “but gene-
rally master (Hosain). After the steamer, or floating commercial
store, there was towed one or two lodjas, which served as maga-
zines, in which meal and salt and other heavy goods were stored,
the purchased fish were salted and looked after, fresh bread baked
for the numerous crew, &c. And as there was not a single jetty
to be found the whole way between Yenisejsk and the sea, both
the steamer and the lodjas, in order to be able to load and deliver
goods at any point, had a large number of boats and lghters
in tow. No place was set apart for passengers, but travellers
were received in a friendly and hospitable manner when they
came on board, where they were then allowed to look out for
themselves as best they could. The nautical command was
held by two mates or pilots of a stately and original appearance,
who, clad in long caftans, sat each in his watch on a chair at
the wheel, generally without steering, mostly smoking a cigarette
made of coarse paper and, with the most careless appearance in
the world, exchanging jests with those who were going down the

VIII. ] A YENISEJ STEAMER. 299

river. The prohibition of taking away the attention of the
steersman from his work by conversation was thus not in force
hereabouts. A man stood constantly in the fore, uninterruptedly
testing the depth with a long pole. For in order to avoid
the strong current of the main stream the course was always
shaped as near the shore as possible, often so near that one
could almost jump ashore, and my own Nordland boat, which
was towed by the side of the steamer, was occasionally drawn
over land. It will be seen from this of how light draught the
steamer was.

CHUKCH VILLAGE ON A SIBERIAN RIVER.
(After a Photograph.)

Siberia, especially the river territory of the Yenise] and the
Lena, possesses rich coal seams, which probably extend under
considerable portions of the Siberian plain, but are yet unworked
and have attracted little attention. The river steamers accord-
ingly are fired, not with coal, but with wood, of which, if I
remember right, 180 fathoms went to the voyage of the steamer
Alexander up the river. As the vessel could carry only a small
portion of this quantity of wood at one time, frequent halts were
necessary, not only for trading with the natives, but also for
taking fuel on board. In addition to this, the weak engine,

300 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. VIII,

although the safety valves were overloaded when necessary with lead
weights, was sometimes unable to make head with all the vessels
in tow against a current which at some places was very rapid,
and often, in the attempt to find still water near the river bank,
the steamer ran aground, notwithstanding the continual ‘“ ladno ”
cry of the poling ‘pilot standing in the fore. It made so slow
progress on this account that the passage from Saostrovskoj to
Yenisejsk occupied a whole month.

The two main arms into which the Yenise] is divided south
of Yenisejsk are too rapid for the present Yenisej steamers
to ascend them, while, as has been already stated, there is no
difficulty in descending these rivers from the Selenga and the
Baikal Lake on the one hand, and from the Minusinsk region
abounding in grain on the other. The’ banks here consist, in

many places, of high rocky ridges covered with fine forests, with
wonderfully beautiful valleys. between them, covered with
luxuriant vegetation.

What I have said regarding the mode of travelling up the
Yenisej refers to the year 1875, in which I went up the river
accompanied by two Swedish naturalists and three Norwegian
seamen. It was then by no means unknown, for scientific men
such as HANSTEEN (1829), CASTREN (1846), MIDDENDORF (winter
journeys in 1843 and 1844), and ScuMrpT (1866), had travelled
hither and communicated their observations to the scientific
world in valuable works on the nature and people of the region.
But the visits of the West-European still formed rare exceptions ;
no West-European commercial traveller had yet wandered to
those regions, and into the calculations of the friendly masters
of the Yenisej river steamers no import of goods from, or
export of goods to, Hurope had ever entered. All at once a new
period seemed to begin. If the change has not gone on so fast
as many expected, life here, however, 1s more than it was at one
time, and every year the change is more and more noticeable.
It is on this account that I consider these notes from the journey
of 1875 worthy of being preserved.

CHAP. IX. ] THE MAMMOTH. 301

CHAPTER IX.

The New Siberian Islands—The Mammoth—Discovery of Mammoth and
Rhinoceros mummies—Fossil Rhinoceros horns—Stolbovoj Island—
Liachoft’s Island—-First discovery of this island—Passage through the
sound between this island and the mainland—Animal life there —
Formation of ice in water above the freezing point—The Bear Islands—
The quantity and dimensions of the ice begin to increase—Different
kinds of sea-ice—Renewed attempt to leave the open channel along the
coast—Lighthouse Island—Voyage along the coast to Cape Schelagskoj
—Advance delayed by ice, shoals, and fog—First meeting with the
Chukches—Landing and visits to Chukch villages—Discovery of
abandoned encampments— Trade with the natives rendered difficult
by the want of means of exchange—Stay at Irkaipi—Onkilon graves—
Information regarding the Onkilon race—Renewed contact with the
Chukches—Kolyutschin Bay—American statements regarding the state
of the ice north of Behring’s Straits—'The Vega beset.

AFTER the parting the Lena shaped her course towards the land ;
the Vega continued her voyage in a north-easterly direction
towards the new Siberian Islands.

These have, from the time of their discovery, been renowned
among the Russian ivory collectors for their extraordinary rich-
ness in tusks and portions of skeletons of the extinct northern
species of elephant known by the name of mammoth.

We know by the careful researches of the academicians PALLAS,
von BAER, BRANDT, VON MIDDENDORFF, FR. SCHMIDT, &c., that
the mammoth was a peculiar northern species of elephant with
a covering of hair, which, at least during certain seasons of the
year, lived under natural conditions closely resembling those
which now prevail in middle and even in northern Siberia.
The widely extended grassy plains and forests of North Asia
were the proper homeland of this animal, and there it must at
one time have wandered about in large herds.

The same, or a closely allied species of elephant, also occurred
in North America, in Eugland, France, Switzerland, Germany,
and North Russia. Indeed, even in Sweden and Finland incon-
siderable mammoth remains have sometimes been found.? But
while in Europe only some more or less inconsiderable remains
of bones are commonly to be found, in Siberia we meet not only
with whole skeletons, but also whole animals frozen in the
earth, with solidified blood, flesh, hide, and hair. Hence we
may draw the conclusion that the mammoth died out, speaking
geologically, not so very long ago. This is besides confirmed by

1 Further information on this point is given by A. J. Malmgren in
a paper on the occurrence and extent of mammoth-finds, and on the
conditions of this animal’s existence in former times (Finska Vet.-Soc.

Forhandl. 1874—5).

302 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. IX.

a remarkable antiquarian discovery made in France. Along
with a number of roughly worked flint flakes, pieces of ivory
were found, on which, among other things, a mammoth with
trunk, tusks, and hair was engraved in rough but unmistak-
able leaments, and in a style resembling that which distin-
guishes the Chukch drawings, copies of which will be found
further on in this work. This drawing, whose genuineness
appears to be proved, surpasses in age, perhaps a hundredfold,
the oldest monuments that Egypt has to show, and forms a re-
markable proof that the mammoth, the original of the drawing,
lived in Western Europe contemporaneously with man. The
mammoth remains are thus derived from a gigantic animal form, —
living in former times in nearly all the lands now civilized, and
whose carcase is not yet everywhere completely decomposed.
Hence the great and intense interest which attaches to all that
concerns this wonderful animal.

If the interpretation of an obscure passage in Pliny be correct,
mammoth ivory has, from the most ancient times, formed a
valued article of commerce, which, however, was often mistaken
for the ivory of living elephants and of the walrus. But portions
of the skeleton of the mammoth itself are first described in de-
tail by WITSEN, who during his stay in Russia in 1686 collected
a large number of statements regarding it, and at least in the
second edition of his work gives good drawings of the under jaw
of a mammoth and the cranium of a fossil species of ox, whose
bones are found along with the remains of the mammoth (WIT-
SEN, 2nd. edit. p. 746). But it appears to have escaped Witsen,
who himself considered mammoth bones to be the remains of
ancient elephants, and who well knew the walrus, that in a
number of the accounts which he quotes, the mammoth and the
walrus are clearly mixed up together, which is not so wonderful,
as both are found on the coast of the Polar Sea, and both yielded
ivory to the stocks of the Siberian merchants. In the same
way all the statements which the French Jesuit, Avrit, during
his stay in Moscow in 1686, collected regarding the amphibious
animal, Behemoth, occurring on the coast of the Tartarian Sea,
(Polar Sea) refer not to the mammoth, as some writers,
HowortH! for example, have supposed, but to the walrus.
The name mammoth, which is probably of Tartar origin, Witsen
appears to wish to derive from Behemoth, spoken of in the
fortieth chapter of the Book of Job. The first mammoth tusk
was brought to England in 1611, by Jostas Locay. It was
purchased in the region of the Petchora, and attracted great

1 Compare Ph. Avril, Voyage en divers états d’ Europe et d’ Asie entrepris
pour découvrir un nouveau chemin a la Chine, etc., Paris, 1692, p. 209.
Henry H. Howorth, “The Mammoth in Siberia” (Geolog. Mag. 1880,
p. 408).

‘BNQsi9j;9d 4G Ul yprMYyoS YOupoiiy ueloimepvoy oy} Aq poyeorunuimos ydvisojoyg v 10yV

‘OUNASHALAd “LS NI SHONAIOS JO AWACVOV AHL AO WOASOW TIVIUAMWI AHL NI NOLATANS HLOWWYW

d04 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

attention, as appears from Logan’s remark in a letter to Hak-
luyt, that one would not have dreamed to find such wares in the
region of the Petchora (Purchas, ui. p. 546). As Englishmen
at that time visited Moscow frequently, and for long periods,
this remark appears to indicate that fossil ivory first became
known in the capital of Russia some time after the conquest of
Siberia.

I have not, indeed, been successful during the voyage of the
Vega in making any remarkable discovery that would throw
hight on the mode of life of the mammoth, but as we now sail

RESTORED FORM OF THE MAMMOTH.
After Jukes, The Student's Manual of Geology, Edinburgh, 1£62.

forward between shores probably richer in such remains than any
other on the surface of the globe, and over a sea, from whose
bottom our dredge brought up, along with pieces of driftwood,
half-decayed portions of mammoth tusks, and as the savages
with whom we came in contact, several times offered us very
fine mammoth tusks or tools made of mammoth ivory, it may
not perhaps be out of place here to give a brief account of
some of the most important mammoth jinds which have been

1 As will be stated in detail further on, there were found during the
Vega expedition very remarkable sub- fossil animal remains, not of the
mammoth, however, but of various different species of the whale.

is)" . MAMMOTH FOLK-LORE. 305

preserved for science. We can only refer to the discovery of
mammoth mummies, for the finds of mammoth tusks sufficiently
well preserved to be used for carving are so frequent as to defy
enumeration. Middendorff reckons the number of the tusks,
which yearly come into the market, as at least a hundred pairs,”
whence we may infer, that during the years that have elapsed
since the conquest of Siberia useful tusks from more than
20,000 animals have been collected.

The discovery of a mammoth-mummy is mentioned for the
first time in detail in the sketch of a journey which the Russian
ambassador Evert YssBRANTS IDES, a Dutchman by birth,
made in 1692 through Siberia to China. <A person whom
Yssbrants Ides had with him during his journey through Siberia,
and who travelled every year to collect mammoth ivory, assured
him that he had once found a head of this animal in a piece of
frozen earth which had tumbled down. The flesh was putrefied,
the neck-bone was still coloured by blood, and some distance
from the head a frozen foot was found.? The foot was taken to
Turuchansk, whence we may infer that the jind was made on
the Yenisej. Another time the same man found a pair of tusks
weighing together twelve poods or nearly 200 kilogram. Ides’
informant further stated, that while the heathen Yakuts, Tun-
guses, and Ostyaks, supposed that the mammoth always lived
in the earth and went about in it, however hard the ground
might be frozen, also that the large animal died when it came
so far up that it saw or smelled the air; the old Russians living
in Siberia were of opinion that the mammoth was an animal
of the same kind as the elephant, though with tusks somewhat
more bent and closer together ; that before the Flood Siberia had
been warmer than now, and elephants had then lived in numbers
there ; that they had been drowned in the Flood, and afterwards,
when the climate became colder, had frozen in the river mud.*

The folk-lore of the natives regarding the mode of life of the
mammoth under ground is given in still greater detail in J. B.
MULLErR’s Leben und Gewonheiten der Ostiaken unter dem Polo

1 The word mummies is used by Von Middendorff to designate carcases
of ancient animals found in the frozen soil of Siberia.

2 The calculation is probably rather too low than too high. The steamer
alone, in which I travelled up the Yenisej in 1875, carried over a hundred
tusks, of which however the most were blackened, and many were so
decayed that I cannot comprehend how the great expense of transport from
the tundra of the Yenisej could be covered by the value of this article.
According to the statement of the ivory dealers the whole parcel, good and
bad together, was paid for at a common average price.

3 Notices of yet other finds of mammoth carcases occur, according to
Middendorff (Sib. Reise, IV. i. p. 274) in the scarce and to me inaccessible
first edition of Witsen’s Noord en Oost Tartarye (1692, Vol. II. p. 473).

4 FE. Yssbrants Ides, Dreyjdirige Reise nach China, ete., Frankfort, 1707,
p. 55. The first edition was published in Amsterdam, in Dutch, in 1704.

».¢

306 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

arctico wohnende, &c. Berlin, 1720 (in French in Recueil de
Voiages au Nord, Amsterdam, 1731-38, Vol. VIII. p. 373).
According to the accounts given by Miiller, who lived in Siberia
as a Swedish prisoner of war, the tusks formed the animal’s
horns. With these, which were fastened above the eyes and
were movable, the animal dug a way for itself through the clay
and mud, but when it came to sandy soil, the sand ran together
so that the mammoth stuck fast and perished. Miiller further
states, that many assured him that they themselves had seen
such animals on the other side of Beresovsk in large grottos in
the Ural mountains (loc. cit. p. 382).

KLAPROTH received a similar account of the mammoth’s way
of life from the Chinese in the Russo-Chinese frontier and trad-
ing town Kyachta. For mammoth ivory was considered to be
tusks of the giant rat ¢ien-shw, which is only found in the cold
regions along the coast of the Polar Sea, avoids the light, and
lives in dark holes in the interior of the earth. Its flesh is
said to be cooling and wholesome. Some Chinese literati con-
sidered that the discovery of these immense earth rats might
even explain the origin of earthquakes.?

It was not until the latter half of the last century that a
European scientific man had an opportunity of examining a
similar find. In the year 1771 a complete rhinoceros, with flesh
and hide, was uncovered by a landslip on the river Wilui in 64°
N.L. Its head and feet are still preserved at St. Petersburg.
All the other parts were allowed to be destroyed for want of
means of transport and preservation.? What was taken away
showed that this primeval rhinoceros (LAinoceros antiquitatis
Blumenbach) had been covered with hair and differed from all
now living species of the same family, though strongly re-
sembling them in shape and size. Already, long before the
horns of the fossil rhinoceros had attracted the attention of
the natives, pieces of these horns were used for the same pur-
poses for which the Chukches employ strips of whalebone, viz.
to increase the elasticity of their bows. They were considered at

1 Strahlenberg in Das Nord- und Ostliche Theil von Europa und Asia,
Stockholm, 1730, p. 393, also gives a large number of statements regarding
the fossil Siberian ivory, and mentions that the distinguished Siberian
traveller Messerschmidt found a complete skeleton on the river Tom.

2 Tilesius, De skeleto mammonteo Sibirico (Mém. de Acad, de St. Péters-
bourg, T. V. pour UVannée 1812, p. 409). Middendorff, Sib. Reise, 1V.1. p. 274.
Von Olfers, Die Uberreste vorweltlicher Riesenthiere in Beziehung zu Ostasia-
tischen Sagen und Chinesischen Schriften (A bhandl. der Akad. d, Wissensch, zu
Berlin aus dem Jahre 1839, p. 51).

3 Pp. §. Pallas, De reliquiis animalium exoticorum per Asiam borealem
repertis complementum (Novi commentarii Acad, Se Petropolitane, XVII.
pro anno 1772, p. 576), and Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen
Reichs, Th. IIL. St. Petersburg, 1776, p. 97.

Ix. ] RHINOCEROS HORNS. 307

the same time to exert a like beneficial influence on the arrow,
tending to make it hit the mark, as, according to the hunter’s
superstition araong ourselves in former days, some cat’s claws
and owl’s eyes placed in the bullet mould had on the ball. The
natives believed that the crania and horns of the rhinoceros
found along with the remains of the mammoth belonged to
gigantic birds, regarding which there were told in the tents of
the Yakut, the Ostyak and the Tunguse many tales resembling
that of the bird Roc in the Thousand and One Nights. Ermann

SIBERIAN RHINOCEROS HORN.
Preserved in the Museum at St. Petersburg.

and Middendorff even suppose that such finds two thousand
years ago gave occasion to Herodotus’ account of the Arimaspi
and the gold-guarding dragons (Herodotus, Book IV. chap. 27).
Certain it is that during the middle ages such “ grip-claws”’
were preserved, as of great value, in the treasuries and art col-
lections of that time, and that they gave rise to many a romantic
story in the folk-lore both of the West and East. Even in
this century Hedenstrém, the otherwise sagacious traveller on
the Siberian Polar Sea, believed that the fossil rhinoceros’ horns
x 2

308 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

were actual “grip-claws.” For he mentions in his oft-quoted
work, that he had seen such a claw 20 verschoks (0°9 metre) in
length, and when he visited St. Petersburg in 1830, the scientific
men there did not succeed in convincing him that his ideas on
this subject were incorrect.!

A new find of a mammoth mummy was made in 1787, when
the natives informed the Russian travellers SARYTSCHEV and
MERK, that about 100 versts below the village Alasejsk, situated
on the river Alasej running into the Polar Sea, a gigantic
animal had been washed out of the sand beds of the beach
in an upright posture, undamaged, with hide and hair. The
jind, however, does not appear to have been thoroughly
examined.”

In 1799 a Tunguse found on the Tamut Peninsula, which juts
out into the sea immediately south-east of the river-arm by
which the Zena steamed up the river, another frozen-in mam-
moth, He waited patiently five years for the ground thawing
so much as that the precious tusks should be uncovered. The
softer parts of the animal accordingly were partly torn in pieces
and destroyed by beasts of prey and dogs, when the place was
closely examined in 1806 by ADAms the Academician. Only
the head and two of the feet were then almost undamaged.
The skeleton, part of the hide, a large quantity of long hair and
woolly hair a foot and a half long were taken away. How fresh
the carcase was may be seen from the fact that parts of the eye
could still be clearly distinguished. Similar remains had been
found two years before, a little further beyond the mouth of the
Lena, but they were neither examined nor removed.?

A new jind was made in 1839, when a complete mammoth
was uncovered by a landslip on the shore of a large lake to the
west of the mouth of the Yenisej, seventy versts from the Polar
Sea. It was originally almost entire, so that even the trunk
appears to have been preserved, to judge by the statement of
the natives that a black tongue as long as a month-old reindeer
calf was hanging out of the mouth; but it had, when it was
removed in 1842, by the care of the merchant TROFIMOV, been
already much destroyed.*

1 Hedenstrém, Otrywki o Sibiri, St. Petersburg, 1830, p. 125, Ermann’s
Archiv, Part 24, p. 140.

2 Compare K. E. v. Baer’s paper in I/élanges Biologiques, T. V. St. Péters-
bourg, 1866, p. 691; Middendorff, IV. i. p. 277; Gavrila Sarytschev’s
Achtjihrige Reise in nordéstlichen Sibirien, etc., translated by J. H. Busse,
Th. 1, Leipzig, 1805, p. 106.

3 Adams’ account is inserted at p. 431 in the work of Tilesius already
quoted. Von Baer gives a detailed account of this and other important
Jinds of the same nature in the above-quoted paper in Tome V, of Mélanges
Biologiques, St. Pétersbourg, pp. 645-740.

4 Middendorff, IV. 1, p. 272.

IX.] MAMMOTH FINDS. 309

Next after Trofimov’s mammoth come the mammoth-jfinds of
Middendorff and Schmidt. The former was made in 1843 on the
bank of the river Tajmur, under 75° N.L.; the latter in 1866
or the Gyda tundra, west of the mouth of the Yenisej in 70° 13’
N.L. The soft parts of these jinds were not so well preserved
as those just mentioned. But the /inds at all events had a
greater importance for science, from the localities having been
thoroughly examined by competent scientific men. Middendorff
arrived at the result that the animal found by him had floated
from more southerly regions to the place where it was found.
Schmidt on the other hand found that the stratum which con-
tained the mammoth rested on a bed of marine clay, containing
shells of high northern species of crustacea which still live in the
Polar Sea, and that it was covered with strata of sand alternat-
ing with beds, from a quarter to half a foot thick, of decayed
remains of plants, which completely correspond with the turf
beds which are still formed in the lakes of the tundra. Even
the very beds of earth and clay in which the bones, pieces of
hide, and hair of the mammoth mwmmy were enclosed, con-
tained pieces of larch, branches and leaves of the dwarf birch
(Betula nana), and of two northern species of willow (Salix
glauca and herbacea).' It appears from this that the climate of
Siberia at the time when these mammoth-carcases were im-
bedded, was very nearly the same as the present, and as the
stream in whose neighbourhood the find was made is a com-
paratively inconsiderable tundra river, lying wholly to the north
of the limit of trees, there is no probability that the carcase
drifted with the spring ice from the wooded region of Siberia
towards the north. Schmidt, therefore, supposes that the
Siberian elephant, if it did not always live in the northern-
most parts of Asia, occasionally wandered thither, in the same
way that the reindeer now betakes itself to the coast of the
Polar Sea. Von Branpt, VoN SCHMALHAUSEN, and others, had
besides already shown that the remains of food which were found
in the hollows of the teeth of the Wilui rhinoceros consisted of
portions of leaves and needles of species of trees which still
grow in Siberia.?

Soon after the mammoth found on the Gyda tundra had been
examined by Schmidt, similar finds were examined by GER-
HARD VON MAYDELL, at three different places between the rivers
Kolyma and Indigirka, about a hundred kilometres from the
Polar Sea. With respect to these finds I can only refer to a

1 Friedrich Schmidt, Wissenschaftliche Kesultate der zur Aufsuchung eines
Mammutheadavers ausgesandten Expedition (Mém. del? Acad, de St. Péters-
bourg, Ser. VII. T. XVIII. No. 1, 1872).

2 Brandt, Berichte der preussischen Akad. der Wissenchaften, 1846, p. 224.
Von Schmalhausen, Bull. de l’Acad. de St. Pétersbourg, T, XXII. p. 291.

310 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

paper by L. von ScHRENCK in the Bulletin of the St. Petersburg
Academy, T. XVI. 1871, p. 147.

Under the guidance of natives I collected in 1876 at the
confluence of the river Mesenkin with the Yenisej, in 71° 28’
N.L., some fragments of bones and pieces of the hide of a
mammoth. The hide was 20 to 25 millimetres thick and nearly
tanned by age, which ought not to appear wonderful, when we
consider that, though the mammoth lived in one of the latest
periods of the history of our globe, hundreds of thousands, per-
haps millions of years have, however, passed since the animal
died to which these pieces of skin once belonged. It was clear
that they had been washed by the neighbouring river Mesenkin
out of the tundra-bank, but I endeavoured, without success, to
discover the original locality, which was probably already con-
cealed by river mud. In the neighbourhood was found a very
fine cranium of the musk ox.

A new and important find was made in 1877 on a tributary
of the Lena, in the circle Werchojansk, in 69° N.L. For there
was found there an exceedingly well preserved carcase of a
rhinoceros (Rhinoceros Merchkii, Jaeg.), a different species from
the Wilui rhinoceros examined by Pallas. However, before the
carcase was washed away by the river, there had only been
removed the hair-covered head and one foot. From the jind
Schrenck draws the conclusion that this rhinoceros belonged to
a high-northern species, adapted to a cold climate, and living in,
or at least occasionally wandering to, the regions where the
carcase was found. There the mean temperature of the year
is now very low,” the winter exceedingly cold (— 63°2 has been
registered) and the short summer exceedingly warm. Nowhere
on earth does the temperature show extremes so widely sepa-
rated as here. Although the trees in winter often split with
tremendous noise, and the ground is rent with the cold, the
wood is luxuriant and extends to the neighbourhood of the Polar
Sea, where besides, the winter is much milder than farther in
the interior. With respect to the possibility of these large
animals finding sufficient pasture in the regions in question, it

1 The find is described by Herr Czersky in the Transactions published by
the Kast Siberian division of the St. Petersburg Geographical Society ; and
subsequently by Dr. Leopold von Schrenck in Mém. de VAcad. de St, Péters-
bourg, Ser. VII. T. XX VII. No. 7, 1880.

* The mean temperature of the different months is shown in the following
table :—

: =e eee ee
JAN. | Fes. MarcH APRIL May JUNE |

| |
ore 9 ae 2 Se my a 0D tes Of the Year: |
| JULY AUG Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. | —16°7 |
| a4 | Fane | e83 | ieee | aga") ae | |
| : |

AX] THE NEW SIBERIAN ISLANDS. 311

ought not to be overlooked that in sheltered places overflowed
by the spring inundations there are found, still far north of the
limit of trees, luxuriant bushy thickets, whose newly-expanded
Juicy leaves, burned up by no tropical sun, perhaps form a
special luxury for grass-eating animals, and that even the bleakest
stretches of land in the high north are fertile in comparison with
many regions where at least the camel can find nourishment, for
instance the east coast of the Red Sea.

The nearer we come to the coast of the Polar Sea, the more
common are the remains of the mammoth, especially at places
where there have been great landslips at the river banks when
the ice breaks up in sprmg. Nowhere, however, are they found
in such numbers as on the New Siberian Islands. Here Heden-
strom in the space of a verst saw ten tusks sticking out of the
ground, and from a single sandbank on the west side of Liach-
off’s Island the ivory collectors had, when this traveller visited
the spot, for eighty years made their best tusk harvest. That
new jinds may be made there year by vear depends on the bones
and tusks being washed by the waves out of the sandbeds on
the shore, so that after an east wind which has lasted some time
they may be collected at low water on the banks then laid
dry. The tusks which are found on the coast of the Polar
Sea are said to be smaller than those that are found farther
south, a circumstance which possibly may be explained by
supposing that, while the mammoth wandered about on the
plains of Siberia, animals of different ages pastured in com-
pany, and that the younger of them, as “being more agile and
perhaps more troubied by flies than the older, went | farther
north than these.

Along with bones of the mammoth there are found on the
New Siberian Islands, in not inconsiderable numbers, portions of
the skeletons of other animal forms, little known, but naturally
of immense importance for ascertaining the vertebrate fauna
which lived at the same time with the mammoth on the plains
of Siberia, and the New Siberian group of islands is not less
remarkable for the “ wood-hills,”’ highly enigmatical as to their
mode of formation, which Hedenstrom found on the south coast
of the northernmost island. These hills are sixty-four metres
high, and consist of thick horizontal sandstone beds alternating
with strata of fissile bituminous tree stems, heaped on each
other to the top of the hill. In the lower part of the hill the
tree stems lie horizontally, but in the upper strata they stand
upright, though perhaps not rootfast.1_ The flora and fauna of
the island group besides are still completely unknown, and the
fossils, among them ammonites with exquisite pearly lustre,

1 Hedenstrém, loc. cit. p. 128. To find stranded driftwood in an upright
position is nothing uncommon.

312 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

which Hedenstrém brought home from the rock strata on
Kotelnoj Island, hold out imducement to further researches,
which ought to yield the geologist valuable information as to the
former climate and the former distribution of land and sea on
the surface of the globe. The knowledge of the hydrography
of this region is besides an indispensable condition for judging
of the state of the ice in the sea which washes the north coast
of Asia. Here lies the single available starting-point for the
exploration of the yet altogether unknown sea farther to the north,
and from hills on the two northernmost islands Hedenstrém
thought that across the sea to the north-west and north-east he

STOLBOVOJ ISLAND.
After a drawing by O. Nordquist.

saw obscure outlines of new land, on which no man had yet set
his foot. All these circumstances confer on this group of islands
an uncommon interest in a scientific and geographical respect,
and therefore no long time can elapse until a scientific ex-
pedition be sent to these regions. Just for this reason I now
desired, as a preparation for a future voyage, to wander about
here for a couple of days, partly on foot, partly by boat.

The air was calm, but for the most part clouded, the
temperature as high as + 4°, the sea clear of ice, the salinity of
the water 1°8 per cent. with a temperature of + 2° to +3°. At
first we made rapid progress, but after having in the after-
noon of the 28th August sighted the westernmost islands,

Ix.] LJACHOFF’S ISLAND. 513

Semenoffskoj and Stolbovoj, the sea became so shallow that for
long stretches we were compelled to sail in six to seven metres
water. Some very rotten ice, or rather ice sludge, was also met
with, which compelled us to make tedious défours, and prevented
the Vega from going at full speed.

The animal life was among the scantiest I had seen during my
many travels in the Polar Seas. A few seals were visible. Of
birds we saw some terns and gulls, and even far out at sea
a pretty large number of phalaropes—the most common kind of
bird on the coast of the Asiatic Polar Sea, at least in autumn. |
Stolbovoj Island was, especially on the north side, high with
precipitous shore-cliffs which afforded splendid breeding-places
for looms, black guillemots and gulls. At all such cliffs there
breed on Spitzbergen millions of sea fowl, which are met with
out on the surrounding sea in great flocks searching for their
food. Here not a single loom was seen, and even the number of
the gulls was small, which indeed in some degree was to be
accounted for by the late season of the year, but also by the
circumstance that no colony of birds had settled on the rocky
shores of the island.

The sea bottom consisted at certain places of hard packed
sand, or rather, as I shall endeavour to show farther on, of
frozen sand, from which the trawl net brought up no animals.
At other places there was found a clay, exceedingly rich in
Idothea entomon and Sabinet and an extraordinary mass of
bryozoa, resembling collections of the eggs of mollusca.

It was not until the 30th of August that we were off the west
side of Lyjachoff’s Island, on which I intended to land. The
north coast, and, as it appeared the day after, the east coast was
clear of ice, but the winds recently prevailing had heaped a
mass of rotten ice on the west coast. The sea besides was so
shallow here, that already at a distance 15’ from land we had
a depth of only eight metres. The ice heaped against the west
coast of the island did not indeed form any very serious obstacle
to the advance of the Vega, but in case we had attempted to
land there it might have been inconvenient enough, when the
considerable distance between the vessel and the land was to
be traversed in a boat or the steam launch, and it might even,
if a sudden frost had occurred, have become a fetter, which would
have confined us to that spot for the winter. Even a storm
arising hastily might in this shallow water have been actually
dangerous to the vessel anchored in an open road. The prospect
of wandering about for some days on the island did not appear
to me to outweigh the danger of the possible failure of the main
object of the expedition. I therefore gave up for the time
my intention of landing. The course was shaped southwards
towards the sound, of so bad repute in the history of the

old THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

Siberian Polar Sea, which separates Ljachoff’s Island from the
mainland.

So far as we could judge at a distance from the appearance
of the rocks, Stolbovo] consisted of stratified rocks, Ljachoft’s
Island, on the contrary, like the mainland opposite, of high
hills, much shattered, probably formed of Plutonic stone-masses.

IDOTHEA ENTOMON, LIN.
From the sea north of the mouth of the Lena.
(Natural size.)

Between these there are extensive plains, which, according to
a statement by the land surveyor CHvoINoFF, who by order of
the Czar visited the island in 1775, are formed of ice and sand,
in which lie imbedded enormous masses of the bones and tusks
of the mammoth, mixed with the horns and skulls of some

kind of ox and with rhinoceros’ horns. Bones of the whale and

1x. ] LJACHOFF’S ISLAND. 315

walrus are not mentioned as occurring there, but “long small
screw-formed bones,” by which are probably meant the tusks
of the narwhal.

All was now clear of snow, with the exception of a few of
the deeper clefts between the mountains. No traces of glaciers
were visible, not even such small collections of ice as are to be

IDOTHEA SABINEI, KROYER.
From the sea off the mouth of the Lena
(Natural size.)

found everywhere on Spitzbergen where the land rises a few
hundred feet above the surface of the sea. Nor, to judge by

1 Martin Sauer, An account of a Geographical and Astronomical Expedition
to the Northern parts of Russia by Commodore Joseph Billings, London,
1802, p. 105. The walrus does not occur in the sea between the mouth
of the Chatanga and Wrangel Land, and large whales are never seen at
the New Siberian Islands, but during Hedenstr6m’s stay in these regions
three narwhals were enclosed in the ice near the shore at the mouth of the
Yana (Otrywhki o Sibiri, p. 131);

316 THE VOYAGE Ot THE VEGA. [CHAP.

the appearance of the hills, have there been any glaciers in
former times, and this is certainly the case on the mainland.
The northernmost part of Asia in that case has never been
covered by such an ice-sheet as is‘assumed by the supporters
of a general ice age embracing the whole globe..

The large island right opposite to Svjatomos was discovered
in 1770 by LyAcHoFF, whose name the island now bears. In
1788 Billings’ private secretary, MARTIN SAUER, met with
Liachoff at Yakutsk, but he was then old and infirm, on which
account, when Sauer requested information regarding the
islands in the Polar Sea, he referred him to one of his com-
panions, ZAITAI PROTODIAKONOFF. He informed him that
the discovery was occasioned by an enormous herd of reindeer
which Ljachoff, in the month of April 1770, saw going from
Svjatoinos towards the south, and whose track came over the
ice from the north. On the correct supposition that the reindeer
came from some land lying to the north, Ljachotf followed the
track in a dog-sledge, and thus discovered the two most southerly
of the New Siberian Islands, a discovery which was rewarded
by the Czarina Catherine II. with the exclusive right to hunt
and collect ivory on them.

Ljachoff states the breadth of the sound between the main-
land and the nearest large island at 70 versts or 40’. On
Wrangel’s map again the breadth is not quite 30’. On the
mainland side it is bounded by a rocky headland projecting
far into the sea, which often formed the turning point in
attempts to penetrate eastwards from the mouth of the river
Lena, and perhaps just on that account, ike many other head-
Jands dangerous to the navigator on the north coast of Russia,
was called Szjatoinos (the holy cape), a name which for the
oldest Russian Polar Sea navigators appears to have had the
same signification as “the cape that can be passed with difficulty.”
No one however now thinks with any apprehension of the
two “holy capes,” which in former times limited the voyages of
the Russians and Fins living on the White Sea to the east and
west, and this, I am quite convinced, will some time be the case
with this and all other holy capes in the Siberian Polar Sea.

The sea water in the sound was much mixed with river water
and had a comparatively high temperature, even at a depth of
nine to eleven metres. The animal life at the sea bottom was
poor in species but rich in individuals, consisting principally of

1 Martin Sauer, An account of a Geographical and Astronomical Expedition
to the Northern parts of Russia by Commodore Joseph Billings, London,
1802, p. 103. A. Ermann, Reise um die Erde, Berlin, 1833—48, D. 1, B. 2,
p. 258. Ermann’s statement, that the knowledge of the existence of these
islands was concealed from the government up to the year 1806, is clearly
incorrect.

im) LJACHOFF’S ISLAND. — 317

Idothea entomon, of which Dr. Stuxberg counted 800 specimens
from a single sweep of the dredge. There were obtained at the
same time, besides a few specimens of Jdothea Sabinet, sponges
and bryozoa in great abundance, and small mussels, crustacea,
vermes, &c. Various fishes were also caught, and some small
alg collected. The trawl-net besides brought up from the
bottom some fragments of mammoth tusks, and a large number
of pieces of wood, for the most part sticks or branches, which
appear to have stood upright in the clay, to judge from the fact
that one of their ends was often covered with living bryozoa.
These sticks often caused great inconvenience to the dredgers,
by tearing the net that was being dragged along the bottom.

LJACHOFF’S ISLAND.
After a drawing by O. Nordquist.

On the night preceding the 31st of August, as we steamed
past Svjatoinos, a peculiar phenomenon was observed... The sky
was clear in the zenith and in the east; in the west, on the other
hand, there was a bluish-grey bank of cloud. The temperature
of the water near the surface varied between +1° and +1°6,
that of the air on the vessel between +1°5 and +1°8. Although
thus both the air and the water had a temperature somewhat
above the freezing-point, ice was seen to form on the calm,
mirror-bright surface of the sea. This ice consisted partly of
needles, partly of a thin sheet. I have previously on several
occasions observed in the Arctic seas a similar phenomenon,
that is to say, have observed the formation of ice when the

318 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA, [cHAP,

temperature of the air was above the freezing-point. On this
oceasion, when the temperature of the uppermost stratum of
water was also above the freezing-point, the formation of ice
was clearly a sort of hoar-frost phenomenon, caused by radiation
of heat, perhaps both upwards towards the atmosphere and
downwards towards the bottom layer of water, cooled below
the freezing-point.

The whole day we continued our voyage eastwards with
glorious weather over a smooth ice-free sea, and in the same
way on the Ist September, with a gentle southerly wind, the
temperature of the air at noon in the shade being + 5°°6. On
the night before the 2nd September the wind became northerly
and the temperature of the air sank to—1°. Little land was
seen, though we were still not very far from the coast. Near to
it there was a broad ice-free, or nearly ice-free, channel, but
farther out to sea ice commenced. The following night snow
fell, so that the whole of the deck and the Bear Islands, which
we reached on the 3rd September, were sprinkled with it.

Hitherto, during the whole time we sailed along the coast, we
had scarcely met with any fields of drift-ice but such as were
formed of rotten, even, thin and scattered pieces of ice, In many
places almost converted into ice-sludge, without an ‘‘ice-foot”
and often dirty on the surface. No iceberg had been seen, nor
any large glacier ice-blocks, such as on the coasts of Spitzbergen
replace the Greenland icebergs. But east of Svjatoinos the ice
began to increase in size and assume the same appearance as
the ice north of Spitzbergen. It was here, besides, less dirty, and
rested on a hard ice-foot projecting deep under water and
treacherous for the navigator.

The ice of the Polar Sea may be divided into the following
varieties :—

1. Icebergs. The true icebergs have a height above the
surface of the water rising to 100 metres. They often ground
in a depth of 200 to 300 metres, and have thus sometimes
a cross section of up to 400, perhaps 500 metres. Their area
may amount to several square kilometres. Such enormous
blocks of ice are projected into the North Polar Sea only from
the glaciers of Greenland, and according to Payer’s statement,
from those of Franz-Josef Land also; but not, as some authors
(GEIKIE, Brown, and others) appear to assume and have shown
by incorrect ideal drawings, from glaciers which project into the
sea and there terminate with a perpendicular evenly-cut border,
but from very uneven glaciers which always enter the sea in tte
bottoms of deep fjords, and are split up into icebergs long before
they reach it. It is desirable that those who write on the
origin of icebergs, should take into consideration the fact that
icebergs are only formed at places where a violent motion takes

1x.] GLACIER ICE-BLOCKS. 319

place in the mass of the ice, which again within a comparatively

short time results in the excavation of the deep ice-fjord. The

largest iceberg, which, so far as I know, has been measwred in

that part of the Polar Sea which lies between Spitzbergen and
: :

Wrangel Land, is one which Barents saw at Cape Nassau

on the 4th August 1596. It was sixteen fathoms high, and had

grounded in a depth of thirty-six fathoms. In the South Polar
Sea icebergs occur in great numbers and of enormous size. If
we may assume that they have an origin similar to those
of Greenland, it is probable that round the South Pole there
is an extensive continent indented by deep fjords.

2. Glacier Ice-blocks. These, which indeed have often been
called icebergs, are distinguished from true icebergs not only
by their size, but also by the way in which they are formed.
They have seldom a cross section of more than thirty or forty
metres, and it is only exceptionally that they are more
than ten metres high above the surface of the water. They
originate from the “calving” of glaciers which project into
the sea with a straight and evenly high precipitous border.
Such glaciers occur in large numbers on the coasts of Spitzbergen,
and they are there of the same height as similar evenly-cut
glaciers on Greenland. According to the statement of the
Dane PETERSEN, who took part both in KANE’s expedition in
1853-55 and in Torell’s in 1861, the glaciers, for instance, at
Hinloopen Strait in Spitzbergen, are fully equal, with respect
to their size and the height of their borders above the sea-level,
to the enormous and much bewritten Humboldt glacier in Green-
land. In Spitzbergen too we find at two places miniatures of
the Greenland ice-currents, for instance the glacier which filled
the North Haven in Bell Sound, another glacier which filled
an old Dutch whaling haven between Recherche Bay and Van
Keulen Bay, a glacier on the north side of Wahlenberg Bay
and perhaps at that part of the inland ice marked in my
map of the expedition of 1872 as a bay on the east coast
of North-east Land. It is even possible that small icebergs
may be projected from the last-mentioned place, and thence drift
out into the sea on the east coast of Spitzbergen.

Glacier-ice shows a great disposition. to fall asunder into
smaller pieces without any perceptible cause. Itis full of cavities,
containing compressed air, which, when the ice melts, bursts
its attenuated enyelope with a crackling sound like that of the
electric spark. It thus behaves in this respect in the same
way as some mineral salts which dissolve in water with slight
explosions. Barents relates that on the ?th August 1596 he
anchored his vessel to a block of ice which was aground on the
coast of Novaya Zemlya. Suddenly, and without any perceptible
cause, the rock of ice burst asunder into. hundreds of smaller

320 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

pieces with a tremendous noise, and to the great terror of all the
men on board. Similar occurrences on a smaller scale I
have myself witnessed. The cause to which they are due
appears to me to be the following. The ice-block while part
ot the glacier is exposed to very severe pressure, which: ceases
when it falls into the sea. The pressure now in most cases
equalises itself without any bursting asunder, but it sometimes
happens that the inner strongly compressed portions of the ice-
block cannot, although the pressure has ceased, expand freely
in consequence of the continuous ice-envelope by which they
are still surrounded. A powerful internal tension must thereby
arise in the whole mass, which finally leads to its bursting into
a thousand pieces. We have here a Prince Rupert’s drop, but
one whose diameter may rise to fifty metres, and which consists
not of glass but of ice.

Glacier ice-blocks occur abundantly on the coasts of Spitz-
bergen and north Novaya Zemlya, but appear to be wanting or
exceedingly rare along the whole north coast of Asia, between
Yugor Schar and Wrangel Land. East of this they again
occur, but not in any great numbers. This appears to show
that the Western Siberian Polar Sea is not surrounded by any
glacial lands. The glacier ice is commonly of a blue colour.
When melted it yields a pure water, free of salt. Sometimes
however it gives traces of salt, which are derived from the spray
which the storms have carried high up on the surface of
the glacier.

3. Pieces of ice from the ice-foot formed along the sea beach
or the banks of rivers. They rise sometimes five or six metres
above the surface of the water. They consist commonly of dirty
ice, mixed with earth.

4. River Ice, level, comparatively small ice fields, which,
when they reach the sea, are already so rotten that they soon
melt away and disappear.

5. The walrus-hunters’ Bay Ice ; by which we understand level
ice-fields formed in fjords and bays along the coast, and which
have there been exposed to a comparatively early summer heat.
The bay ice therefore melts away completely during summer,
and it is not commonly much pressed together. When all the
snow upon it has disappeared, there is to be seen above the
surface of the water a little ice of the same colour as the water,
while under water very considerable portions of unmelted hard
ice are still remaining. This has given rise to the walrus-
hunters’ statement, which has been warmly maintained, that the
ice in autumn finally disappears by sinking. Nearly all the ice
we met with in the course of our voyage belonged to this
variety.

6. Seca Ice, or heavy ice, which often exhibits traces of having

1X.] BAY AND SEA ICE. 321

been much pressed together, but has not been exposed to any
early summer heat. The walrus-hunters call it sea ice, wishing,
I imagine, to indicate thereby that it 1s formed in the sea
farther up towards the north: That it has drifted down from
the north is indeed correct, but that it has been formed far
from land over a considerable depth in the open sea is perhaps
uncertain, as the ice that is formed there cannot, we think,
be very thick. It has rather perhaps drifted down from the
neighbourhood of some yet unknown Polar continent. Of
this ice are formed most of the ice-fields in the seas east
of Greenland, north of Spitzbergen, between Spitzbergen and
the north island of Novaya Zemlya, and north of Behring’s
Straits. In the northern seas it does not melt completely
during the summer, and remains of sea ice therefore often
enter as component parts into the bay ice formed during the
following winter. The latter then becomes rough and uneven,
from remnants of old sea ice being frozen into the newly formed
ice. Sea ice is often pressed together so as to form great
torosses or ice-casts, formed of pieces of ice which at first. are
angular and piled loose on each other, but gradually become
rounded, and freeze together into enormous blocks of ice, which,
together with the glacier ice-blocks, form the principal mass
of the ground ice found on the coasts of the Polar lands. The
water which is obtaimed by melting sea-ice is not completely
free from salt, but the older it is the less salt does it contain.

East of the Bear Islands heavy sea-ice in pretty compact
masses had drifted down towards the coast, but still left an
open ice-free channel along the land. Here the higher animal
world was exceedingly poor, which, as far as the avi-fauna was
concerned, must be in some degree ascribed to the late season
of the year. For Wrangel mentions a cliff at the Bear Islands
which was covered with numberless birds’ nests. He saw
besides, on the largest of these islands, traces of the bear, wolf,
fox, lemming, and reindeer (Wrangel’s Reise, 1. pp. 304 and
327). Now the surrounding sea was completely deserted.’ No
Polar bear saluted us from the ice-floes, no walruses, and only
very few seals were visible. During many watches not a single
natatory bird was seen. Only the phalarope was still met with
in large numbers, even pretty far out at sea. Perhaps it was
then migrating from the north. The lower animal world was
more abundant. -From the surface of the sea the drag-net
brought up various small surface crustacea, inconsiderable in
themselves, but important as food for larger animals; and from
the sea-bottom were obtained a large number of the same animal
forms as from the sound at Svjatomos, and in addition some
beautiful asterids and a multitude of very large beaker sponges.

Y

322 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

On the 3rd September, after we had sailed past the Bear
Islands, the course was shaped right for Cape Chelagskoj. This
course, as will be seen by a glance at the map, carried us far
from the coast, and thus out of the channel next the land, in
which we had hitherto sailed. The ice was heavy and close,
although at first so distributed that it was navigable. But with
a north wind, which began to blow on the night before the
1st September, the temperature fell below the freezing-point,
and the water between the pieces of drift-ice was covered with a
very thick crust of ice, and the drift-ice came closer and closer
together. It thus became impossible to contmue the course
which we had taken. We therefore turned towards the land,
and at 6 o’clock P.M., after various bends in the ice and a few
concussions against the pieces of ice that barred our way, again

BEAKER SPONGES.
From the sea off the mouth of the Kolyma.

reached the ice-free channel, eight to twelve kilometres broad,
next the land. While we lay a little way in among the drift-
ice fields we could see no sign of open water, but it appeared as
if the compact ice extended all the way to land, a circumstance
which shows how careful the navigator ought to be in express-
ing an opinion as to the nature of the pack beyond the imme-
diate neighbourhood of the vessel. The temperature of the air,
which in the ice-field had sunk to — 3°, now rose at once to
4+ 4°-1, while that of the water rose from — 1°2 to + 3%5,
and its salinity fell from 2°4 to 13 per cent. All showed that
we had now come into the current of the Kolyma, which from
causes which have been already stated, runs from the mouth of
the river along the land im an easterly direction,

_

1x.] LIGHTHOUSE ISLAND. yA)

The Bear Islands lying off the mouth of the Kolyma are,
for the most part, formed of a plutonic rock, whose upper part
has weathered away, leaving gigantic isolated pillars. Four
such pillars have given to the easternmost of the islands the
name Lighthouse Island (Fyrpelaron). Similar ruin-like form-
ations are found not only on Cape Baranoy, which hes right
opposite, but also at a great number of other places in that
portion of the north coast of Siberia which les farther to the
east. Generally these cliff-ruims are collected together over
considerable areas in groups or regular rows. They have thus,
when seen from the sea, so bewildering a resemblance to the
ruins of a gigantic city which had once been surrounded by
strong walls and been full of temples and splendid buildings,

LIGHTHOUSE ISLAND.
After a drawing by O. Nordquist.

that one is almost tempted to see in them memorials of the
exploits of a Tamerlane or a Chingis Khan up here in the
high north.

The north side of the hill-tops was powdered with new-fallen
snow, but the rest of the land was clear of snow. The distance
between the south point of Lyachoff’s Island and the Bear
Islands is 360’. This distance we had traversed in three days,
having thus made 120’ in the twenty-four hours, or 5’ per hour.
If we consider the time lost in dredging, sounding, and determin-
ing the temperature and salinity of the water, and the caution
which the navigator must observe during a voyage in quite
unknown waters, this speed shows that during this part of our

YA

324 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

voyage we were hindered by ice only to a slight extent. Cape
Baranov was passed on the night before the 5th September, the
mouth of Chaun Bay on the “night before the 6th September,
and Cape Chelagskoj was reached on the 6th at 4 o’clock P.M.
The distance in a right line between this headland and the Bear
Islands is 180’. In consequence of the many détowrs in the ice
we had required 2% days to traverse this distance, which cor-
responds to 72’ per day, or 3’ per hour, a speed which in a
voyage in unknown, and for the most part ice-bestrewed waters,
must yet be considered very satisfactory. But after this our
progress began to be much slower. At midnight the sun was
already 12° to 13° below the horizon, and the nights were now
so dark that at that time of day we were compelled to he still
anchored to some large ground-ice. A further loss of time was
caused by the dense fog which often prevailed by day, and which
in the unknown shallow water next the land compelled Captain
Palander to advance with extreme caution. The navigation
along the north coast of Asia began to get somewhat monotonous.
Even the most zealous Polar traveller may tire at last of mere
ice, shallow water and fog; and mere fog, shallow water and ice.

Now, however, a pleasant change began, by our coming at
last in contact with natives. In the whole stretch from Yugor
Schar to Cape Chelagskoj we had seen neither men nor human
habitations, if I except the old uninhabited hut between Cape
Chelyuskin and the Chatanga. But on the 6th September,
when we were a little way off Cape Chelagskoj, two boats were
sighted. Every man, with the exception of the cook, who
could be induced by no catastrophe to leave his pots and pans,
and who had circumnavigated Asia and Europe perhaps without
having been once on land, rushed on deck. The boats were of
skin, built in the same way as the “umiaks” or women’s boats
of the Eskimo. They were fully laden with laughimg and
chattering natives, men, women, and children, who indicated
by cries and gesticulations that they wished to come on board.
The engine was stopped, the boats lay to, and a large number
of skin-clad, bare-headed beings climbed up over the gunwale in
a way that clearly indicated that they had seen vessels before.
A lively talk began, but we soon became aware that none of the
crew of the boats or the vessel knew any language common to
both. It was an unfortunate circumstance, but signs were
employed as far as possible. This did not prevent the chatter
from going on, and great gladness soon came to prevail, especially
when some presents began to be distributed, mainly consisting
of tobacco and Dutch clay pipes. It was remarkable that none
of them could speak a simgle word of Russian, while a boy
could count tolerably well up to ten in English, which shows that
the natives here come into closer contact with American whalers

rs) THE CHUKCHES DEPART. 325

than with Russian traders. They acknowledged the name
chukch or chautchu.

Many of them were tall, well-grown men. They were clothed
in close fitting skin trousers and “ pesks”’ of reindeer skin, The
head was bare, the hair always clipped short, with the exception
of a small fringe in front, where the hair had a length of four
centimetres and was combed down over the brow. Some had a
cap of the sort used by the Russians at Chabarova, stuck into
the belt behind, but they appeared to consider the weather still
too warm for the use of this head-covering. The hair of most
of them was bluish-black and exceedingly thick. The women
were tattooed with black or bluish-black lines on the brow and
nose, a number of similar lines on the chin, and finally some
embellishments on the cheeks. The type of face did not strike

CHUKCH BOATS.

one as so unpleasant as that of the Samoyeds or Eskimo. Some
of the young girls were even not absolutely ugly. In comparison
with the Samoyeds they were even rather cleanly, and had a
beautiful, almost reddish-white complexion. Two of the men
were quite fair. Probably they were descendants of Russians,
who for some reason or other, as prisoners of war or fugitives,
had come to live among the Chukches and had been nationalised
by them.

In a little we continued our voyage, after the Chukches had
returned to their boats, evidently well pleased with the gifts
they had received and the leaf tobacco I had dealt out in
bundles,—along with the clay pipes, of which every one got as
many as he could carry between his fingers,—with the finery and

526 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

old clothes which my comrades and the crew strewed around
them with generous hand. For we were all convinced that after
some days we should come to waters where winter clothes would
be altogether unnecessary, where our want of any article could
easily be supplied at the nearest port, and where the means of
exchange would not consist of goods, but of stamped pieces of
metal and slips of paper.

On the 7th September, we steamed the whole day along the

A CHUKCH IN SEAL-GUT GREAT COAT.

After a photograph by L. Palander.

coast in pretty open ice. At night we lay to at a floe. The
hempen tangles and the trawl-net were put out and yielded a
very rich harvest. But in the morning we found ourselves
again so surrounded by ice and fog, that, after several unsuccess-
ful att tempts to make an immediate advance, we were compelled
to le-to at a large piece of drift-ice near the shore. When the
fog had lightened so much that the vessel could be seen from
the land, we were again visited by a large number of natives,

f=)
whom as before we entertained as best we could. They invited

Ex.) LAGOONS ON THE COAST. 327

us by evident signs to land and visit their tents. As 1t was in
any case impossible immediately to continue our voyage, I
accepted the invitation, ordered a boat to be put out, and landed
along with most of my comrades.

The beach here is formed of a low bank of sand which runs
between the sea and a small shallow lagoon or fresh-water lake,
whose surface is nearly on a level with that of the sea. Farther
into the interior the land rises gradually to bare hills, clear of
snow or only covered with a thin coating of powdered snow
from the fall of the last few days. Lagoon formations, with
either fresh or salt water, of the same kind as those which we
saw here for the first time, are distinctive of the north-eastern
coast of Siberia. It is these formations which gave rise to the
statement that on the north coast of Siberia it is difficult to
settle the boundaries between sea and land. In winter this may
be difficult enough, for the low bank which separates the lagoon
from the sea is not easily distinguished when it has become
covered with snow, and it may therefore readily happen in winter
journeys along the coast that one is far into the land while he
still believes himself to be out on the sea-ice. But when the
snow has melted, the boundary is sharp enough, and the sea by
no means shallow for such a distance as old accounts would
indicate. A continual ice-mud-work also goes on here during
the whole summer. Quite close to the beach accordingly the
depth of water is two metres, and a kilometre farther out ten to
eleven metres. Off the high rocky promontories the water is
commonly navigable even for vessels of considerable draught
‘close to the foot of the cliffs. :

The villages of the Chukches commonly stand on the bank of
sand which separates the lagoon from the sea. The dwellings
consist of roomy skin tents, which enclose a sleeping chamber of
the form of a parallelopiped surrounded by warm well-prepared
reindeer skins, and lighted and warmed by one or more train-oil
lamps. It is here that the family sleep durmg summer, and
here most of them live day and night during winter. In sum-
mer, less frequently in winter, a fire is lighted besides in the
outer tent with wood, for which purpose a hole is opened in the
top of the raised tent-roof. But to be compelled to use wood
for heating the inner tent the Chukches consider the extremity
of scarcity of fuel.

We were received everywhere in a very friendly way, and were
offered whatever the house afforded. At the time the supply
of food was abundant. In one tent reindeer beef was being
boiled in a large cast-iron pot. At another two recently shot
or slaughtered reindeer were being cut in pieces. At a third an
old woman was employed in taking out of the paunch of the
reindeer the green spinage-like contents and cramming them

328 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

into a sealskin bag, evidently to be preserved for green food
during winter. The hand was used in this case as a scoop, and
the naked arms were coloured high up with the certainly un-
appetising spinage, which however, according to the statements
of Danish colonists in Greenland, has no unpleasant taste. Other
skin sacks filled with traim-oil stood in rows along the walls of
the tent.

The Chukches offered train-oil for sale, and appeared to be
surprised that we would not purchase any. In all the tents
were found seals cut in pieces, a proof that the catch of seals had
recently been abundant. At one tent lay two fresh walrus heads
with large beautiful tusks, I tried without success to purchase
these heads, but next day the tusks were offered to us. The

CHUKCH TENT.

(After a photograph by L. Palander.)

Chukches appear to have a prejudice against disposing of
the heads of slain animals. According to older travellers they
even pay the walrus-head a sort of worship.

Children were met with in great numbers, healthy and
thriving. In the imner tent the older children went nearly
naked, and I saw them go out from it without shoes or other
covering and run between the tents on the hoarfrost-covered
ground. The younger were carried on the shoulders both of
men and women, and were then so wrapped up that they
resembled balls of skin. The children were treated with marked
friendliness, and the older ones were never heard to utter an
angry word. I purchased here a large number of household
articles and dresses, which I shall describe further on.

Ix.] COMPELLED TO LIE-TO. 329

On the morning of the 9th September we endeavoured to
steam on, but were soon compelled by the dense fog to lie-to
again at a ground-ice, which, when the fog lightened, was found
to have stranded quite close to land. The depth here was
eleven metres. At this place we lay till the morning of the
10th. The beach was formed of a sandbank,! which immediately
above high-water mark was covered with a close grassy turf, a
proof that the climate here, notwithstanding the neighbourhood
of the pole of cold, is much more favourable to the develop-
ment of vegetation than even the most favoured parts of the
west coast of Spitzbergen. Farther inland was seen a very high,
but snow-free, range of hills, and far beyond them some high
snow-covered mountain summits. No glaciers were found here,
though I consider it probable that small ones may be found in
the valleys between the high fells in the interior. Nor were
any erratic blocks found either in the interior of the coast
country or along the strand bank. Thus it is probable that no
such ice-covered land as Greenland for the present bounds the
Siberian Polar Sea towards the north. At two places at the
level of the sea in the neighbourhood of our anchorage the solid
rock was bare. There it formed perpendicular shore cliffs, nine
to twelve metres high, consisting of magnesian slate, limestone
more or less mixed with quartz, and silicious slate. The strata
were nearly perpendicular, ran from north to south, and did not
contain any fossils. From a geological point of view therefore
these rocks were of little interest. But they were abundantly
covered with lichens, and yielded to Dr. Almquist important
contributions to a knowledge of the previously quite unknown
lichen flora of this region.

The harvest of the higher land plants on the other hand was,
in consequence of the far advanced season of the year, con-
siderable, if also of great scientific interest, as coming from a
region never before visited by any botanist. In the sea Dr.
Kjellman dredged without success for alge. Of the higher
animals we saw only a walrus and some few seals, but no land
mammalia. Lemmings must however occasionally occur in
incredible numbers, to judge by the holes and passages, ex-
cavated by these animals, by which the ground is crossed in all
directions. Of birds the phalarope was still the most common

1 Of course the earth here at an inconsiderable depth under the surface
is constantly frozen, but I have nowhere seen such alternating layers of
earth and ice, crossed by veins of ice, as Hedenstrom in his oft-quoted
work (Otrywki 0 Sibiri, p. 119) says he found at the sea-coast. Probably
such a peculiar formation arises only at places where the spring floods bring
down thick Jayers of mud, which cover the beds of ice formed during the
winter and protect them for thousands of years from melting. I shall have
an opportunity of returning to the interesting questions relating to this
point,

S301 0 4) THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

species, especially at sea, where in flocks of six or seven it swam
incessantly backwards and forwards between the pieces of ice.
No tents were met with in the neighbourhood of the vessel’s
anchorage, but at many places along the beach there were seen
marks of old encampments, sooty rolled stones which had been
used in the erection of the tents, broken household articles, and
above all remains of the bones of the seal, reindeer, and walrus.
At one place, a large number of walrus skulls lay in a ring,
possibly remains from an entertainment followmg a large catch.
Near the place where the tents had stood, at the mouth of a small
stream not yet dried up or frozen, Dr. Stuxberg discovered some
small mounds containing burnt bones. The cremation had been
so complete that only one of the pieces of bone that were found
could be determined by Dr. Almquist. It was a human tooth.
After*cremation the remains of the bones and the ash had been
collected in an excavation, and covered first with turf and then
with small flat stones. The encampments struck me as having

SECTION OF A CHUKCH GRAVE.1

(After a drawing by A. Stuxberg.)
a. Layer of burned bones, much weathered. b. Layer of turf and twigs. c. Stones.

been abandoned only a few years ago, and even the collections
of bones did not appear to me to be old. But we ought to be
very cautious when we endeavour in the Arctic regions to
estimate the age of an old encampment, because in judging of
the changes which the surface of the earth undergoes with time
we are apt to be guided by our experience from more southerly
regions. To how limited an extent this experience may be
utilised in the high north is shown by RINK’s assertion that on
Greenland at some of the huts of the Norwegian colonists,
which have been deserted for centuries, footpaths can still be

1 Since we discovered the Chukches also bury their dead by laying
them out on the tundra, we have begun to entertain doubts whether the
collection of bones delineated here was actually a grave. Possibly these
mounds were only the remains of fireplaces, where the Chukches had used
as fuel train-drenched bones, and which they had afterwards for some reason
or other endeavoured to protect from the action of the atmosphere.

1%] TRAFFIC WITH THE CHUKCHES. 301

distinguished) an observation to which I would scarcely give
credence, until I had myself seen something similar at the site
of a house in the bottom of Jacobshaven ice-fjord im north-
western Greenland, which had been abandoned for one or two
centuries. Here footpaths as sharply defined as if they had been
trampled yesterday ran from the ruin in different directions.
It may therefore very readily happen that the encampments in
the neighbourhood of our present anchorage were older than we
would be inclined at first sight to suppose. No refuse heaps of
any importance were seen here.

This was the first time that any vessel had lain-to on ‘this
coast. Our arrival was therefore evidently considered by the
natives a very remarkable occurrence, and the report of it
appears to have spread very rapidly. For though there were
no tents in the neighbourhood, we had many visitors. I still
availed myself of the opportunity of procuring by barter a
large number of articles distinctive of the Chukches’ mode of
life. Eight years before I had collected and purchased a large
number of ethnographical articles, and I was now surprised at
the close correspondence there was between the household
articles purchased from the Chukches, and those found in
Greenland in old Eskimo graves.

My traffic with the natives was on this occasion attended with
ereat difficulty. For I suffered from a sensible want of the first
condition for the successful prosecution of a commercial under-
taking, goods in demand. Because, during the expeditions of
1875 and 1876, I found myself unable to make use of the
small wares I carried with me for barter with the natives, and
found that Russian paper-money was readily taken. I had, at
the departure of the Vega from Sweden, taken with me only
money, not wares intended for barter. But money was of little
use here. A twenty-five rouble note was less valued by the
Chukches than a showy soap-box, and a gold or silver coin less
than tin or brass buttons. I could, mdeed, get rid of a few
fifty-Gre pieces, but only after I had first adapted them by
boring to take the place of earrings.

The only proper wares for barter I now had were tobacco and
Dutch clay pipes. Of tobacco I had only some dozen bundles,
taken from a parcel which Mr. Sibiriakoff intended to import into
Siberia by theYenisej. Certain as I was of reaching the Pacific
this autumn, I scattered my stock of tobacco around me with
so liberal a hand that it was soon exhausted, and my Chukch
friends’ wants satisfied for several weeks. I therefore, as far as
this currency was concerned, already when the Vega was beset,
suffered the prodigal’s fate of beimg soon left with an empty
~ 1H. Rink, Grinland geographisk og statistisk beskrevet, Bd. 2, Copenhagen,
1857, p. 344.

332 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

purse. Dutch clay pipes, again, I had in great abundance, from
the accident that two boxes of these pipes, which were to have
been imported into Siberia with the expedition of 1876, did not
reach Trondhjem until the Ymer had sailed from that town.
They were instead taken on the Vega, and now, though quite
too fragile for the hard fingers of Chukches, answered well for
smaller bargains, as gifts of welcome to a large number of
natives collected at the vessel, and as gifts to children in order
to gain the favour of their parents. I besides distributed a large
quantity of silver coin with King Oscar’s effigy, in order, if any
misfortune overtook us, to afford a means of ascertaining the
places we had visited.

For the benefit of future travellers I may state that the wares
most in demand are large sewing and darning needles, pots,
knives (preferably large), axes, saws, boring tools and other iron
tools, linen and woollen shirts (preferably of bright colours, but
also white), neckerchiefs, tobacco and sugar. To these may be
added the spirits which are in so great request among all savages ;
a currency of which, indeed, there was great abundance on the
Vega, but which I considered myself prevented from making
use of. In exchange for this it 1s possible to obtain, im short,
anything whatever from many of the natives, but by no means
from all, for even here there are men who will not taste spirits,
but with a gesture of disdain refuse the glass that is offered
them. The Chukches are otherwise shrewd and calculating
men of business, accustomed to study their own advantage.
They have been brought up to this from childhood through the
barter which they carry on between America and Siberia.
Many a beaver-skin that comes to the market at Irbit belongs to
an animal that has been caught in America, whose skin has passed
from hand to hand among the wild men of America and Siberia,
until it finally reaches the Russian merchant. For this barter a
sort of market is held on an island in Behring’s Straits. At
the most remote markets in Polar America, a beaver-skin is
said some years ago to have been occasionally exchanged for a
leaf of tobacco. An exceedingly beautiful black fox-skin was
offered to me by a Chukch for a pot. Unfortunately I had
none that I could dispense with. Here, too, prices have risen.
When the Russians first came to Kamchatka, they got eight
sable-skins for a knife, and eighteen for an axe,and yet the
Kamchadales laughed at the credulous foreigners who were
so easily deceived. At Yakutsk, when the Russians first
settled there, a pot was even sold for as many sable-skins as
it could hold.”

1 C. von Dittmar, Bulletin hist.-philolog. de V Acad. de St. Pétersbourg,
XIII. 1856, p. 130.

2 Krascheninnikov, Histoire et Description du Kamtschatka, Amsterdam
1770, IL. p. 95. A. Erman, Reise um die Erde, D. 1, B. 2, p. 255.

Ix. ] SAILING AMONG ICE. 333

During the night before the 10th September, the surface
of the sea was covered with a very thick sheet of newly-frozen
ice, which was broken up again in the neighbourhood of the
vessel by blocks of old ice drifting about. The pack itself
appeared to have scattered a little. We therefore weighed
anchor to continue our voyage. At first a détour towards the
west was necessary to get round a field of drift-ice. Here too,
however, our way was barred by a belt of old ice, which was
bound together so firmly by the ice that had been formed in the
course of the night, that-a couple of hours’ work with axes and
ice-hatchets was required to open a channel through it. On the
other side of this belt of ice we came again into pretty open

IRKAIPIJ,

(After a drawing by O. Nordquist )

water, but the fog, stead, became so dense that we had again
to lie-to at a ground-ice, lymg farther out to the sea but more
to the west than our former resting-place. On the night before
the 11th there was a violent motion among the ice. Fortu-
nately the air cleared in the morning, so that we could hold on
our course among pretty open ice, until on the approach of night
we were obliged ¢ as usual to lie-to at a ground-ice.

The following day, the 12th September, when we had passed
Irkaipij, or Cape North, a good way, we fell in with so close ice
that there was no possibility of penetrating farther. We were
therefore compelled to return, and were able to make our way

334 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. _ (CHAP.

with great difficulty among the closely packed masses of drift
ice. Here the vessel was anchored in the lee of a ground-ice,
which had stranded near the northernmost spur of Irkaipij,
until a strong tidal current began to carry large pieces of drift-
ice past the vessel’s anchorage. She was now removed and
anchored anew in a little bay open to the north, which was
formed by two rocky poimts juttimg out from the mainland.
Unfortunately we were detained here, waiting for a better state
of the ice, until the 18th September. It was this involuntary
delay which must be considered the main cause of our
wintering.

Irkaipij is the northernmost promontory in that part of Asia,
which was seen by Cook in 1778. It was, therefore, called by

him Cape North, a name which has since been adopted in most

REMAINS OF AN ONKILON HOUSE.
a. Seen from the side. 6. From above.
(After a drawing by O. Nordquist.)

maps, although it is apt to lead to confusion from capes similarly
named being found in most countries. It is also incorrect,
because the cape does not form the northernmost promontory
either of the whole of Siberia, or of any considerable portion of
it. For the northernmost point of the mainland of Siberia is
Cape Chelyuskin, the northernmost in the land east of the Lena
Syjatomos, the northernmost in the stretch of coast east of
Chaun Bay, Cape Chelagskoj, and so on. Cape North ought,
therefore, to be replaced by the original name Irkaipij, which is
well known to all the natives between Chaun Bay and Behring’s
Straits.

On the neck of land which connects Irkaipij with the main-
land, there was at the time of our visit a village consisting of
sixteen tents. We saw here also rwins, viz. the remains of a large

1X. ] STONE AND SLATE IMPLEMENTS. 335

number of old house-sites, which belonged to a race called Onkilon,
who formerly inhabited these regions, and some centuries ago were
driven by the Chukches, according to tradition, to some remote
islands in the Polar Sea. At these old house-sites Dr. Almquist
and Lieutenant Nordquist set on foot excavations in order to
collect contributions to the ethnography of this traditional race.
The houses appear to have been built, at least partly, of the
bones of the whale, and half sunk in the earth. The refuse

IMPLEMENTS FOUND IN THE RUINS OF AN ONKILON HOUSE.
1. Stone chisel with bone handle, one-half the natural size. 2, 4. Knives of slate, one-third.
3, 7. Spear-heads of slate, one-third. 5. Spear-head of bone, one-third.
6. Bone spoon, one-third.

heaps in the neighbourhood contained bones of several species
of the whale, among them the white whale, and of the seal,
walrus, reindeer, bear, dog, fox, and various kinds of birds.
Besides these remains of the produce of the chase, there were

found implements of stone and bone, among which were stone

1 Ankali signifies in Chukch dwellers on the coast, and is now used to
denote the Chukches living on the coast. A similar word, Onkilon, was
formerly used as the name of the Eskimo tribe that lived on the coast
of the Polar Sea when the Chukch migration reached that point.

336 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

axes, which, after lying 250 years in the earth, were still fixed
to their handles of wood or bone. Even the thongs with which
the axe had been bound fast to, or wedged into, the handle, were
still remaining. The tusks of the walrus! had to the former
inhabitants of the place, as to the Chukches of the present,
yielded a material which in many cases may be used with
ereater advantage than flit for spear-heads, bird-arrows, fish-
hooks, ice-axes, &c. Walrus tusks, more or less worked, accord-
ingly were found in the excavations in great abundance. The
bones of the whale had also been employed on a great scale, but
we did not find any large pieces of mammoth tusks, an indication
that the race was not in any intimate contact with the mhabi-
tants of the regions to the westward, so rich in the remains of
the mammoth? At many places the old Onkilon houses were
used by the Chukches as stores for blubber; and at others,
excavations had been made in the refuse heaps in search of
walrus tusks. Our researches were regarded by the Chukches
with mistrust. An old man who came, as it were by chance,
from the interior of the country past the place where we worked,
remained there a while, regarding our labours with apparent
indifference, until he convinced himself that from simplicity, or
some other reason unintelligible to him, we avoided touching the
blubber-stores, but instead rooted up in search of old fragments
of bone or stone-flakes.

Remains of old dwellings were found even at the highest
points among the stone mounds of Irkaipij, and here perhaps was
the last asylum of the Onkilon race. At many places on the
mountain slopes were seen large collections of bones, consisting
partly of a large number (at one place up to fifty) of bears’
skulls overgrown with lichens, laid in circles, with the nose
inwards, partly of the skulls of the reindeer, Polar bear,’ and
walrus, mixed together in a less regular circle, in the midst of

1 The walrus now appears to be very rare in the sea north of Behring’s
Straits, but formerly it must have been found there in large numbers, and
made that region a veritable paradise for every hunting tribe. While we
during our long stay there saw only a few walruses, Cook, in 1778, saw an
enormous number, and an interesting drawing of walruses is to be found
in the account of his third voyage. A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, etc.,
Vol. II]. (by James King), London, 1784, p. 259, pl. 52.

2 The greatest number of mammoth tusks is obtained from the stretches
of land and the islands between the Chatanga and Chaun Bay. Here the
walrus is wanting. The inhabitants of North Siberia therefore praise the
wisdom of the Creator, who lets the walrus live in the regions where the
mammoth is wanting, and has scattered mammoth ivory in the earthy layers
of the coasts where the walrus does not occur (A. Erman, Reise um die
Erde, Berlin, 1833—48, D. 1, B. 2, p. 264).

4 Among the bears’ skulls br ought home from this place Lieut. Nordquist
found after his return home the skull of a sea-lion (Otaria Stelleri). It is,
however, uncertain whether the animal was captured in the region, or
whether the cranium was brought hither from Kamchatka.

Ix.] THE HISTORY OF THE ONKILON RACE, O37

which reindeer horns were found set up. Along with the
reindeer horns there was found the coronal bone of an elk with
portions of the horns still attached. Beside the other bones lay
innumerable temple-bones of the seal, for the most part fresh
and not lichen-covered. Other seal bones were almost com-
pletely absent, which shows that temple-bones were not remains
of weathered seal skulls, but had been gathered to the place for
one reason or another in recent times. No portions of human
skeletons were found in the neighbourhood. These places are
sacrificial places, which the one race has inherited from the
other.

WRANGEL gives the following account of the tribe which lived
here in former times :—

“ As is well known the sea-coast at Anadyr Bay is inhabited
by a race of men, who, by their bodily formation, dress,
language, -differ manifestly from the Chukches, and call
themselves Onkilon-seafolk. In the account of Captain
BILLING’s journey through the country of the Chukches,
he shows the near relationship the language of this coast
tribe has to that of the Aleutians at Kadyak, who are of
the same primitive stem as the Greenlanders. Tradition
relates that upwards of two hundred years ago these Onkilon
occupied the whole of the Chukch coast, from Cape Chelagsko}
to Behring’s Straits, and indeed we still find along the whole of
this stretch remains of their earth huts, which must have been very
unlike the present dwellings of the Chukches; they have the
form of small mounds, are half sunk in the eround and closed
above with whale ribs, which are covered with a thick layer of
earth. <A violent quarrel between Kriichoj, the chief of these
North-Asiatic Eskimo, and an errim or chief of the reimdeer
Chukches, broke out into open feud. Krachoj drew the shorter
straw, and found himself compelled to fly, and leave the country
with his people; simce then the whole coast has been desolate
and uninhabited. Of the emigration of these Onkilon, the
inhabitants of the village Irkaipij, where Krachoj appears to
have lived, narrated the following story. He had killed a Chukch
errim, and was therefore eagerly pursued by the son of the
murdered man, whose pursuit he for a considerable time escaped.
Finally Kriichoj believed that he had found a secure asylum
on the rock at Irkaipij, where he fortified himself behind a sort
of natural wall, which can still be seen. But the young Chukch
errim, driven by desire to avenge his father’s death, finds means
to make his way within the fortification and kills Krachoj’s son.
Although the blood-revenge was now probably complete according
to the prevailing ideas, Krichoj must have feared a further
pursuit by his unrelenting enemy, for during night he lowers

Z

338 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

himself with thongs from his lofty asylum, nearly overhanging
the sea, enters a boat, which waits for him at the foot of the cliff,
and, in order to lead his pursuers astray, steers first towards the
east, but at nightfall turns to the west, reaches Schalaurov
Island, and there fortifies himself in an earth hut, whose remains
we (Wrangel’s expedition) have still seen. Here he then collected
all the members of his tribe, and fled with them in 15 “ baydars”
to the land whose mountains the Chukches assure themselves
they can in clear sunshine see from Cape Yakan. During the
following winter a Chukch related to Krachoj disappeared in
addition with his family and reindeer, and it is supposed that he
too betook himself to the land beyond the sea. With this
another tradition agrees, which was communicated to us by the
inhabitants of Kolyutschin Island. For an old man informed
me (Wrangel) that durig his grandfather’s lifetime a “ baydar”
with seven Chukches, among them a woman, had ventured too
far out to sea. After they had long been driven hither and
thither by the wind, they stranded on a country unknown to
them, whose inhabitants struck the Chukches themselves as
coarse and brutish. The shipwrecked men were all murdered.
Only the woman was saved, was very well treated, and taken
round the whole country, and shown to the natives as something
rare and remarkable. So she came at last to the Kargauts,
a race living on the American coast at Behring’s Straits, whence
she found means to escape to her own tribe. This woman told
her countrymen much about her travels and adventures ; among
other things she said that she had been in a great land which
lay north of Kolyutschin Island, stretched far to the west, and
was probably connected with America. This land was inhabited
by several races of men ; those living in the west resembled the
Chukches in every respect, but those living in the east were so
wild and brutish, that they scarcely deserved to be called men.
The whole account, both of the woman herself and of the
narrators of the tradition, is mixed up with so many improbable
adventures, that it would scarcely be deserving of any attention
were it not remarkable for its correspondence with the history
of Krachoj.’’?

When Wrangel wrote that, he did not believe in the existence
of the land which is to be found set out on his map in 177° E.L.
and 71° N.L., and which, afterwards discovered by the English-
man KELLET, according to the saying, lucus a non lucendo,
obtained the name of Wrangel Land. Now we know that the
land spoken of by tradition actually exists, and therefore there
is much that even tells in favour of its extending as far as to
the archipelago on the north coast of America.

1 Wrangel’s Reise, Th. 2, Berlin, 1839, p. 220.

1x.] STAY AT IRKAIPIJ. 339

With this fresh light thrown upon it, the old Chukch woman’s
story ought to furnish a valuable hint for future exploratory
voyages in the sea north of Behring’s Straits, and an important
contribution towards forming a judgment of the fate which
has befallen the American Jeannette expedition, of which, while
this is being written, accounts are still wanting.1

Between us and the inhabitants of the present Chukch village
at Irkaipij there soon arose very friendly relations. A somewhat
stout, well-grown, tall and handsome man named Chepurin, we
took at first to be chief. He was therefore repeatedly entertained
in the gunroom, on which occasions small gifts were given him
to secure his friendship. Chepurin had clearly a weakness for
. gentility and grandeur, and could now, by means of the barter
he carried on with us and the presents he received, gratify his
love of show to a degree of which he probably had never
before dreamed. When during the last days of our stay he paid
a visit to the Vega he was clad in a red woollen shirt drawn over
his “pesk,” and from either ear hung a gilt watch-chain, to the
lower end of ‘which a perforated ten-ére piece was fastened.
Already on our arrival he was better clothed than the others, his
tent was larger and provided with two sleeping apartments, one
for each of his wives. But notwithstanding all this we soon
found that we had made a mistake, when, thinking that a society
could not exist without government, we assigned to him so
exalted a position. Here, as in all Chukch villages which we
afterwards visited, absolute anarchy prevailed.

At the same time the greatest unanimity reigned in the little
headless community. Children, healthy and thriving, tenderly
cared for by the inhabitants, were found in large numbers. A
good word to them was sufficient to pave the way for a friendly»
reception in the tent. The women were treated as the equals of
the men, and the wife was always consulted by the husband when a
more important bargain than usual was to be made; many times
it was carried through only after the giver of advice had been
bribed with a neckerchief or a variegated handkerchief. The
articles which the man purchased were immediately committed to
the wife’s keeping. One of the children had round his neck a band
of pearls with a Chinese coin having a square hole in the middle,

1 According to a paper in Deutsche Geograjische Blitter, B. IV. p. 54,
Captain E. Dallmann, in 1866, as commander of the Havai schooner W. C,
Talbot, not only saw but landed on Wrangel Land. As Captain Dallmann
of recent years has been in pretty close contact with a large number of
geographers, and communications from him have been previously inserted
in geographical journals, it appears strange that he has now for the first
time made public this important voyage. At all events, Dallmann’s
statement that the musk-ox occurs on the coast of the Polar Sea and on
Wrangel Land is erroneous. He has here confused the musk-ox with

the reindeer.
yA

340 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

suspended from it ; another bore a perforated American cent piece.
None knew a word of Russian, but here too a youngster could count
ten in English. They also knew the word “ship.” In all the tents,
reindeer stomachs were seen with their contents, or sacks stuffed
full of other green herbs. Several times we were offered in
return for the bits of sugar and pieces of tobacco which we dis-
tributed, wrinkled root-bulbs somewhat larger than a hazel nut,
which had an exceedingly pleasant taste, resembling that of fresh
nuts. A seal caught in a net among the ice during our visit was
cut up in the tent by the women. On this occasion they were
surrounded by a large number of children, who were now and
then treated to bloody strips of flesh. The youngsters carried
on the work of cutting up con amore, coquetting a little with .
their bloody arms and faces.

The rock which prevails in this region consists mainly of gabbro,
which in the interior forms several isolated, black, plateau-formed
hills, 100 to 150 metres high, between which an even, grassy,
but treeless plain extends. It probably rests on sedimentary
strata. For on the western side of Irkaipij the plutonic rock is
seen to rest on a black slate with traces of fossils, for the most
part obscure vegetable impressions, probably belonging to the
Permian Carboniferous formation.

Uneasy at the protracted delay here I made an excursion to
a hill im the neighbourhood of our anchorage, which, according
to a barometrical measurement, was 129 metres high, in order,
from a considerable height, to get a better view of the ice than
was possible by a boat reconnaisance. The hill was called by
the Chukches Hammong-Ommang. From it we had an exten-
sive view of the sea. It was everywhere covered with closely
packed drift-ice. Only next the land was seen an open channel,
which, however, was interrupted in an ominous way by belts of ice.

The plutonic rock, of which the hill was formed, was almost
everywhere broken up by the action of the frost into angular
blocks of stone, so that its surface was converted into an enor-
mous stone mound. The stones were on the wind side covered
with a translucent glassy ice-crust, which readily fell away,
and added considerably to the difficulty of the ascent. I had
previously observed the formation of such an ice-crust on the
northernmost mountain summits of Spitzbergen.t It arises
undoubtedly from the fall of super-cooled mist, that is to say of
mist whose vesicles have been cooled considerably below the
freezing-point without being changed to ice, which first takes
place when, after falling, they come in contact with ice or snow, or
some angular hard object. Itis such a mist that causes the icing
down of the rigging of vessels, a very unpleasant phenomenon

1 Of, Redogérelse fir den svenska polarexpeditionen ar 1872-73 (Bihang
till Vet. Ak. handl. Bd. 2, No. 18, p. 91).

IXx.] SUPER-COOLED MIST. 541

for the navigator, which we experienced during the following
days, when the tackling of the Vega was covered with pieces of
ice so large, and layers so thick, that accidents might have
happened by the falling of the ice on the deck."

ALGA FROM IRKAIPIJ.

Laminaria solidungula (J. G. Ag.)

The dredgings here yielded to Dr. Kjellman some alge, and

to Dr. Stuxberg masses of a species of cumacea, Diastylis

1 A more dangerous kind of icing down threatens the navigator in severe
weather not only in the Polar Seas but also in the Baltic and the North Sea.
For it happens at that season that the sea-water at the surface is over-
cooled, that is, cooled below the freezing-point without being frozen.
Every wave which strikes the vessel is then converted by the concussion
into ice-sludge, which increases and freezes together to hard ice so speedily
that all attempts to remove it from the deck are in vain. In a few hours
the vessel may be changed into an unmanageable floating block of ice
which the sailors, exhausted by hard labour, must in despair abandon to its
fate. Such anicing down, though with a fortunate issue, befell the steamer
Sofia in the month of October off Bear Island, during the Swedish Polar
Expedition pf 1868.

342 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP,

Rathkei Kr., of Acanthostephia Malmgreni Goés, and Liparis
gelatinosus Pallas, but little else. On the steep slopes of the
north side of Irkaipij a species of cormorant had settled in so
large numbers that the cliff there might be called a true fowl-
fell. A large number of seals were visible among the ice, and
along with “the cormorant a few other birds, principally phala-
ropes. Fish were now seen only in exceedingly small numbers.
Even in the summer, fishing here does not appear to be specially
abundant, to judge from the fact that the Chukches had not
collected any stock for the winter. We were offered, however,
a salmon or two of small size.

CORMORANT FROM IRKAIPIJ.

Graculus Licristatus (Pallas).

On the 18th September? the state of the ice was quite
unchanged. If a wintering was to be avoided, it was, however,

1 Trkaipij lies in 180° long. from Greenwich. To bring our day-reckoning
into agreement with that of the New World, we ought thus to have here
lessened our date by one day, and have written the 17th for the 18th
September. But as, with the exception of the short excursion to Port
Clarence and St. Edward Island, we always followed the coasts of the Old
World, and during our stay in the new hemisphere did not visit any place
inhabited by Europeans, we retained during the whole of our voyage our
European day-reckoning unaltered. If we had met with an American
whaler, we would have been before him one day, our 27th September would
thus have corresponded to his 26th. The same would have been the case
on our coming to an American port.

Ix.] VOYAGE RESUMED. 343

not advisable to remain longer here. It had besides appeared
from the hill-top which I visited the day before that an open
water channel, only interrupted at two places by ice, was still to
be found along the coast. The anchor accordingly was weighed,
and the Vega steamed on, but in a depth of only 6 to 8 metres,
As the Vega’s draught is from 4°8 to 5 metres, we had only a
little water under the keel, and that among ice in quite unknown
waters. About twenty kilometres from the anchorage, we met
with a belt of ice through which we could make our way though
only with great difficulty, thanks to the Vega’s strong bow ena-
bling her to withstand the violent concussions. Our voyage was
then continued, often in yet shallower water than before, until
the vessel, at 8 o'clock in the morning, struck on a ground
ice foot. The tide was falling, and on that account it was not
until next morning that we could get off, after a considerable
portion of the ground-ice, on whose foot the Vega had run up,
had been hewn away with axes and ice-hatchets. Some attempts
were made to blast the ice with gunpowder, but they were un-
successful. For this purpose dynamite is much more efficacious,
and this explosive ought therefore always to form part of the
equipment in voyages in which belts of ice have to be broken
through. .

On the 19th we continued our voyage in the same way as
before, in still and for the most part shallow water near the
coast, between high masses of ground-ice, which frequently had
the most picturesque forms. Later in the day we again fell in
with very low ice formed in rivers and shut-in inlets of the sea,
and came into slightly salt water having a temperature above
the freezing-point.

After having been moored during the night to a large ground-
ice, the Vega continued her course on the 20th September
almost exclusively among low, dirty ice, which had not been
much pressed together during the preceding winter. This ice
was not so deep in the water as the blue ground-ice, and could
therefore drift nearer the coast, a great inconvenience for our
vessel, which drew so much water. We soon came to a place
where the ice was packed so close to land that an open channel
only 3} to 44 metres deep remained close to the shore. We
were therefore compelled after some hours’ sailing to lie-to at a
ground-ice to await more favourable circumstances. The wind
had now gone from west to north and north-west. Notwith-
standing this the temperature became milder and the weather
rainy, a sign that great open stretches of water lay to the north
and north-west of us. During the night before the 21st it
rained heavily, the wind being N.N.W. and the temperature +
2°, An attempt was made on that day to find some place where
the belt of drift-ice that was pressed against the land could be

344 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

broken through, but it was unsuccessful, probably in consequence
of the exceedingly dense fog which prevailed.

Dredging gave but a scanty yield here, probably because the
animal life im water so shallow as that in which we were
anchored, is destroyed by the ground-ices, which drift about
here for the greater part of the year. Excursions to the neigh-
bouring coast on the other hand, notwithstanding the late season
of the year, afforded to the botanists of the Vega valuable in-
formation regarding the flora of the region.

On the 22nd I made, along with Captain Palander, an excursion
in the steam launch to take soundings farther to the east. We
soon succeeded in discovering a channel of sufficient depth and
not too much blocked with ice, and on the 23rd the Vega was

PIECES OF ICE FROM THE COAST OF THE CHUKCH PENINSULA.
(After a drawing by O. Nordquist.)

able to resume her voyage among very closely packed drift-ice,
often so near the land that she had only a fourth of a metre of
water under her keel. We went forward however, if slowly.
The land here formed a grassy plain, still clear of snow, rising
inland to gently sloping hills or earthy heights. The beach
was strewn with a not inconsiderable quantity of driftwood, and
here and there were seen the remains of old dwelling-places.
On the evening of the 23rd September we lay-to at a ground-ice
in a pretty large opening of the ice-field. This opening closed
in the course of the night, so that on the 24th and 25th we
could make only very little progress, but on the 26th we
continued our course, at first with difficulty, but afterwards

1x] STOPPED BY ICE. 345

in pretty open water to the headland which on the maps is
called Cape Onman. The natives too, who came on board here,
gave the place that name. The ice we met with on that day
was heavier than before, and bluish-white, not dirty. It was
accordingly formed farther out at sea.

On the 27th we continued our course in somewhat open water
to Kolyutschin Bay. No large river debouches in the bottom
of this great fjord, the only one on the north coast of Asia which,
by its long narrow form, the configuration of the neighbouring
shores, and its division into two at the bottom, reminds us of the
Spitzbergen fjords which have been excavated by glaciers. The
mouth of the bay was filled with very closely packed drift-ice
that had gathered round the island situated there, which was
inhabited by a large number of Chukch families. In order to
avoid this ice the Vega made a considerable détour up the fjord.
The weather was calm and fine, but new ice was formed every-
where among the old drift-ice where it was closely packed.
Small seals swarmed by hundreds among the ice, following the
wake of the vessel with curiosity. Birds on the contrary were
seen in limited numbers. Most of them had evidently already
migrated to more southerly seas. At 4.45 P.M. the vessel was
anchored to an ice-floe near the eastern shore of the fjord, It
could be seen from this point that the ice at the headland, which
bounded the mouth of the fjord to the east, lay so near land
that there was a risk that the open water next the shore would
not be deep enough for the Vega.

Lieutenant Hovgaard was therefore sent with the steam
launch to take soundings. He returned with the report that
the water off the headland was sufficiently deep. At the same
time, accompanied by several of the naturalists, I made an
excursion on land. In the course of this excursion the hunter
Johnsen was sent to the top of the range of heights which
occupied the interior of the promontory, in order to. get a view
of the state of the ice farther to the east. Johnsen too returned
with the very comforting news that a very broad open channel
extended beyond the headland along the coast to the south-east.
I was wandering about along with my comrades on the slopes
near the beach in order, so far as the falling darkness permitted,
to examine its natural conditions, when Johnsen came down ;
he informed us that from the top of the height one could hear
bustle and noise and see fires at an encampment on the other
side of the headland. He supposed that the natives were
celebrating some festival. 1 had a strong inclination to go
thither in order, as I thought, “to take farewell of the Chukches,”
for I was quite certain that on some of the following days we
should sail into the Pacific. But it was already late in the
evening and dark, and we were not yet sufficiently acquainted

346 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

with the disposition of the Chukches to go by night, without
any serious occasion, in small numbers and provided only with
the weapons of the chase, to an encampment with which we
were not acquainted. It was not until afterwards that we
learned that such a visit was not attended with any danger.
Instead of going to the encampment, as the vessel in any case
could not weigh anchor this evening, we remained some hours
longer on the beach and lighted there an immense log fire of
drift-wood, round which we were soon all collected, chatting
merrily about the remaining part of the voyage in seas where
not cold but heat would trouble us, and where our progress at
least would not be obstructed by ice, continual fog, and unknown
shallows. None of us then had any idea that, instead of the
heat of the tropics, we would for the next ten months be
experiencing a winter at the pole-of cold, frozen in on an
unprotected road, under almost continual snow-storms, and
with a temperature which often sank below the freezing-point
of mercury.

The evening was glorious, the sky clear, and the air so calm
that the flames and smoke of the log fire rose high against the
sky. The dark surface of the water, covered as it was with a
thin film of ice, reflected its light as a fire-way straight as a line,
bounded far away at the horizon by a belt of ice, whose in-
equalities appeared in the darkness as the summits of a distant
high mountain chain. The temperature in the quite draught-
free air was felt to be mild, and the thermometer showed only
2° under the freezing-point. This slight degree of cold was
however sufficient to cover the sea in the course of the night
with a sheet of newly-frozen ice, which, as the following days’
experience showed, at the opener places could indeed only delay,
not obstruct the advance of the Vega, but which however bound
together the fields of drift-ice collected off the coast so firmly
that a vessel, even with the help of steam, could with difficulty
force her way through.

When on the following day, the 28th September, we had
sailed past the headland which bounds Kolyutschin Bay on the
east, the channel next the coast, clear of drift-ice, but covered
with newly formed ice, became suddenly shallow. The depth
was too small for the Vega, for which we had now to seek a
course among the blocks of ground-ice and fields of drift-ice in
the offing. The night’s frost had bound these so firmly together
that the attempt failed. We were thus compelled to lie-to at a
ground-ice so much the more certain of getting off with the
first shift of the wind, and of being able to traverse the few
miles that separatedus from the open water at Behring’s Straits,
as whalers on several occasions had not left this region until the
middle of October.

7 1x.] INFORMATION REGARDING THE ICE IN BEHRING’S SEA. 347

As American whalers had during the last decades extended
their whale-fishing to the North Behring Sea, I applied before
my departure from home both directly and through the Foreign
Office to several American scientific men and authorities with a
request for information as to the state of the ice in that sea. In
all quarters my request was received with special good-will and
best wishes for the projected journey. I thus obtained both a
large quantity of printed matter otherwise difficult of access, and
maps of the sea between North America and North Asia, and
oral and written communications from several persons: among
whom may be mentioned the distinguished naturalist, Prof.
W.H. Datu of Washington, who lived for a long time in the
Territory of Alaska and the north part of the Pacific; Admiral
JOHN RODGERS, who was commander of the American man-of-war,
Vincennes, when cruising north of Behring’s Straits in 1855 ; and
WASHBURN MAyNopD, lieutenant in the American Navy. I had
besides obtained important information from the German sea-
captain E. DALLMANN, who for several years commanded a
vessel in these waters for coast traffic with the natives. Space
does not permit me to insert all these writings here. But to
show that there were good grounds for not considering the season
of navigation in the sea between Kolyutschin Bay and Behring’s
Straits closed at the end of September, I shall make some
extracts from a letter sent to me, through the American Consul-
General in Stockholm, N. A. Etvine, from Mr. MILLER, the
president of the Alaska Commercial Company.

“The following is an epitome of the information we have
received regarding the subject of your inquiry.

“The bark Massachusetts, Captain O. WILLIAMS, was in 74°
30' N.L. and 173° W.L. on the 21st Sept. 1867. No ice in
sight in the north, but to the east saw ice. Saw high peaks
bearing W.N.W. about 60’. Captain Williams is of opinion that
Plover Island, so-called by Kellet, is a headland of Wrangel
Land. Captain Williams says that he is of opinion from his
observations, that usually after the middle of August there is
no ice south of 70°—west of 175°, until the 1st of October.
There is hardly a year but that you could go as far as Cape
North (Irkaipij), which is 180°, durmg the month of September.
If the winds through July and August have prevailed from the
S.W., as is usual, the north shore will be found clear of ice.
The season of 1877 was regarded as an ‘icy season,’ a good deal
of ice to southward. 1876 was an open season; as was 1875.
Our captain, Gustav NIEBAUM, states that the east side of
Behring’s Straits is open till November; he passed through
the Straits as late as October 22nd two different seasons. The
north shore was clear of all danger within reasonable distance.

348 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. IX.

In 1869 the bark Navy anchored under Kolyutschin Island from
the 8th to the 10th October. On the 10th October of that year
there was no ice south and east of Wrangel Land.”

These accounts show that I indeed might have reason to be
uneasy at my ill luck in again losing some days at a place at
whose bare coast, exposed to the winds of the Polar Sea, there
was little of scientific interest to employ ourselves with, little at
least in comparison with what one could do in a few days, for
instance, at the islands in Behring’s Straits or in St. Lawrence
Bay, lying as it does south of the easternmost promontory of
Asia and therefore sheltered from the winds of the Arctic Ocean,
but that there were no grounds for fearing that it would be
necessary to winter there. I also thought that I could come to
the same conclusion from the experience gained in my wintering
on Spitzbergen in 1872-73, when permanent ice was first formed
in our haven, in the 80th degree of latitude, during the month of
February. Now, however, the case was quite different, The
fragile ice-sheet, ‘which on the 28th September bound together
the ground-ices and hindered our progress, increased daily in
strength under the influence of severer and severer cold until it
was melted by the summer heat of the followmg year. Long
after we were beset, however, there was still open water on the
coast four or five kilometres from our winter haven, and after our
return home I was informed that, on the day on which we
were frozen in, an American whaler was anchored at that
place.

Whether our sailing along the north coast of Asia to Kolyut-
schin Bay was a fortunate accident or not, the future will show.
I for my part believe that it was a fortunate accident, which will
often happen. Certain it is, in any case, that when we had come
so far as to this point, our being frozen in was a quite accidental
misfortune brought about by an unusual state of the ice in the
autumn of 1878 in the North Behring Sea.

CHAP. X.] THE POSITION OF THE VEGA. 349

CHAPTER X.

Wintering becomes necessary—The position of the Vega—The ice round
the vessel—American ship in the neighbourhood of the Vega when
frozen in—The nature of the neighbouring country—The Vega is prepared
for wintering—Provision-depot and observatories established on land
—The winter dress—Temperature on board—Health and dietary—Cold,
wind, and snow—The Chukches on board—Menka’s visit—Letters sent
home—Nordquist and Hovgaard’s excursion to Menka’s encampment—
Another visit of Menka—The fate of the letters—Nordquist’s journey
to Pidlin—Find of a Chukch grave—Hunting—Scientific work—Life
on board—Christmas Eve.

ASSURED that a few hours’ southerly wind would be sufficient
to break up the belt of ice, scarcely a Swedish mile! in breadth,
that barred our way, and rendered confident by the above-
quoted communications from experts in America concerning the
state of the ice in the sea north of Behring’s Straits, I was not
at first very uneasy at the delay, of which we took advantage
by making short excursions on land and holding converse with
the inhabitants. First, when day after day passed without any
change taking place, it became clear to me that we must make
preparations for wintering just on the threshold between the
Arctic and the Pacific Oceans. It was an unexpected dis-
appointment, which it was more difficult to bear with equanimity,
as it was evident that we would have avoided it if we had come
some hours earlier to the eastern side of Kolyutschin Bay.
There were numerous occasions during the preceding part of our
voyage on which these hours might have been saved: the Vega
did not require to stay so long at Port Dickson, we might have
saved a day at Taimur Island, have dredged somewhat less west
of the New Siberian Islands, and so on; and above all, our long
stay at Irkaipij waiting for an improvement in the state of the
ice, was fatal, because at least three days were lost there without
any change for the better takimg place.

The position of the vessel was by no means very secure. For
the Vega, when frozen in, as appears from the sketch map to be
found further on, did not le at anchor in any haven, but was
only, in the expectation of finding a favourable opportunity to
steam on, anchored behind a ground-ice, which ‘had stranded
in a depth of 9} metres, 1,400 metres from land, in a road
which was quite open from true N. 74° W. by north to east.
The vessel had here no other protection against the violent ice-
pressure which winter storms are wont to cause in the Polar
seas, than a rock of ice stranded at high water, and therefore
also at high water not very securely fixed. Fortunately the tide

1 Equal to 6°64 English miles.

350 up THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

just on the occasion of our being frozen in, appears to have been
higher than at any other time during the course of the winter.
The ice-rocks, therefore, first floated again far into the summer
of 1879, when their parts that projected above the water had
diminished by melting. Little was wanting besides to make
our winter haven still worse than it was in reality. For the
Vega was anchored the first time on the 28th September at
some small ice-blocks which had stranded 200 metres nearer the
land, but was removed the following day from that place, because
there were only a few inches of water under her keel. Had the
vessel remained at her first anchorage, it had gone ill with us.

TOROSS.
From the neighbourhood of the Vega’s winter quarters.

For the newly formed ice, during the furious autumn storms,
especially during the night between the 14th and 15th
December, was pressed over these ice-blocks. The sheet of ice,
about half a metre thick, was thereby broken up with loud noise
into thousands of pieces, which were thrown up on the under-
lying ground-ices so as to form an enormous ¢oross, or rampart of
loose, angular blocks of ice. A vessel anchored there would
have been buried under pieces of ice, pressed aground, and
crushed very early in the winter.

When the Vega was beset, the sea near the coast, as has been

s

x.] THE ICE ROUND THE VESSEL. 351

already stated, was covered with newly formed ice, too thin to
carry a foot passenger, but thick enough to prevent the passage
of a boat. In the offing lay, as far as the eye could see, closely
packed drift-ice, which was bound together so firmly by the
newly formed ice, that it was vain to endeavour to force a
passage. Already, by the 2nd October, it was possible, by
observing the necessary precautions, to waik upon the newly
formed ice nearest the vessel, and on the 3rd October, the
Chukches came on board on foot. On the 10th there were
still weak places here and there between the vessel and the
land, and a blue sky to the eastward mdicated that there was
still open water in that direction. That this “clearing ” was at a
considerable distance from the vessel was seen from an excursion
which Dr. Almquist undertook .in a north-easterly direction on
the 13th October, when, after walking about twenty kilometres
over closely packed drift-ice, he was compelled to turn without
having reached the open water. It was clear that the Vega was
surrounded by a band, at least thirty kilometres broad, of drift-
ice fields, united by newly formed ice, which in the course of
the winter reached a considerable thickness.’

In this immense ice-sheet there often arose in the course of
the winter cracks of great length. They ran uninterruptedly
across newly formed ice-fields, and old, high ground-ices. One
of the largest of these cracks was formed on the night before
the 15th December right under the bow of the vessel. It was
nearly a metre broad, and very long. Commonly the cracks were
only some centimetres broad, but, notwithstanding this, they
were troublesome enough, because the sea-water forced itself
up through them to the surface of the ice and drenched the
snow lying next to it.

The causes of the formation of the cracks were twofold.
Either they arose from a violent wind disturbing somewhat the
position of the newly formed ice, or through the contraction of
the ice in severe cold. The formation of the cracks took place
with amore or less loud report, and, to Judge from the number of
these reports, more frequently than could be observed from the

1 When it had become evident that we could make no further advance
before next year, Lieut. Brusewitz occasionally measured the thickness of
the newly formed ice, with the following results :—

THICKNESS OF THE ICE.

1 December, 56 centimetres. 1 May, 154 centimetres.

1 January, 92 - US) Saas eho o

1 February, 108 ¥ '1 June, 154 if

eee 120 3 15g oe a

1 March, 123 7 1 July, 104 y

1 April, 128 _ Len Oe » (full of holes).
1b @, 139 4; 18 ,, The ice broke up.

352 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

appearance of the snow-covered ice. Thus even during severe cold
the apparently continuous ice-sheet was divided into innumerable
pieces lying in the close proximity of each other, which either
were completely loose or bound together only by the weak ice-
band which was gradually formed under the snow on the surface
of the water which had forced its way into the crack. Up to
a distance of about six kilometres from the shore the ice in any
case lay during the course of the whole winter nearly undis-
turbed, with the exception of the small cracks just mentioned.
Farther out to sea, on the other hand, it was in constant motion.
So-called polynias or open places probably occur here all the year
round, and when the weather was favourable we could therefore
nearly always see a blue water sky at the horizon from true N.W. to
E. A southerly wind after some days brought the open water
channel so near the vessel that it was possible to walk to it ina
few hours. It then swarmed with seals—an indication that it was
in connection with a sea that was constantly open. The neighbour-
hood of such a sea perhaps also accounts for the circumstance
that we did not see a single 'seal-hole in the ice-fields that
surrounded the vessel.

The ground-ice, to which the Vega was moored on the 29th
September, and under which she lay during the course of the
winter, was about forty metres long and twenty-five metres
broad ; its highest point lay six metres above the surface of the
water. It was thus not very large, but gave the vessel good
shelter. This ground-ice, along with the vessel and the newly
formed ice-field lying between it and the shore, was indeed
moved considerably nearer land during the violent autumn
storms. A groati or two and a knocking sound in the hull of
the vessel indicated that it did not escape very severe pressure ;
but the Vega did not during the course of the winter suffer any
damage, either from this or from the severe cold, during which
sharp reports often indicated that some crack in the wood-
work had widened through the freezing of the water that had
made its way into the vessel. “Cold so that the walls crack ”
is a well-known expression, with which we inhabitants of the
North often connect memories from some stormy winter even-
ing, passed by the home hearth ; but here these reports heard in
our cabins, especially at night, were unpleasant enough, giving
rise to fears that the newly formed or widened cracks would
cause dangerous leaks in the vessel's hull. In consequence of
iron contracting more than wood under the influence of cold,
the heads of the iron bolts, with which the ship’s timbers
were fastened together, in the course of the winter sank deep
into the outside planking. But no serious leak arose in this
way, perhaps because the cold only acted on that part of the
vessel which lay above the surface of the water.

x.] AMERICAN SHIP IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. 353

Already during the first days of our wintering we interpreted
various lively accounts of the natives, which they illustrated by
signs, to mean that a whaler would be found at Serdze Kamen,
in the neighbourhood of the Vega’s winter haven. On this
account Lieutenant Brusewitz was sent out on the 4th October
with two men and the little boat, Louzse, built in Copenhagen
for the expedition of 1872-73, and intended for sledge-journeys,
with instructions to ascertain, if possible, if such was the case.
He returned late at night the same day without having got
sight of any vessel. We now supposed that the whole depended
on our having misunderstood the accounts of the Chukches.
But a letter which I received after our return, from Mr. W.
BARTLETT, dated New Bedford, 6th January, 1880, shows that
this had not been the case. For he writes, among other
things :—

“The writer’s son, GIDEON W. BARTLETT, left San Francisco
Ist June, 1878, in our freighter ship Syren, of 875 tons, for
St. Lawrence Bay, arriving there July 8th, and, after loading
6,100 barrels of oil and 37,000 Ibs. of bone from our whalers,
she sailed for New Bedford direct, touching at Honolulu to
land her bone, to come here vid San Francisco, and he joimed
our whaler bark, Rainbow, at St.. Lawrence Bay, and went on
a tour of observation and pleasure, visiting Pomt Barrow and
going as far east as Lion Reefs, near Camden Bay, and then
returning to Point Barrow, and going over to Herald Island,
and while there visiting our different whalers, seeing one “ bow-
head” caught and cut in, and September 25th he came down
in the schooner W. I. Meyer to San Francisco, arriving there
October 22nd. By a comparison of dates we find he passed
near Cape Serdze September 29th, or one day after you anchored
near Kolyutschin Bay.”

The 29th September according to the American day-reckoning
corresponds to the 30th according to that of the old world, which
was still followed on board the Vega. The schooner W. M.
Meyer thus lay at Serdze Kamen two days after we anchored in
our winter haven. The distance between the two places is only
about 70 kilometres.

The winter haven was situated in 67° 4’ 49” north latitude,
and 173° 23’ 2” longitude west from Greenwich, 1'4 kilo-
metres from land. The. distance from East Cape was 120’,
and from Pomt Hope near Cape Lisburn on the American
side, 180’.

The neighbouring land formed a plain rising gradually from
the sea, slightly undulating and crossed by river valleys, which
indeed when the Vega was frozen in was covered with hoarfrost

A A

354 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP. x.

and frozen, but still clear of snow, so that our botanists could
form an idea of the flora of the region, previously quite unknown.
Next the shore were found close beds of Elymus, alternating
with carpets of Halianthus peploides, and further up a poor, even,
gravelly soil, covered with water in spring, on which grew only
a slate-like lichen, Gyrophora proboscidea, and a few flowering
plants, of which Armeria sibirica was the most common.
Within the beach were extensive salt and fresh-water lagoons,
separated by low land, whose banks were covered with a pretty
luxuriant carpet, formed of mosses, grasses, and Carices. But
first on the neighbouring high land, where the weathered gneiss
strata yielded a more fertile soil than the sterile sand thrown
up out of the sea, did the vegetation assume a more variegated
stamp. No trace of trees! was indeed found there, but low
willow bushes, extensive carpets of Hmpetrum mgrum and
Andromeda tetragona were seen, along with large tufts of a
species of Artemisia. Between these shoot forth in summer, to
judge partly from the dried and frozen remains of plants which
Dr. Kjellman collected in autumn, partly from collections made
in spring, a limited number of flowering plants, some of which
are well known at home, as the red whortleberry, the cloud-
berry, and the dandelion.

Although experience from preceding Polar journeys and
specially from the Swedish expedition of 1872-73, showed that
even at the 80th degree of latitude the sea may suddenly break
up in the middle of winter, we however soon found, as has
been already stated, that we must make preparations for
wintering. The necessary arrangements were accordingly made.
The snow which collected on deck, and which at first was daily
swept away, was allowed to remain, so that it finally formed a
layer 30 centimetres thick, of hard tramped snow or ice, which
in no inconsiderable degree contributed to increase the resistance
of the deck to cold, and for the same purpose snowdrifts were
thrown up along the vessel’s sides. <A stately ice stair was
carried up from the ice to the starboard gunwale. A large tent
made for the purpose at Karlskrona was pitched from the bridge
to the fore, so that only the poop was open. Aft the tent was
quite open, the blast and driftmg snow having also free entrance
from the sides and from an incompletely closed opening in the
fore. The protection it yielded against the cold was indeed
greatly diminished in this way, but instead it did not have the
least injurious action on the air on the vessel, a circumstance
specially deserving of attention for its influence on the state of
health on board. Often under this tent in the dark days of
winter there blazed a brisk smithy fire, round which the

! Low brush is probably to be met with in the interior of the Chukch
peninsula at places which are protected from the cold north winds.

ih

mM i TT

Mil

THE ‘‘ VEGA’’ IN WINTER QUARTERS,

(After a photograph, taken in the spring of 1879 by L. Palander.)

356 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

Chukches crowded in curious wonder at the skill with which
the smith fashioned the glowing iron. Here the cook dealt out
to the Chukches the soup and meat that were left over, and the
loaves of bread which at every baking were baked for them.
Here was our reception saloon, where tobacco and sugar were
distributed to the women and children, and where sometimes, if
seldom, a frozen hunter or fisherman was treated to a little
spirits. Here pieces of wood and vertebrz of the whale were
valued and purchased, and here tedious negotiations were
carried on regarding journeys in dog-sledges in different
directions,

The violent motion which took place in the ice during the
night before the 15th December, gave us a sharp warning that
our position in the open road was by no means so secure as was
desirable, but that there was a possibility that the vessel might
be nipped suddenly and without any previous warning. If such
a misfortune had happened, the crew of the Vega would certainly
have had no difficulty in getting to land over the ice. But the
yield of hunting appeared to be so scanty, and the Chukches
were, as almost always, so destitute of all stock of provisions—
for they literally obey the command to take no thought for to-
morrow—that there was every probability that we, having come
safe ashore, would die of hunger, if no provisions were saved from
the vessel. This again, as the principal part of the provisions
was of course down in the hold, would have been attended with
ereat difficulty, if the Vega had been suddenly in the night cut
into by the ice at the water-line. In order as far as possible to
secure ourselves against the consequences of such a misfortune,
a depot of provisions, guns, ammunition, &c., reckoned for 30
men and 100 days, was formed on land. Fortunately we did not
require to depend upon it. The stores were laid up on the
beach without the protection of lock or bolt, covered only with
sails and oars, and no watch was kept at the place. Notwith-
standing this, and the want of food which occasionally prevailed
among the natives, it remained untouched both by the Chukches
who lived in the neighbourhood, and by those who daily drove
past the place from distant regions. All however knew very well
the contents of the sail-covered heap, and they undoubtedly
supposed that there were to be found there treasures of immense
value, and provisions enough for the whole population of the
Chukcb peninsula for a whole year.

The Magnetical Observatory was erected, as will be told in
greater detail further on, upon the beach a kilometre and a
half from the vessel. To this house the observers had to walk
to and fro at least four times in the twenty-four hours over an
ice-field, covered with loose snow, as fine as dust, that was set in

x.] METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 357

x |

motion by the least puff of wind, and then in a few moments
completely obliterated every footprint. When the moon did not
shine, the winter nights were so dark, that it was impossible to
distinguish the very nearest objects, and day after day during the
course of the winter we had, besides, drifting snow so thick that
the high dark hull of the vessel itself could be distinguished
only when one was in its immediate neighbourhood! In walk-
ing from land during the darkness of the night and in drifting
snow it would have been very difficult to find one’s way to the
vessel without guidance, and he would have been helplessly lost
who went astray. To prevent such an accident, the precaution
was taken of running a line over high ice-pillars between the
Observatory and the vessel. Even with the help of the guide-
line it was often difficult enough to find our way.

The attempt to keep open a channel in the ice round the
vessel during the whole winter had soon to be given up, but two
holes were kept constantly open, one by the side of the vessel in
case of fire, and the other for the tidal observations which
Captain Palander set on foot during the winter. The latter
hole was chosen by a little seal as its haunt for a long time,
until one day we entertained ourselves by catching him with
the necessary care, and making him pay an involuntary visit on
board, where he was offered various delicacies, which however
were disregarded. ‘The seal was let loose again in his hole, but
notwithstanding the friendliness we showed him, he never more
returned.

From the meteorological observations it appears that the win-
ter was not so cold as the winters in the Franklin archipelago
or in the coldest parts of the mainland of Siberia On the
other hand, it was exceedingly stormy at the Vega’s winter
station, and day after day, night after night, we have gone to
and from the Observatory ina high wind and a cold of —30°
to —46°C. In calm weather a cold of —40° is scarcely very
troublesome, but with only a slight draught a degree of cold of
for instance — 35° is actually dangerous for one who goes against
the wind, and without the necessary precautions exposes unco-
vered parts of the face, the hands, or the wrists, to the cold current
of air. Without one’s being warned by any severe pain frostbite
arises, which, if it be not in time thawed by rubbing the injured
part with the hand, or with melting snow, may readily become
very serious. Most of those who for the first time took part

1 According to H. Wild’s newly-published large work, “‘ Die Temperatur
Verhiiltnisse des Russischen Reiches, 2e Halfte, St. Petersburg, 1881,” the
Old World’s cold-pole lies in the neighbourhood of the town Werchojansk
(67° 34’ N.L, 133° 51’ E.L. from Greenwich). The mean temperature of the
different months and of the whole year is given in the note at page 411. If
the data on which these figures rest are correct, the winter at Werchojansk
is immensely colder than at the Vega’s winter station.

.

358 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

in a wintering in the high north, were, when the first cold
occurred, more or less frostbitten, on several occasions so that
there arose high frost-blisters filled with bloody water, several
square centimetres in extent, but fortunately never to such a
degree that any serious bad results followed. After we, new-

YHE WINTER DRESS OF THE ‘‘ VEGA’’ MEN,

comers to the Polar regions, warned by experience, became more
eareful, such frostbites occurred but seldom. Nor did there
occur a single case of frostbite in the feet. To this conduced
our clothing, which was adapted to the climate, and, besides good

/

x] . THE WINTER DRESS. 359

winter clothes of the sort commonly used in Sweden, consisted of
the following articles of dress brought with us specially for use
in the high north :—

1. An abundant stock of good woollen wnder-clothing.

2. A carefully made blouse of sailcloth, provided with many
pockets, intended to be drawn over the ordinary seaman’s dress
as a protection against wind and drifting snow. This proved to
be very suitable for the purpose for which it was intended, and
was much liked by the crew.

3. A Lapp “pesk” with leggings was not so often used, because
it was so warm that it was only with difficulty one could
walk with it any considerable distance. On the other hand, in
the case of winter journeys with dogs or reindeer it was
indispensable.

4, A pair of very large canvas boots with leather soles. Inside
these was put shay of Carex vesicaria L. The foot itself was covered
with one or two pairs of stockings, above which there was a foot-strip
of felt. Our boots were thus intermediate between the foot-covering
introduced by Parry for Arctic journeys, and the hay-filled komager
of the Lapps. All who used these canvas boots are unanimous
in thinking that they left nothing to desire. Even in the case
of extended excursions in wet snow they are to be preferred to
leather shoes; for the latter become heavy and drenched with
water, and can with difficulty be dried in the open air in the
course of a night’s rest. Canvas boots and the long hay in them
on the other hand are easily dried in a single night. They are
also light when wet, and in that state little prejudicial to health on
account of the change of air which the hay under the foot renders
possible, I therefore am of opinion that we are warranted in
giving such boots the highest recommendation for winter
journeys and winter hunting excursions, even in our own land.

5, An Oresund cap and a loose felt hood (baschlik) of the same
sort as those which are used in the Russianarmy. I had bought
the baschliks in St. Petersburg on account of the Expedition.

6. Fingerless gloves of sealskin and chamois, with an inside
lining of sheepskin and at the wrists bordered with long-haired
fur, They were commonly carried with a band from the neck,
as children are wont to carry their gloves. For outside work
these thick gloves were too inconvenient; then fingerless
woollen mittens were used.

7. Coloured spectacles, which were distributed to all the wen
in the beginning of February. One must himself have lived in
the Polar regions during winter and spring, “after the return of
the sun,” to understand how indispensable is such a protection
from the monotonous white light which then surrounds the eye
in every direction. The inexperienced, though warned, seldom
observe the necessary precautions, and commonly pay the penalty

360 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

by a more or less complete snowblindness, which indeed is not
very dangerous, but is always exceedingly painful, and which
lasts several days.

On board the vessel in our cabins and collection-rooms it was
besides by no means so cold as many would suppose. The sides
of the vessel in several places indeed, especially in the cabins,
were covered with a thick sheet of ice, and so was the skylight in
the gun-room. But in the inhabited parts of the vessel we had, a
little from the sides, commonly a temperature of + 12°to +17°, that
is to say about the same as we in the north are wont to have in-
doors in winter, and certainly higher thanthe temperature of rooms
during the coldest days of the year in many cities in the south,
as for instance in Paris and Vienna. By night however the
temperature in the cabins sank sometimes to + 5° and + 10°, and
the boarding at the side of the berth became covered with ice.
In the work-room ’tweendecks the thermometer generally stood
about + 10°, and even in the underhold, which was not heated,
but lay under the water-line, the temperature was never under,
commonly 1° or 2° above, the freezing-point.

Much greater inconvenience than from cold did we in the
cabins suffer from the excessive heat and the fumes, which
firing in large cast-iron stoves is wont to cause in small close rooms.
When in the morning after a cold night the watch all too willingly
obeyed the direction, which sounded from different quarters, to fire
well, one had often his wish so thoroughly satisfied, that, in half an
hour after, every man lay bathed in perspiration. There was no
other help for it than to leave the cabin, take a cold bath and
a good rub down, dress rapidly, rush on deck for fresh air,
and cool in the temperature of —30° to —40° prevailmg there.
Other opportunities for bathing were also given both to the officers
and crew, and the necessary care was taken to secure cleanliness,
a sanitary measure which ought never to be neglected in Arctic
winterings.

The state of health on board during the course of the winter
was exceedingly good. Dr. Almquist’s report enumerates only
a few serious maladies, all successfully cured, among which may
be mentioned stomach colds and slight cases of inflammation of
the lungs, but not a single case of that insidious disease, scurvy,
which formerly raged in such a frightful way among the crews
in all long voyages, and which jis still wont to gather so many
victims from among Polar travellers.

This good state of health depended in the first place on the
excellent spirit which inspired the scientific men, the officers
and the crew of the Expedition, but it ought also to be ascribed
to the suitable equipment of the Vega, arranged by Captain
Palander at Karlskrona, and above all to adjustment to the

ml THE DIETARY. 361

climate of our dietary, which was settled on the ground of the
experience gained in the expedition of 1872-73, and after
taking the advice of its distinguished physician Dr. Envall.
The dietary is shown in the following table :—

No. 1. SUNDAY.

Breakfast : butter 6 ort, coffee 10 ort, sugar 7°5 ort.

Dinner : salt pork or dried fish 75 ort, sourkrout 75 ort, pre-
served or fresh potatoes 12 ort, preserved vegetables 5°5 ort,
extract of meat 15 ort, raisins 5 ort, rice 50 ort, brandy or
rum 2 cubic inches.

Supper : butter 6 ort, tea 1°5 ort, sugar 7°5 ort, barley-groats 10
cubic inches, cheese 12 ort.

No. 2. Monpay, WEDNESDAY, and FRIDAY.

Breakfast same as No. 1.

Dinner : preserved meat or fish 1 portion, preserved potatoes 12
ort, preserved vegetables 5°5 ort, preserved leeks 1 portion,
extract of meat 1:5 ort, brandy or rum 2 cubic inches.

Supper same as No.1 without cheese.

No. 3. THURSDAY.

Breakfast same as No. 1.

Dinner : salt pork 1 lb., peas 10 cubic inches, extract of meat 1°5
ort, barley-groats 2 cubic inches, brandy or rum 2 cubic
inches.

Supper same as No. 2.

No. 4. TUESDAY.

Breakfast : butter 6 ort, chocolate 10 ort, sugar 7°5 ort.

Dinner: salt meat 1 Ib., maccaroni 15 ort (or brown beans 10
cubic inches or green peas 1 portion), fruit soup 1 portion,
brandy or rum 2 cubic inches.

Supper same as No, 2.

No. 5. SAatTuRDAY.

Breakfast same as No. 4,

Dinner : preserved beeksteak or stewed beef 1 portion, preserved
or fresh potatoes 12 ort, preserved leeks 1 portion, fruit
soup 1 portion, brandy or rum 2 cubic inches.

Supper same as No. 2.

Every man besides had served out to him daily 1} lb. dried
bread or flour (3 wheat and } rye), 3 ort tobacco and 2 cubic
inches vinegar ; and weekly 1 lb. wheat-flour, 30 ort butter, 21 ort
salt, 7 ort mustard, 3 ort pepper, and two cubic inches vinegar.

1 { Ib.=100 ort=425°05 gram. 1 kanna=100 cubic inches =2°617 litres.

‘

362 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

Besides what is included in the above list, “multegrot”
(preserved cloudberries), mixed with rum, was served out twice a
week from the 15th February to the st April. I would
willingly have had a larger quantity of this, according to
northern experience, excellent antidote to scurvy, but as the
cloudberry harvest completely failed in 1877, I could not, at any
price, procure for the Expedition the quantity that was required.
There was purchased in Finland instead, a large quantity of
cranberry-juice, which was regularly served out to the crew
and much liked by them. We carried with us besides a pair of
living swine, which were slaughtered for the Christmas festivities.’
All the men at that time had an opportunity of eating fresh
pork twice a week, an invaluable interruption to the monotonous
preserved provisions, which in its proportion conduced, during
this festival, to which we inhabitants of the North are nena
by so many memories, to enliven and cheer us.

COD FROM PITLEKAJ.

Gadus navaga, Kolreuter.
One-third of the natural size.

The produce of hunting was confined during the course
of the winter to some ptarmigan and hares, and thus did not
yield any contribution worth mentioning to the provisioning
of the vessel. On the other hand, I was able by barter with
the natives to procure fish in considerable abundance, so that at
certain seasons the quantity was sufficient to allow of fresh
fish being served out once a week. The kind of fish which was
principally obtained during the winter, a sort of cod with
greyish-green vertebrx, could however at first only be served

in the gun-room, because the crew, on account of the colour of

its bones, for a long time had an invincible dislike to it.

On many of the ground-ices in the neighbourhood of the
vessel there were fresh-water collections of considerable depth
which indeed were already hard frozen on the surface, but long

1 To carry animals for slaughter on vessels during Polar expeditions
cannot be sufficiently reeommended. Their flesh acts beneficially by
forming a change from the preserved provisions, which in course of time
become exceedingly disagreeable, and their care a not less important
interruption to the monotony of the winter life.

————

eS

x] THE GREATEST COLD OBSERVED. 363

yielded us splendid water for drinking and washing. After the
14th of December, when all the smaller fresh-water collections
were almost frozen to the bottom, and salt-water had made its
way into the largest ones and those on which we most depended,
it became necessary to procure water by melting ice.

The meteorological observations were made every fourth hour
up to the 1st November; after that to the Ist April every hour;
after that again six times in the twenty-four hours. From the
27th November to the Ist April the thermometers were set up on
land at the magnetical observatory ; before and after that time
in the immediate neighbourhood of the vessel. During winter
the charge of the meteorological observations was intrusted to
Dr. Stuxberg, who at that season when all around us was
covered with ice, was compelled to let his own zoological
researches rest. ;

The state of the weather of course had a very sensible in-
fluence on our daily life, and formed the touchstone by which
our equipment was tested. Space does not permit me _ to
give in this work the detailed results of the meteorological
observations. I shall therefore only state the following facts.

The greatest cold which was observed during the different
months was in

October the 24th — 20°8 March the 29th — 39°8
November the 30th — 27°2 April the 15th -- 38°0
December the 23rd — 37°1 May the 3rd —26"8
January the 25th — 45°7 June the 3rd—14°3
February the 2nd -- 43°8 July the 2nd—1°0

Twice we had the barometer uncommonly high, viz. :

On the 22nd December 6 A.M. 782°0 (0°) mm.
On the 17th February 6 A.M. 788°1 (0°) mm.

The lowest atmospheric pressure, 728°8 (0°) mm., occurred on
the 31st December at two o'clock P.M.

The weather during the winter was very stormy, and the
direction of the wind nearest the surface of the earth almost
constantly between north-west and north-north-west. But
already in atmospheric strata of inconsiderable height there
prevailed, to judge by the direction of the clouds, a similar un-
interrupted atmospheric current from the south-east, which when
it occasionally sank to the surface of the earth brought with it air
that was warmer and less saturated with moisture. The reason
of this is easy to see, if we consider that Behring’s Straits form
a gate surrounded by pretty high mountains between the warm
atmospheric area of the Pacific and the cold one of the Arctic
Ocean. The winds must be arranged here approximately after the
same laws as the draught in the door-opening between a warm and

564 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

a cold room, that is to say, the cold current of air must go below
from the cold room to the warm, the warm above from the warm
room to the cold. The mountain heights which, according to
the statement of the natives, are to be found in the interior of

the Chukch peninsula besides conduce to the heat and dryness.

of the southerly and south-easterly winds. For they confer on
the sea winds that pass over their summits the properties of
the fohn winds. Our coldest winds have come from 8.W. to
W., that is to say, from the Old World's pole of cold, situated in
the region of Werchojansk. On the existence of two currents
of air, which at a certain height above the surface of the earth
contend for the mastery, depends also the surprising rapidity
with which the vault of heaven in the region of Behring’s Straits
becomes suddenly clouded over and again completely clear.
Already the famous Behring’s Straits’ navigator, RODGERS, now
Admiral in the American Navy, had noticed this circumstance,
and likened it very strikingly to the drawing up and dropping of
the curtain of a theatre.

In our notes on the weather a difference was always made
between sndyra (fall of snow in wind) and yrsné (snow-storm
without snow-fall). The fall of snow was not very great, but as
there was in the course of the winter no thaw of such continu-
ance that the snow was at any time covered with a coherent
melted crust, a considerable portion of the snow that fell re-
mained so loose that with the least puff of wind it was whirled
backwards and forwards. In a storm or strong breeze the snow
was carried to higher strata of the atmosphere, which was
speedily filled with so close and fine snow-dust, that objects at
the distance of a few metres could no longer be distinguished.
There was no possibility in such weather of keeping the way
open, and the man that lost his way was helplessly lost, if he
could not, like the Chukch snowed up in a drift, await the ceasing
of the storm. But even when the wind was slight and the sky
clear there ran a stream of snow some centimetres in height
along the ground in the direction of the wind, and thus
principally from N.W. to 8.E. Even this shallow stream heaped
snowdrifts everywhere where there was any protection from the
wind, and buried more certainly, if less rapidly, than the drifting
snow of the storm, exposed objects and trampled footpaths. The
quantity of water, which in a frozen form is removed in this
certainly not deep, but uninterrupted and rapid current over the
north coast of Siberia to more southerly regions, must be equal
to the mass of water in the giant rivers of our globe, and play
a sufficiently great dle, among others as a carrier of cold to
the most northerly forest regions, to receive the attention of
meteorologists.

The humidity of the air was observed both by August's

er
i

x] HUMIDITY OF THE AIR. 365

psychrometer and Saussure’s hygrometer. But I do not
believe that these instruments give trustworthy results at a
temperature considerably under the freezing-poimt. Moreover
the degree of humidity at the place where there can be a
question of setting up a psychrometer and hygrometer during
a wintering in the high north, has not the meteorological
importance which has often been ascribed to it. For the instru-
ments are as a rule set up in an isolated louvre case, standing at
a height above the surface convenient for reading. While the
snow is drifting almost uninterruptedly it is impossible to keep
this case clear of snow. Even the air, which was originally
quite dry, must here be saturated with moisture through evapor-

co)
ation from the surrounding layers of snow and from the snow

dust which whirls about next the surface of the earth. In order
to determine the true degree of humidity in the air, I would
accordingly advise future travellers to these regions to weigh
directly the water which a given measure of air contains by
absorbing it In tubes with chloride of calcium, calcined sulphate
of copper, or sulphuric acid. It would be easy to arrange an
instrument for this purpose so that the whole work could be
done under deck, the air from any stratum under the mast-top
being examined at will. If I had had the means to make such
an examination at the Vega’s winter quarters, it would certainly
have appeared that the relative humidity of the air at a height
of some few metres above the surface of the earth was for the
most part exceedingly small.

The sandy neck of land which on the side next the vessel
divided the lagoons from the sea, was bestrewn with colossal
bones of the whale, and with the refuse of the Chukches, who
had lived and wandered about there for centuries, and besides
with portions of the skeleton of the seal and walrus, with the
excreta of men, dogs, birds, &c. The region was among the
most disagreeable I have seen in any of the parts inhabited
by fishing Lapps, Samoyeds, Chukches, or Eskimo. When
the Vega was beset there were two Chukch villages on the
neighbouring beach, of which the one that lay nearest our winter
haven was called Pitlekaj. It consisted at first of seven tents,
which in consequence of want of food their inhabitants removed
gradually in the course of the winter to a region near Behring’s
Straits, where fish were more abundant. At the removal only
the most indispensable articles were taken along, because there
was an intention of returning at that season of the year when
the chase again became more productive. The other encamp-
ment, Yinretlen, lay nearer the cape towards Kolyutschin Bay,
and reckoned at the beginning of our wintering likewise seven
tents, whose inhabitants appeared to be in better circumstances
than those of Pitlekaj. They had during the autumn made a

366 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

better catch and collected a greater stock. Only some of them
accordingly removed during winter.

The following encampments lay at a somewhat greater dis-
tance from our winter quarters, but so near, however, that we
were often visited by their inhabitants :

Pidlin, on the eastern shore of Kolyutschin Bay, four tents.

Kolyutschin, on the island of the same name, twenty-five tents.
This village was not visited by any of the members of the Vega
Expedition.

Rirajtinop, situated six kilometres east of Pitlekaj, three tents.

Irgunnuk, seven kilometres east of Pitlekaj, ten tents, of
which, however, in February only four remained. The in-
habitants of the others had for the winter sought a better
fishing place farther eastward.

KAUTLJKAU, A CHUKCH GIRL FROM IRGUNNUK.
Front face and Profile.
(After photographs by L. Palander.)

The number of the persons who belonged to each tent was
difficult to make out, because the Chukches were constantly
visiting each other for the purpose of gossip and talk. On an
average it may perhaps be put at five or six persons. Including
the inhabitants of Kolyutschin Island, there thus lived about
300 natives in the neighbourhood of our winter quarters.

When we were beset, the ice next the shore, as has been
already stated, was too weak to carry a foot passenger, and the
difficulty of reaching the vessel from the land with the means
which the Chukches had at their disposal was thus very great.
When the natives observed us, there was in any case im-
mediately a great commotion among them. Men, women,

Na

red THE CHUKCHES ON BOARD. 367

children, and dogs were seen running up and down the beach
in eager confusion; some were seen driving in dog-sledges
on the ice street next the sea. They evidently feared that the
splendid opportunity which here lay before them of purchasing
brandy and tobacco, would be lost. From the vessel we could
see with glasses how several attempts were made to put out
boats, but they were again given up, until at last a boat was got
to a lane, clear of ice or only covered with a thin sheet, that ran
from the shore to the neighbourhood of the vessel. In this a
large skin boat was put out, which was filled brimful of men
and women, regardless of the evident danger of navigating such
a boat, heavily laden, through sharp, newly formed ice. They
rowed immediately to the vessel, and on reaching it most of
them climbed without the least hesitation over the gunwale with
jests and laughter, and the cry anoaj anoaj (good day, good day).
Our first meeting with the inhabitants of this region, where we
afterwards passed ten long months, was on both sides very
hearty, and formed the starting-point of a very friendly relation
between the Chukches and ourselves, which remained unaltered
during the whole of our stay.

Regard for cleanliness compelled us to allow the Chukches
to come below deck only exceptionally, which at first annoyed
them much, so that one of them even showed a disposition to
retaliate by keeping us out of the bedchamber in his tent.
Our firmness on this point, however, combined with friendliness
and generosity, soon calmed them, and it was not so easy for
the men to exclude us from the inner tent, for im such visits
we always had confections and tobacco with us, both for them-
selves and for the women and children. On board the vessel’s
tent-covered deck soon became a veritable reception saloon for
the whole population of the neighbourhood. Dog-team after
dog-team stood all day in rows, or more correctly lay snowed up
before the ice-built flight of steps to the deck of the Vega,
patiently waiting for the return of the visitors, or for the
pemmican I now rand then from pity ordered to be given to the
hungered animals. The report of the arrival of the “remarkable
foreioners must besides have spread with great rapidity. For
we soon had visits even from distant settlements, and the Vega
finally became a resting-place at which every passer-by stopped
with his dog-team for some hours in order to satisfy his curiosity,
or to obtain in exchange for good words or some more acceptable
wares a little warm food, a bit of tobacco, and sometimes when
the weather was very stormy, a little drop of spirits, by the
Chukches called vam, a word whose origin is not to be sought
for in the Swedish-Norwegian dram, but in the English word
rum.

All who came on board were allowed to go about without let

3h8 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

or hindrance on our deck, which was encumbered with a great
many things. We had not however to lament the loss of the
merest trifle. Honesty was as much at home here as in the
huts of the remdeer Lapps. On the other hand, they soon
became very troublesome by their beggary, which was kept in
bounds by no feeling of self-respect. Nor did they fail to take
all possible advantage of what they doubtless considered the
great experience of the Europeans. Small deceptions in this
way were evidently not looked upon as blameworthy, but as
meritorious. Sometimes, for instance, they sold us the same
thing twice over, they were always liberal in promises which
they never intended to keep, and often gave deceptive accounts
of articles which were exposed for sale. Thus the carcases of
foxes were offered, after having been flayed and the head and
feet cut off, on several occasions as hares, and it was laughable
to see their astonishment at our immediately discovering the
fraud. The Chukches’ complete want of acquaintance with
money and our smallsupply of articles for barter for which they
had a liking besides compelled even me to hold at least a portion
of our wares at a high price. Skins and blubber, the common
products of the Polar lands, to the great surprise of the natives,
were not purchased on the Vega. On the other hand a complete
collection of weapons, dresses, and household articles was pro-
cured by barter. All such purchases were made exclusively
on account of the Expedition, and in general the collection of
natural and ethnographical objects for private account was wholly
forbidden, a regulation which ought to be in force in every
scientific expedition to remote regions.

As the Chukches began to acquire a taste for our food, they
never neglected, especially during the time when their hunting
failed, to bring daily on board driftwood and the vertebra and
other bones of the whale. They bartered these for bread. A
load of five bits of wood, from four to five inches in diameter
and six feet long, was commonly paid for with two or three ship
biscuits, that is to say with about 250 gram bread, the vertebra
of a whale with two ship biscuits, &e. By degrees two young
natives got into the habit of coming on board daily for the
purpose of performing, quite at their leisure, the office of
servant. The cook was their patron, and they obtained from
him in compensation for their services the larger share of the
left victuals. So considerable a quantity of food was distributed
partly as payment for services rendered or for goods purchased,
partly as gifts, that we contributed in a very great degree to
mitigate the famine which during midwinter threatened to
break out among the population.

None of the natives in the neighbourhood of the Vega’s
winter station professed the Christian religion. None of them

x. ] STUDIES OF THE CHUKCH LANGUAGE. 369

spoke any European language, though one or two knew a couple
of English words and a Russian word of salutation. This was
avery unfortunate circumstance, which caused us much trouble.
But it was soon remedied by Lieut. Nordquist specially devoting
himself to the study of their language, and that with such zeal
and success that in a fortnight he could make himself pretty
well understood. The natives stated to DE Lone in the autumn
of 1879 that a person on the “man of war” which wintered on
the north coast, spoke Chukch exceedingly well. The difficulty
of studying the language was increased, to a not inconsiderable
degree, by the Chukches in their wish to co-operate with us in
finding a common speech being so courteous as not to correct,
but to adopt the mistakes, in the pronunciation or meaning of
words that were made on the Vega. As a fruit of his studies
Lieut. Nordquist has drawn up an extensive vocabulary of this
little known language, and given a sketch of its grammatical
structure. The knowledge of the Chukch language, which

1 T give here an extract from the Vocabulary, that the reader may form
some idea of the language of the north-east point of Asia :—

Tndergin, heaven.
Tirkir, the sun.
Yédlin, the moon.

Liljaptkdurgin, to see.
Huedljédlin, ear.
Huedljokodljaurgin, to

Anetljkatl),
hook.
Anedljourgin, to angle.

fishing-

Angatlingan, a star. hear. Uadlin, knife.
Nitatschka, land. Huddljomerkin, to un- Tschiipak, Kdameak,
Angka, sea. derstand. dog.

Ljédijenki, winter.
Edljek, summer.
Edljéngat, day.
Nekita, night.
Ayguon, yesterday.

Umku, Polar bear.
Reérka, walrus.
Meémetlj, seal.
Kéorang, reindeer.
Gatlje, bird.

Huedljountékurgin, not
to understand,

Yeka, nose.

Yekergin, mouth.

Kametkuaurgin, to eat.

Tethin, to-day. Yedlinedljourgin, to Enzne, fish,

Ergatti, to-morrow. speak, Gurgur, dwarf-birch.
Gninian, north. Mammah, a woman’s Kukatkokongadlin, wil-
Emnungku, south. breast. low-bush.

Nikayan, east. Mammatkéurgin, to Gem, I.

Kayradljgin, west. give suck. Gemnin, mine.

Tintin, ice. Yéet, foot. Get, you.

Atljatlj, snow.
Yeeiedli, the aurora,
Yengeen, mist.
Tédljgio, storm.

Retschaurgin, to stand.
Yetkatjergin, to lie.
Tschipiska, to sleep.
Kadljetschetuetjakurgin,

Genin, yours.
Enkan, he.
Muri, we.
Turi, you.

Eek, fire. to learn. Mayngin, much.
Kijautlj,aman,ahuman Pintekatkéurgin, to be Pljukin, little.
being. born. Konjpeng, all.

Ordedlja, men.
Nediren, a woman.
Nénena, a child.
Empenitschyo, father.
Empengau, mother.
Ljéut, head.
Ljeutljka, face.
Dijedljadlin, eye.

Kaertraljirgin, to die.
Kamakatan, to be sick.
Kamak, the Deity, a

guardian Spirit.
Yaranga, tent.
Etschengeratlin, lamp.
Orguor, sledge.
Atkudt, boat.

I, yes.

Etlje, no.

Metschinka, thanks.

Hnnen, one.

Nirak, two.

Nrok, three.

Nrak, four.

Metljingan, five.
BB

CHUKCHES ANGLING.

cHap, x.| THE CHUKCHES FISHING FOR WINTER ROACH. . 371

the other members of the Expedition acquired, was confined to
a larger or smaller number of words ; the natives also learned a
word or two of our language, so that a lingua franca
somewhat intelligible to both parties gradually
arose, in which several of the crew soon became very
much at home, and with which in case of necessity
one could get along very well, although in this
newly formed dialect. all grammatical inflections
were totally wanting. Besides, I set one of the
crew, the walrus-hunter Johnsen, free for a con-
siderable time from all work on board, in order that
he might wander about the country daily, partly
for hunting, partly for conversing with the natives.
He sueceeded in the beginning of winter in killing
some ptarmigan and hares, got for me a great deal
of important information regarding the mode of
life of the Chukches, and procured several valuable
ethnographical objects. But after a time, for what
reason 1 could never make out, he took an in-
vineible dislike to visit the Chukch tents more,
without however having come to any disagreement
with their inhabitants.

On the 5th October the openings between the
drift-ice fields next the vessel were covered with
splendid skating ice, of which we availed ourselves
by celebrating a gay and joyous skating festival.
The Chukch women and children were now seen
fishing for winter roach along the shore. In this
sort of fishing a man, who always accompanies the
fishing women, with an iron-shod lance cuts a
hole in the ice so near the shore that the distance
between the under corner of the hole and the
bottom is only half a metre. Each hole is used
only by one woman, and that only for a short
time. Stooping down at the hole, in which the
surface of the water is kept quite clear of pieces of
ice by means of an ice-sieve, she endeavours to
attract the fish by means of a peculiar wonderfully
clattermg cry, First when a fish is seen in
the water an angling line, provided with a hook of
bone, iron or copper, is thrown down, strips of the
entrails of fish being employed as bait. A small pstiia

One-eighth of
metre-long staff with a single or double crook the natural size.
in the end was also used as a fishing implement.

With this little leister the men cast up fish on the ice with
incredible dexterity. When the ice became thicker, this fishing
BB2

372 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHaP.

was entirely given up, while during the whole winter a species
of cod and another of grayling were taken in great quantity
in a lagoon situated nearer Behring’s Straits. The coregonus is
also caught in the inland lakes, although, at least at this season
of the year, only in limited quantity.

On the morning of the 6th October, we saw from the vessel
an extraordinary procession moving forward on the ice. A
number of Chukches drew a dog-sledge on which lay a man.
At first we supposed it was a man who was very ill, and who
came to seek the help of the physician, but when the proces-
sion reached the vessel’s side, the supposed invalid climbed
very nimbly up the ice-covered rope-ladder (our ice-stair was
not yet in order), stepped immediately with a confident air,
giving evidence of high rank, upon the half-deck, crossed himself,
saluted graciously, and gave us to know in broken Russian that
he was a man of importance in that part of the country. It

mans

SMELT FROM THE CHUKCH PENINSULA.
Osmerus eperlanus, Lin.
One third of the natural size.

now appeared that we were honoured with a visit from the
representative of the Russian empire, Wassint Menxka, the
starost among the reindeer-Chukches. He was a little dark
man, with a pretty worn appearance, clad in a white variecated
“pesk ” of reindeer skin, under which a blue flannel shirt. was
visible. In order immediately on his arrival to inspire us with
respect, and perhaps also in order not to expose his precious
life to the false Ran’s treachery, he came to the vessel over the
yet not quite trustworthy ice, riding in a sledge that was drawn
not by dogs but by his men. On his arrival he immediately
showed us credentials of his rank, and various evidences of the
payment of tribute (or market tolls), consisting of some few red
and some white fox-skins, reckoning the former at 1 rouble 80
copecks, the latter at 40 copecks each.

‘He was immediately invited down to the gunroom, enter-
tained after the best of our ability, and bothered with a number

ah tie

x] MENKA’S VISIT. 373

of questions which he evidently understood with difficulty, and
answered in very unintelligible Russian. He was in any case
the first with whom some of us could communicate, at least in a
way. He could neither read nor write. On the other hand, he
could quickly comprehend a map which was shown him, and
point out with great accuracy a number of the more remarkable
places in north-eastern Siberia. Of the existence of the Russian
emperor the first official of the region had no idea; on the
other hand, he knew that a very powerful person had his home
at Irkutsk. On us he conferred the rank of “ Ispravnik” in the
neighbouring towns. At first he crossed himself with much

Ey

Pips

WASSILI MENKA.
Starost among the Reindeer Chukches
(After a photograph by L, Palander.)

zeal before some photographs and copper-plate engravings in
the gunroom, but he soon ceased when he observed that we
did not do likewise. Menka was accompanied by two badly-
clad natives with very oblique eyes, whom we took at first for
his servants or slaves. Afterwards we found that they were
owners of reindeer, who considered themselves quite as good as
Menka himself, and further on we even heard one of them
speak of Menka’s claim to be a chief with a compassionate
smile. Now, however, they were exceedingly respectful, and it
was by them that Menka’s gift of welcome, two reindeer roasts,
was carried forward with a certain stateliness, As a return

B74 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

present we gave him a woollen shirt and some parcels of tobacco.
Menka said that he should travel im a few days to Markova, a
place inhabited by Russians on the river Anadyr, in the neigh-
bourhood of the oid Anadyrsk. Although I had not yet given
up hope of getting free before winter, I wished to endeavour
to utilize this opportunity of sending home accounts of the
Vega’s position, the state of matters on board, &c. An open
letter was therefore written in Russian, and addressed to his
Excellency the Governor-General at Irkutsk, with the request
that he would communicate its contents to his Majesty, King
Oscar. This was placed, along with several private sealed
letters between a couple of pieces of board, and handed over to
Menka with a request to give them to the Russian authorities
at Markova. At first it appeared as if Menka understood the
letter as some sort of further credentials for himself. For when
he landed he assembled, in the presence of some of us, a circle
of Chukches round himself, placed himself with dignity in their
midst, opened out the paper, but so that he had it upside down,
and read from it long sentences m Chukch to an attentive
audience, astonished at his learning. Next forenoon we had
another visit of the great and learned chief. New presents
were exchanged, and he was entertained after our best ability.
Finally he danced to the chamber-organ, both alone and
together with some of his hosts, to the great entertainment of
the Europeans and Asiatics present.

As the state of the ice was still unaltered, I did not neglect
the opportunity that now offered of making acquaintance with
the interior of the country. With pleasure, accordingly, I gave
Lieutenants Nordquist and Hovgaard permission to pay a visit
to Menka’s encampment. They started on the morning of the
8th October. -Lieut. Nordquist has given me the following
account of their excursion :—

“On Tuesday, the 8th October, at 10 o’clock a.m. Lieut.
Hovgaard::and I travelled from Pitlekaj in dog-sledges into
the interior in a S.8.E. direction. Hovgaard and I had
each a Chukch as driver. Menka had with him a servant, who
almost all the time ran before as guide. My comrade’s sledge,
which was heaviest, was drawn by ten dogs, mine by eight, and
Menka’s, which was the smallest and im which he sat alone, by
five. In general the Chukches appear to reckon four or five
dogs sufficient for a sledge with one person.

“The tundra, with marshes and streams scattered over it,
was during the first part of our way only gently undulating,
but the farther we went into the interior of the country the
more uneven it became, and when, at 8 o’clock next morning,
we reached the goal of our journey—Menka’s brother’s camp—

X.] AT MENKA’S ENCAMPMENT. 375

we found ourselves in a valley, surrounded by hills, some of
which rose about 300 metres above their bases. A portion of
the vegetable covermg the tundra could still be distinguished
through the thin layer of snow. The most common plants on
the drier places were Aira alpina and Poa alpina ; on the more
low-lying places there grew Glyceria, Pedicularis, and Leduin
palustre ; everywhere we found Petasites Jrigida and a species
of Salix. The latter grew especially on the slopes in great
masses, which covered spots having an area of twenty to thirty
square metres. At some places this bush rose to a height of
about a metre above the ground. The prevailing rock appeared
to be granite. The bottoms of the valleys were formed of post-
Tertiary formations, which most frequently consisted of sand and
rolled stones, as, for imstance, was the case in the great valley
in which Menka’s brother’s camp was pitched.

“When, on the morning of the 9th, we came to the camp
there met us some of the principal Chukches. They saluted
Menka in the Russian way, by kissing him first on both cheeks

CHURCH DOG-SLEDGE,.

and then on the mouth. The Chukches, however, appear to
be very averse to this ceremony, and scarcely ever touched
each other with the mouth. Us they saluted in the common
way, by stretching out the hand and bowing themselves. We
then went into Menka’s brother's tent, im front. of which the
whole inhabitants of the encampment were speedily assembled
to look at us. The camp consisted of eighteen tents, pitched
on both sides of a river which ran through the valley. The
tents were inhabited. by reindeer-Chukches, who carry on traffic
between the Russians and a tribe living on the other side of
Behring’s Straits, whom they call Yekargaules. Between the
tents we saw a great number of sledges, both empty and loaded.
Some of these were light and low sledges for driving in, with
runners bent upwards and backwards, others were heavier pack-
sledges, made of stronger wood, with the runners not bent back.
Some of the hight sledges were provided with tilts of splints
covered with reindeer skins; others were completely covered,
having an entrance only in front.

376 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

“The knives, axes, boring tools, &c., which I saw were of
iron and steel, and had evidently been obtained from Americans
or Russians. The household articles in Menka’s brother’s tent
consisted of some copper coffee-pots, which were used for
boiling water, a german-silver beaker with an English in-
scription, two teacups with saucers, flat wooden trays, and barrels.
The dress of the reindeer-Chukches is similar to that of the
coast-Chukches, only with this difference, that the former use
reindeer-skins exclusively, while the latter employ seal-skin in
addition. Some, on our arrival, put on blouses of variegated
cloth, probably of Russian manufacture. Among ornaments
may be mentioned glass-beads, strung on sinews, which were worn
in the ears or on the neck, chiefly by the women. These were
tattooed in the same way as those of the coast-Chukches. I saw
here, however, an old woman, who, besides the common tattooing
of the face, was tattooed on the shoulders, and another, who,
on the outside of the hands, had two parallel lines running
along the hand and an oblique line connecting them. The
men were not tattooed. Two of them carried crosses, with
Slavonic inscriptions, at the neck, others carried in the same
way forked pieces of wood. Whether these latter are to be
considered as their gods or as amulets I know not.

“As we could not obtain here the reindeer that we wished
to purchase on account of the expedition, we betook ourselves
with our dogs on the afternoon of the same day along with
Menka to his son-in-law’s encampment, which we reached at
8 o'clock in the evening. We were received in a very friendly
way, and remained here over night. All the inhabitants of the
tent sleep together in the bedchamber of it, which is not
more than 2 to 2'4 metres long, 1°8 to 2 metres broad, and 1:2
to 15 metres high. Before they le down they take supper.
Men and women wear during the night only a cingulum pudti-
citie, about fifteen centimetres broad, and are otherwise com-
pletely naked. In the morning the housewife rose first and
boiled a little flesh, which. was then served in the bedchamber,
before its inmates had put on their clothes. She cut the meat
in slices in a tray, and distributed them afterwards. In the
morning we saw the Chukches catch and slaughter their reindeer.
Two men go into the herd, and when they have got sight of a
reindeer which they wish to have, they cast, at. a distance of
nine or ten metres, a running noose over the animal’s horns.
It now throws itself backwards and forwards in its attempts to
escape, and drags after it for some moments the man who holds
the noose. The other man in the meantime endeavours to
approach the reindeer, catches the animal by the horns and
throws it to the ground, killing it afterwards by a knife-stab
behind the shoulder. The reindeer is then handed over to the

~~ ee es

Xi WE RETURN TO THE VEGA. 577

women, who, by an incision in the side of the belly, take out
the entrails. The stomach is emptied of its contents, and is
then used to hold the blood. Finally the skin is taken off.

“ About 10 o’clock A.M. we commenced our homeward journey.
At nightfall we sought to have a roof over our head in a
wretched Chukch tent on the shore of Lake Utschunutsch. It
was partly sunk in one of the small mounds which are found
here along the shore, and which are probably the remains of
old Onkilon dwellings. The present inhabitants, two old men
and an old woman, had their habitation arranged in the follow-
ing way :—In the bottom of a cylindrical pit, one metre deep
and three and a half to four and a half metres in diameter, a
vertical pole was erected, against the upper end of which rested
a number of obliquely placed bars, rising from the edge of the
pit, which were covered with skins. The enclosure or bed-
chamber, peculiar to the Chukch tent, was not wanting here.
Otherwise the whole dwelling bore the stamp of poverty and
dirt. The food of the inmates appeared to be fish. Of this,
besides the fish we obtained here, the nets hanging in front of
the tent afforded evidence. Some clothes, an iron pot, two
wooden vessels, and a Shaman drum were the only things I
could discover in the tent.

“Next morning we continued our journey. On the other
side of Lake Utschunutsch we saw two dwellings, which
only consisted of boats turned upside down with some hides
drawn over them. The rest of the way we came past Najtskaj
and through Irgunnuk, where we were received in an exceed-
ingly friendly fashion. By 7 o’clock in the evening of the 11th
October we were again on board the Vega.”

From Lieutenant Hovgaard’s report, which principally relates
to the topography of the region passed through, we make the
following extract relating to the endurance which the Chukches
and their dogs showed :—

“ During our outward journey, which lasted twenty-one and a
half hours, Menka’s attendant, the before-mentioned reindeer
owner, whom we at first took to be Menka’s slave or servant,
ran without interruption before the sledges, and even when we
rested he was actively searching for the track, looking after the
dogs, &c. When we came to the camp he did not sleep, and,
notwithstanding, was as fresh during the following day’s journey.
During the time he got no spirituous liquor, by express order of
Menka, who said that if he did he would not be able to continue
to run. Instead he chewed a surprising quantity of tobacco.
The dogs, during the whole time, were not an instant unyoked ;
in the mornings they lay half snowed up, and slept in front of
the sledges. We never saw the Chukches give them any food :

378 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [GHAP.

the only food they got was the frozen excrements of the fox and
other animals, which they themselves snapped up in passing.
Yet even on the last day no diminution in their power of
draught was observable.”

Nordquist brought with him, among other things, two rein-
deer, bought for,a rouble and a half each. They were still
very serviceable, though badly slaughtered. But the reindeer
we purchased farther on in the winter were so poor that no one
on board could persuade himself to eat them.

On the 18th October, by which time we believed that Menka
would be already at Markova we were again visited by him and
his son-in-law. He said he had no akmimul (fire- water) to keep
holiday with, and now came to us to exchange three slaughtered
reindeer for it. Our miscalculation with respect to the letters,
which we hoped were long ago on their way to their destination,
and my dislike to the mode of payment in question—I offered
him, without success, half-imperials and metal rouble pieces
instead of brandy—made his reception on this occasion less
hearty, and he therefore left us soon. It was not until the
9th February, 1879, that we again got news from Menka by one
of the Chukches, who had attended him the time before. The
Chukch said that in ten days he had traversed the way between
the Vega’s winter haven and Markova, which would run to
about ninety kilometres a day. According to his statement
Menka had travelled with the letters to Yakutsk. The statement
seemed very suspicious, and appeared afterwards to have
been partly fabricated, or perhaps to have been misunderstood
by us. But after our return to the world of newspapers we
found that Menka had actually executed his commission. He,
however, did not reach Anadyrsk until the “"""_. Thence

2ard February*

the packet was sent to Irkutsk, arriving there on the #75",. The
news reached Sweden by telegraph six days after, on the 16th
May, just at a time when concern for the fate of the Vega was
beginning to be very great, and the question of relief expeditions
was seriously entertained.+

In order to relieve the apprehensions of our friends at home,
it was, however, exceedingly important to give them some
accounts of the position of the Vega durmg winter, and I
therefore offered all the purchasing power which the treasures
of guns, powder, ball, food, fine shirts, and even spirits, collected
on board, could exert, in order to induce some natives to convey
Lieutenants Nordquist and Bove to Markova or Nischni
Kolymsk. The negotiations seemed at first to go on very well,

* The King of Sweden has since ordered a gold medal to be given to
Wassili Menka in recognition of the fidelity with which he executed the
commission of carrying our letters to a Russian post station. -

x] NORDQUIST'S VISIT TO PIDLIN. 379

an advance was demanded and given, but when the journey
should have commenced the Chukches always refused to start
on some pretext or other—now it was too cold, now too dark,
now there was no food for the dogs. The negotiations had thus
no other result than to make us acquainted with one of the
few less agreeable sides of the Chukches’ disposition, namely
the complete untrustworthiness of these otherwise excellent
savages, and their peculiar idea of the binding force of an
agreement.

The plans of travel just mentioned, however, led to Lieu-
tenant Nordquist making an excursion with dog-sledges in order
to be even with one of the natives, who had received an advance
for driving him to Markova, but had not kept his promise.
Of this journey Lieutenant Nordquist gives the following
account :—

“On the 5th December, at 7.50 s.m., I started with a dog-
sledge for the village Pidlin, lymg on Kolyutschin Bay. I was
driven by the Chukch Auango from Irgunnuk. He hada small,
light sledge, provided with runners of whalebone, drawn by six
dogs, of which the leader was harnessed before the other five,
which were fastened abreast in front of the sledge, each with its
draught belt. The dogs were weak and ill managed, and there-
fore went so slowly that I cannot estimate their speed at more
than two or three English miles an hour. As the journey both
thither and back lasted eight to nine hours, the distance between
Pitlekaj and Pidlin may be about twenty-five English miles.

“Pidlin and Kolyutschin Island are the only mhabited places
on Kolyutschin Bay. At the former place there are four tents,
pitched on the eastern shore of the bay, the number of the
inhabitants being a little over twenty persons. I was received
in front of the tents by the population of the village and
earried to the tent, which was inhabited by Chepcho, who now
promised to go with me in February to Anadyrsk. My host
had a wife and three children. At night the children were
completely undressed; the adults had short trousers on, the
man of tanned skin, the woman of cloth. In the oppressive
heat, which was kept up by two train-oil lamps burning the
whole night, it was difficult to sleep even in the heavy reindeer-
skin dresses. Yet they covered themselves with reindeer skins.
Besides the heat there was a fearful stench—the Chukches
obeyed the calls of nature within the bedchamber—which I
could not stand without going out twice to get fresh air. When
we got up next morning our hostess served breakfast in a flat
tray, containing first seals’ flesh and fat, with a sort of sour-
krout of fermented willow-leaves, then seals’ liver, and finally
seals’ blood—all frozen.

380 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHaP.

“ Among objects of ethnographical interest I saw, besides the
Shaman drum which was found in every tent, and was not
regarded with the superstitious dread which I have often
observed elsewhere, a bundle of amulets fastened with a small
thong, a wolf's skull, which was also hung up by a thong, the
skin together with the whole cartilaginous portion of a wolf's
nose and a flat stone. The amulets consisted of wooden forks,
four to five centimetres long, of the sort which we often see the
Chukches wear on the breast. My host said that such an
amulet worn round the neck was a powerful means of pre-
venting disease. The wolf’s skull which I had already got, he
took back, because his four- or five-year-old son would need it
in making choice of a wife. What part it played in:this I did
not however ascertain.

“While my driver harnessed the dogs for the journey home,
I had an opportunity of seeing some little girls dance, which
they did in the same way as that in which I had seen girls
dance at Pitlekaj and Yinretlen. Two girls then place them-
selves either right opposite to or alongside of each other. In the
former case they often lay their hands on each other’s shoulders,
bend by turns to either side, sometimes leap with the feet held
together and wheel round, while they sing or rather grunt
the measure.

“The journey home was commenced at eight o’clock in the
morning. In the course of it my driver sang Chukch songs.
These are often only imitations of the cries of animals or
improvisations without any distinct metre or rhythm, and very
little variation in the notes; only twice I thought I could dis-
tinguish a distinct melody. In the afternoon my driver told
me the Chukch names of several stars. At five o’clock in the
afternoon I reached the Vega.”

On the 10th October, the new ice at many places in the neigh-
bourhood of the vessel was still so weak that it was impossible to
walk upon it, and blue water-skies at the horizon indicated, that
there were still considerable stretches of open water in the neigh-
bourhood. But the drift-ice round about us lay so rock-fast, that
I could already take solar altitudes from the deck of the vessel
with a mercurial horizon. In order to ascertain the actual state
of the case with reference to the open water, excursions were
undertaken on the 13th October, in different directions. Dr.
Kjellman could then, from the rocky promontory at Yinretlen,
forty-two metres high, see large open spaces in the sea to the
northward. Dr. Almquist went right out over the ice, following
the track of Chukches, who had gone to catch seals. He
travelled about twenty kilometres over closely packed drift-ice
fields, without reaching open water, and found the newly frozen

x. ] A DEAD MAN ON THE TUNDRA. 381

ice, with which the pieces of drift-ice were bound together, still
everywhere unbroken. The Chukches, who visited the vessel
in dog-sledges on the 28th October, informed us, however, that
the sea a little to the east of us was still completely open.

On the 15th October the hunter Johnsen returned from a
hunting expedition quite terrified. He informed us that during
his wanderings on the tundra, he had found a murdered man and
brought with him, with the idea that, away here in the land of
the Chukches, similar steps ought to be taken as in those lands
which are blessed by a well-ordered judiciary, as species facti,
some implements lying beside the dead man, among which
was a very beautiful lance, on whose blade traces of having been
inlaid in gold could still be discovered. Fortunately he had
come with these things through the Chukch camp unobserved.
From the description which was given me, however, I was able
immediately to come to the conclusion that the question here
was not of any murder, but of a dead man laid out on the
tundra. Irequested Dr. Almquist to visit the place, in order
that he might make a more detailed examination. He con-
firmed my conjecture. As wolves, foxes, and ravens had already
torn the corpse to pieces, the doctor considered that he, too,
might take his share, and therefore brought home with him
from his excursion, an object carefully wrapped up and concealed
among the hunting equipment, namely, the Chukch’s head. It
was immediately sunk to the sea-bottom, where it remained for
a couple of weeks to be skeletonised by the crustacea swarming
there, and it now has its number in the collections brought
home by the Vega. This sacrilege was never detected by the
Chukches, and probably the wolves got the blame of it, as
nearly every spring it was seen that the corpse, which had been
laid out during autumn, lost its head during winter. It was,
perhaps, more difficult to explain the disappearance of the
lance, but of this, too, the maws of the wolves might well bear
the blame.

Our hunters now made hunting excursions in different
directions, but the supply of game was scanty. The openings
in the ice probably swarmed with seals, but they were too dis-
tant, and without a boat it was impossible to carry on any
hunting there. Not a single Polar bear now appeared to be
visible in the neighbourhood, although bears’ skulls are found at
several places on the beach, and this animal appears to play a
great part in the imagination of the natives, to judge of the
many figures of bears among the bone carvings I purchased
from the Chukches. The natives often have a small strip of
bear’s skin on the seat of their sledges, but I have not seen any
whole bear’s skin here ; perhaps the animal is being extermin-
ated on the north coast of Siberia. Our wintering, therefore,

382 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

will not enrich Arctic literature with any new bear stories—
a very sensible difficulty for the writer himself. Wolves, on the
other hand, occur on the tundra in sufficient abundance, even if
one or other of the wolves found in mist and drifting snow,
and saluted with shot, turned out, on a critical determination of
species, to be our own dogs. At least, this was the case with the
“wolf,” that inveigled one of the crew into shooting a ball one
dark night right through the thermometer case, fortunately
without injuring the instruments, and with no other result than
that he had afterwards to bear an endless number of jokes from

CHUKCH BONE-CARVINGS,
(The two largest figures represent bears.)

his comrades on account of his wolf-hunt. Foxes, white, red
and black, also occurred here in great numbers, but they were
at that season difficult to get at, and besides they had perhaps
withdrawn from the coast. Hares, on the other hand, maintained
themselves during the whole winter at Yinretlen, by day partly
out on the ice partly on the cape, by night in the neighbourhood
of the tents. Sweepings and offal from the proceeds of the
chase had there produced a vegetation, which, though concealed
by snow, yielded to the hares in winter a more abundant supply

——— ee ee

x.] FLOCKS OF BIRDS OBSERVED. 383

of food than the barren tundra. It was remarkable that the
hares were allowed to live between the tents and in their neigh-
bourhood without being disturbed by the score of lean and
hungry dogs belonging to the village. When farther mto the
winter for the sake of facilitating the hare-hunting I had a hut
erected for Johnsen the hunter, he chose as the place for it
the immediate neighbourhood of the village, declaring that the
richest hunting-ground in the whole neighbourhood was just
there. The shooters stated that part of the hares became
snow-blind in spring. The hares here are larger than with us,
and have exceedingly delicious flesh.

HARES FROM CHUKCH LAND.

On our arrival most of the birds had already left these
regions, so inhospitable in winter, or were seen high up in the
air in collected flocks, flying towards the south entrance of
Behring’s Straits. Still on the 19th October an endless pro-
cession of birds was seen drawing towards this region, but by
the 3rd November it was noted, as something uncommon, that
a gull settled on the refuse heaps in the neighbourhood of the
vessel. It resembled the ivory gull, but had a black head.
Perhaps it was the rare Larus Sabinii, of which a drawing has
been given above.’ All the birds which passed us came from
the north-west, that is, from the north coast of Siberia, the
New Siberian Islands or Wrangel Land. Only the mountain

1 See p. 93.

384 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP

owl, a species of raven and the ptarmigan wintered in the
region, the last named being occasionally snowed up.

The ptarmigan here is not indeed so plump and good as the
Spitzbergen ptarmigan during winter, but in any case provided
us with an always welcome, if scanty change from the tiresome
preserved meat. When some ptarmigan were shot, they were
therefore willingly saved up by the cook, along with the hares,
for festivals. For in order to break the monotony on board an
opportunity was seldom neglected that offered itself for holding
festivities. Away there on the coast of the Chukch peninsula
there were thus celebrated with great conscientiousness during
the winter of 1878-9, not only our own birthdays but also those
of King Oscar, King Christian and King Humbert, and of the
Emperor Alexander. Every day a newspaper was distributed,
for the day indeed, but for a past year. In addition we numbered
among our diversions constant intercourse with the natives, and
frequent visits to the neighbouring villages, driving in dog-
sledges, a sport which would have been very enjoyable if the
dogs of the natives had not been so exceedingly poor and bad,
and finally industrious reading and zealous studies, for which I
had provided the expedition with an extensive library, intended
both for the scientific men and officers, and for the crew,
numbering with the private stock of books nearly a thousand
volumes.

All this time of course the purely scientific work was not
neglected. In the first rank among these stood the meteoro-
logical and magnetical observations, which from the 1st November
were made on land every hour. However fast the ice lay
around the vessel it was impossible to get on it a sufficiently
stable base for the magnetical variation imstrument. The
magnetical observatory was therefore erected on land of the
finest building material any architect has had at his disposal,
namely, large parallelopipeds of beautiful blue-coloured ice-
blocks. The building was therefore called by the Chukches
Tintinyaranga (the ice-house), a name which was soon adopted
by the Vega men too. As mortar the builder, Palander, used
snow mixed with water, and the whole was covered with a
roof of boards. But as after a time it appeared that the storm
made its way through the joints and that these were gradually
growing larger in consequence of the evaporation of the ice
so that the drifting snow could find an entrance, the whole
house had a sail drawn over it. As supports of the three
variation instruments large blocks of wood were used, whose
lower ends were sunk in pits, which, with great trouble, were
excavated in the frozen ground, and then, when the block
supports were placed, were filled with sand mixed with water.

The ice-house was a spacious observatory, well-fitted for its

eee oe eC

a

x.] " FIRING WITH OIL ABANDONED. 385

- purpose in every respect. It had but one defect, the tempera-

ture was always at an uncomfortably low point. As no iron
could be used in the building, and we had no copper-stove with
us, we could not have any fireplace there. We endeavoured,
indeed, to use a copper fireplace, that had been intended for
sledge journeys, for heating, but only with the result that the
observatory was like to have gone to pieces. We succeeded
little better when we discovered farther on in the winter, while
trimming the hold, a forgotten cask of bear’s oil. We con-
sidered this find a clear indication that instead of a stove fired
with wood we should, according to the custom of the Polar
races, use oil-lamps to mitigate the severe cold which deprived

THE OBSERVATORY AT PITLEKAJ.
(After a drawing by O. Nordquist.)

our stay in Tintinyaranga of part of its pleasure. But this mode
of firmg proved altogether impracticable. The fumes of the
oil smelled worse than those of the charcoal, and the result of
this experiment was none other than that the splendid crystals
of ice, with which the roof and walls of the ice-house were |
gradually clothed, were covered with black soot. Firing with
oil was abandoned, and the oil presented to our friends at
Yinretlen, who just then were complaining loudly that they
had no other fuel than wood.

Besides the nine scientific men and officers of the Vega, the

CG

386 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

engineer Nordstrém and the seaman Lundgren took part in the
magnetical and meteorological observations. Every one had his
watch of six hours, five of which were commonly passed in the
ice-house. To walk from the vessel to the observatory, distant
a kilometre and a half, with the temperature under the freezing
point of mercury, or, what was much worse, during storm, with
the temperature at — 36°, remain in the observatory for five
hours in a temperature of —17°, and then return to the vessel,
commonly against the wind—for it came nearly always from the
north or north-west—was dismal enough. None of us, however,
suffered any harm from it. On the contrary, it struck me as
if this compulsory interruption to our monotonous life on board
and the long-continued stay in the open air had a refreshing
influence both on body and soul.

In the neighbourhood of the ice-house the thermometer case
was erected, and farther on in the winter there were built in the
surrounding snowdrifts, two other observatories, not however
of ice, but of snow, in the Greenland snow-building style. Our
depdt of provisions was also placed in the neighbourhood, and
at a sufficient distance from the magnetical observatory there
was a large wooden chest, in which the Remington guns, which
were carried for safety in excursions from the vessel, and other
iron articles which the observer had with him, were placed before
he entered the observatory.

The building of Tintinyaranga was followed by the Chukches
with great interest. When they saw that we did not imtend
to live there, but that rare, glancing metal instruments were
set up in it, and that a wonderfully abundant flood of light in
comparison with their tent illumination was constantly main-
tained inside with a kind of lhght quite unknown to them
(stearine candles and photogen lamps) a curious uneasiness
began to prevail among them, which we could not quiet with
the language of signs mixed with a Chukch word or two, to
which our communications with the natives were at that time
confined. Even farther on in the year, when an efficient though
word-poor international language had gradually been formed
between us, they made inquiries on this point, yet with consider-
able indifference. All sensible people among them had evidently
already come to the conclusion that it was profitless trouble
to seek a reasonable explanation of all the follies which the
strange foreigners, richly provided with many earthly gifts but
by no means with practical sense, perpetrated. In any case
it was with a certain amazement and awe that they, when they
exceptionally obtained permission, entered one by one through
the doors in order to see the lamps burn and to peep into
the tubes. Many times even a dog-team that had come a long
way stopped for a few moments at the ice-house to satisfy the

x.] LIFE ON BOARD DURING THE WINTER. 387

owner's curiosity, and on two occasions in very bad drifting
weather we were compelled to give shelter to a wanderer who
had gone astray.

When this ice-house was ready and hourly observations began
in it, life on board took the stamp which it afterwards retained
in the course of the winter. In order to give the reader an idea —
of our every-day life, I shall reproduce here the spirited sketch
of a day on the Vega, which Dr. Kjellman gave in one of his
home letters :—

“Tt is about half-past eight in the morning. He whose watch
has expired has returned after five hours’ stay in the ice-house,
where the temperature during the night has been about — 16°.
His account of the weather is good enough. There are only
thirty-two degrees of cold, it is half-clear, and, to be out of the
ordinary, there is no wind. Breakfast is over. Cigars, cigarettes,
and pipes are lighted, and the gunroom personnel go up on deck |
for a little exercise and fresh air, for below it is confined and
close. The eye rests on the desolate, still faintly-lighted land-
scape, which is exactly the same as it was yesterday; a white
plain in all directions, across which a low, likewise white, chain
of hillocks or torosses here and there raises itself, and over which
some ravens, with feeble wing-strokes, fly forward, searching for
something to support hfe with. ‘Metschinko Orpist, ‘ mets-
chinko Okerpist, ‘metschinko Kellman,’ &c., now sounds every-
where on the vessel and from the ice in its neighbourhood.
‘Orpist’ represents Nordquist, ‘Okerpist’ again Stuxberg. It is
the Chukches’ morning salutation to us. To-day the com-
paratively fine weather has drawn out a larger crowd than usual,
thirty to forty human beings, from tender sucking babes to grey
old folks, men as well as women; the latter in the word of
salutation replacing the ¢sch-sound with an exceedingly soft
caressing ¢s-sound. That most of them have come driving is
shown by the equipages standing in the neighbourhood of the
vessel. They consist of small, low, narrow, light sledges, drawn
by four to ten or twelve dogs. The sledges are made of small
pieces of wood and bits of remdeer-horn, held together by seal-
skin straps. As runner-shoes thin plates of the ribs of the
whale are used. The dogs, sharp-nosed, long-backed, and exces-
sively dirty, have laid themselves to rest, curled together in
the snow.

“The salutation is followed almost immediately to-day as
on preceding days by some other words: ‘Ouinga mouri kauka,’
which may be translated thus: ‘I am so hungry; I have no
food; give me a little bread!’ They suffer hunger now, the
poor beings. Seal flesh, their main food, they cannot with the
pest will procure for the time. The only food they can get

cc Z

388 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP KER

consists of fish (two kinds of cod), but this is quite too poor diet
for them, they have fallen off since we first met with them.

“Soon we are all surrounded by our Chukch acquaintances.
The daily market begins. They have various things to offer,
which they know to be of value to us, as weapons, furs, ornaments,
playthings, fish, bones of the whale, alge, vegetables, &c. For
all this only ‘kauka’ is now asked. To-day the supply of
whales’ bones is large, in consequence of our desire, expressed
on previous days, to obtain them. One has come with two
vertebree, one with a rib or some fragments of it, one with
a shoulder-blade. They are not shy in laying heavy loads on
their dogs.

“ After the close of the promenade and the traffic with the
natives, the gunroom personnel have begun their labours. Some
keep in their cabins, others in the gunroom itself. The magnetical
and meteorological observations made the day before are tran-
scribed and subjected to a preliminary working-out, the natural
history collections are examined and looked over, studies and
authorship are prosecuted. The work is now and then inter-
rupted by conversation partly serious, partly jocular. From the
engine-room in the neighbourhood we hear the blows of ham-
mers and the rasping of files. In the ’tweendecks, pretty well
heated, but not very well lighted, some of the crew are employed
at ordinary ship’s work; and in the region of the kitchen the
cook is just in the midst of his preparations for dinner. He
is in good humour as usual, but perhaps grumbles a little at the
‘mosucks’ (a common name on board for the Chukches), who will
not give him any peace by their continual cries for ‘mimil’ (water).

“ The forenoon passes in all quietness and stillness. Immediately
after noon nearly all the gunroom people are again on deck,
promenading backwards and forwards. It is now very lively.
{t is the crew's meal-time. The whole crowd of Chukches are
collected at the descent to their apartment, the lower deck.
One soup basin after the other comes up; they are immediately
emptied of their contents by those who in the crowd and
confusion are fortunate enough to get at them. Bread and
pieces of meat and bits of sugar are distributed assiduously,
and disappear with equal speed. Finally, the cook himself
appears with a large kettle, containing a very large quantity
of meat soup, which the Chukches like starving animals throw
themselves upon, baling into them with spoons, empty pre-
serve tins, and above all with the hands. Notwithstanding
the exceedingly severe cold a woman here and there has un-
covered one arm and half her breast in order not to be embarrassed
by the wide reindeer-skin sleeve in her attempts to get at
the contents of the kettle. The spectacle is by no means a
pleasant one.

hi

i i

i

” DURING THE WINTERING,

AN EVENING IN THE GUNROOM OF THE ‘‘ VEGA

390 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

“ By three o'clock it begins to grow dark, and one after the
other of our guests depart, to return, the most of them, in the
morning. Now it is quiet and still. About six the crew have
finished their labours and dispose of the rest of the day as they
please. Most of them are occupied with reading during the
evening hours. When supper has been served at half-past seven
in the gunroom, he who has the watch in the ice-house from
nine to two next morning prepares for the performance of his
disagreeable duty; the rest of the gunroom personnel are
assembled there, and pass the evening in conversation, play,
light reading, &c. At ten every one retires, and the lamps are
extinguished. In many cabins, however, lights burn till after
midnight.

“Sueh was in general our life on the Vega. One day was very
like another. When the storm howled, the snow drifted, and the
cold became too severe, we kept more below deck; when the
weather was finer we lived more in the open air, often paying
visits to the observatory in the icehouse, and among the Chukches
living in the neighbourhood, or wandering about to come upon,
if possible, some game.”

The snow which fell durmg winter consisted more generally
of small simple snow-crystals or ice-needles, than of the
beautiful snow-flakes whose grand kaleidoscopic forms the
inhabitants of the north so often have an opportunity of
admiring. Already with a gentle wind and with a pretty clear
atmosphere the lower strata of the atmosphere were full of these
regular ice-needles, which refracted the rays of the sun, so as to
produce parhelia and halos. Unfortunately however these were
never so completely developed as the halos which I saw in 1873
during the sledge-journey round North-east Land on Spitzbergen ;
but I believed that even now I could confirm the correctness of
the observation I then made, that the representation which is
generally given of this beautiful phenomenon, in which the halo
is delineated as a collection of regular circles, is not correct,
but that it forms a very involved system of lines, extended
over the whole vault of heaven, for the most part coloured on
the sun-side and uncoloured on the opposite side, of the sort
shown in the accompanying drawings taken from the account of
the Spitzbergen Expedition of 1872-73.

Another very beautiful phenomenon, produced by the refrac-
tion of the solar rays by the ice-needles, which durme winter
were constantly mixed with the atmospheric strata lying
nearest the surface of the earth, was that the mountain
heights to the south of the Vega in a certain light appeared
as if feathered with fire-clouds. In clear sunshine and a high
wind we frequently saw, as it were, a glowing pillar of vapour

X.] OPENINGS IN THE ICE. 391

arise obliquely from the summits of the mountains, giving them
the appearance of volcanos, which throw out enormous columns
of smoke, flame-coloured by the reflection from the glowing
lava streams in the depths of the crater.

A blue water-sky was still visible out to sea, indicating that
open water was to be found there. I therefore sent Johnsen the
hunter over the ice on the 18th December to see how it was.
In three-quarters of an hour’s walking from the vessel he found
an extensive opening, recently covered with thin, blue, newly
frozen ice. A fresh northerly breeze blew at the time, and by it
the drift-ice fields were forced together with such speed, that

REFRACTION-HALO.

Seen on Spitzbergen in May 1873, simultaneously with the Reflection-halo delineated on the
following page.

Johnsen supposed that in a couple of hours the whole lead
would be completely closed.

In such openings in Greenland white whales and other small
whales are often enclosed by hundreds, the natives thus having
an opportunity of making in a few hours a catch which would
be sufficient for their support during the whole winter, indeed
for years, if the idea of saving ever entered into the imagination
of the savage. But here in a region where the pursuit of the
whale is more productive than in any other sea, no such occur-
rence has happened. During the whole of our stay on the coast
of the Chukch country we did not see a single whale. On the

Buz, THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

other hand, masses of whales’ bones were found thrown up on
the beach. At first I did not bestow much attention upon
them, thinking they were the bones of whales that had been
killed during the recent whale-fishing period. I soon found
however that this could not have been the case. For the bones
had evidently been washed out of the sandy dune running along
the beach, which had been deposited at a time when the present
coast lay ten to twenty metres below the surface of the sea,
thus hundreds or thousands of years ago, undoubtedly before the
time when the north coast of Asia was first inhabited by man.
The dune sand is, as recently exposed profiles show, quite free
from other kitchen-midden remains than those which occur

REFLECTION-HALO.

Seen simu'taneously with the Refraction-halo delineated on the preceding page, in the part
of the sky opposite the sun.

upon its surface. The whales’ bones in question were thus
subfossil. Their number was so great, that in the systematic
examination of the beach in the immediate neighbourhood of
the vessel, which I undertook during spring with the assistance
of Dr. Kjellman and half a dozen of the sailors, thirty neck-
bones and innumerable other bones of the whale were found in
a stretch of from four to five kilometres. Of course masses of
bones are still concealed in the sand; and a large number of
lower jaw-bones, ribs, shoulder-blades, and vertebrae had been
used for runner-shoes, tent-frames, spades, picks and other
implements. A portion, after being exposed for several years to

~

xi] CHRISTMAS, 1878. 393

the action of the air, had undergone decay. The bones are there-
fore found in createst number at those places where the sand of
the dune has been recently carried away by the spring floods or
by the furious winds which prevail here, and which easily gain
the ascendency over the dry sand, bound together only by
widely scattered Elymus-stalks. The largest crania belonged to
a species nearly allied to the Balena mysticetus. Crania of a
species of Rachianectes are also found along with some bones of
smaller varieties of the whale. No complete skeleton however
has been found, but we brought home with us so large a quantity
of the loose bones that the collection of whales’ bones alone
would have formed a full cargo for a small vessel. These bones
will be delineated and described by Professor. A. W. MALM in
The Scientific Work of the Vega Expedition. Special attention
was drawn to a skeleton, belonging to the Balana mysticetus, by
its being still partially covered with skin, and by deep red,
almost fresh, flesh adhering to those parts of it which were
frozen fast in the ground. This skeleton lay at a place where
the dune sand had recently been washed away and the coarse

SECTION OF THE BEACH STRATA AT PITLEK4J.

1. Hard frozen coarse sand. 2. The sea. 38. Beach of fine dry sand with masses of bones of the
whale. 4: Coast-lagoon.

underlying sand uncovered, the whale-mummy also I suppose
coming to light at the same time. That the whale in question
had not stranded in the memory of man the Chukches assured
me unanimously. In such a case we have here a proof that
even portions of the flesh of gigantic sea-animals have been
protected ag
parallel to the mammoth-mummies, though from a codsiderbly
more recent period.

Christmas Eve was celebrated in the usual northern fashion.
We had indeed neglected, as in the Expedition of 1872-73, to
take with us any Christmas tree. But instead of it Dr. Kjellman
prevailed on our Chukch friends to bring with dog-sledges
willow-bushes from the valleys lying beyond the mountains to
the south. By means of these a bare driftwood stem was
converted into a luxuriant, branchy tree which, to replace the
verdure, was clothed with variegated strips of paper, and planted
in the ’tweendecks, which after our enclosure in the ice had
been arranged as a working room, and was now set in order for

riaal |
ALUN
CCaci

DAN

il

”

CHRISTMAS EVE ON THE ‘‘VEGA.

CHAP. X1.] HOPE OF RELEASE. 395

the Christmas festivities, and richly and tastefully ornamented
with flags. A large number of small wax-lights, which we had
brought with us for the special purpose, were fixed in the
Christmas tree, together with about two hundred Christmas
boxes purchased or presented to us before our departure. At
six o'clock in the afternoon all the officers and crew assembled
in the ’tweendecks, and the drawing of lots began, now and then
interrupted by a thundering polka round the peculiar Christmas
tree. At supper neither Christmas ale nor ham was wanting.
And later in the evening there made their appearance in the
‘tweendecks five punchbowls, which were emptied with songs
and toasts for King and Fatherland, for the objects of the
Expedition, for its officers and men, for the families at home, for
relatives and friends, and finally for those who decked and
arranged the Christmas tree, who were the sailors C. Lundgren
and O. Hansson, and the firemen O. Ingelsson and C. Carlstrom.

The other festivals were also celebrated in the best way, and
at midnight before New Year’s Day the new year was shot in
with sharp explosive-shell firing from the rifled cannon of the
Vega, and a number of rockets thrown up from the deck.

CHAPTER. XI.

Hope of release at the new year—Bove’s excursion to the open water—
Mild weather and renewed severe cold—Mercury frozen—Popular
Jectures—Brusewitz’s excursion to Najtskaj—Another despatch of letters
home—Tte natives’ accounts of the state of the ice on the coast of
Chukch Land—The Chukches carry on traffic between Arctic America
and Siberia—Excursions in the neighbourhood of winter quarters—The
weather during sprmg—The melting of the snow—The aurora—The
arrival of the migratory birds—The animal world of Chukch Land
—Noah Elisej’s relief expedition—A remarkable fish—The country
clear of snow—Release—The North-East Passage achieved.

THE new year came in with a faint hope of release. For since
the north and north-west winds that had prevailed almost con-
stantly towards the close of December had given place to winds
from the east and south, considerable “clearmgs” were again
formed out at sea, and the Chukches again began to say that
the ice would drift away, so that the vessel would be able
to continue .her voyage; a prediction which they always ended
with a declaration, expressed both by words and gestures, that
they would then bitterly lament, which they would also have
had sufficient reason to do, considerig the very friendly way in
which they were treated by all on board the Vega, both officers
and men.

396 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

On New Year’s Day, in order to see the state of the ice farther
out to sea, Lieut. Bove, accompanied by the hunter Johnsen,
again made an excursion to the open water. Of this he gave
the following account :—

“T left the vessel on the forenoon of Ist January and reached
the open water after four hours’ steady walkmg. The deep
loose snow made walking very fatiguing, and three rows of
torosses also contributed to this, mainly in consequence of the
often snow-covered cracks, which crossed the ice-sheet in their
neighbourhood. One of the torosses was ten metres high. The
size of the blocks of ice, which were here heaped on each other,
showed how powerful the forces were which had caused the
formation of the torosses. These ice ramparts now afford a
much needed protection to the Vega’s winter haven. About
halfway between the open water and the vessel the way was
crossed by cracks running from east to west, and clearly idi-
cating that the opening in the ice would have extended to the
distance of a kilometre from the vessel, if the violent storm in
December had lasted twelve hours longer. The Vega would
thereby have been in great danger. The edge of the ice towards
the open water was evenly cut, as with an immense knife, and
was so strong that one could walk along it as on a rock. Even
from the top of a five-metre-high ice-rampart no boundary of
the open water could be seen to the north-east or north. Partly
from this, partly from the extension of the water-sky in this
direction, I draw the conclusion that the breadth of the open
water was at least thirty-five kilometres. The “clearmg”’ was
bounded on the east by an ice-rampart running north, which at
a distance of nine or ten kilometres appeared to bend to the
east. Possibly farther to the east beyond this ice-rampart there
was another open water basin. The depth at the edge of the
ice was twenty-one metres, the temperature of the water 2° C.
The water ran at a considerable speed right out from the
coast (ze. from S.8.E.). As it ran here nearly in a straight
Ime, the current may have been a tidal one. The open
water swarmed with seals, according: to Johnsen both bearded
and rough. Neither Polar bears, walrusses, nor birds were
seen.”

Lieut. Bove’s report confirmed me in my supposition that the
open water, as towards the end of January 1873 at Mussel Bay,
might possibly extend as far as our anchorage and open for us
the way to Behring’s Straits, in which case we could not refrain
from continuing our voyage, however unpleasant and dangerous
it might be at this season of the year. The Chukches also
declared repeatedly that the open water in January would

X1.] BOVE’S EXCURSION TO THE OPEN WATER. ~~ 397

continue for a considerable time, and in expectation of this got
their simple fishing implements ready. But both they and we
were disappointed in our expectation. The Vega’s ice-fetters
remained undisturbed, and the blue border at the horizon grew
less and again disappeared. This caused so great a want of
food, and above all of train oil, among the natives, that all the
inhabitants of Pitlekaj, the village nearest to us, were compelled
to remove to the eastward, notwithstanding that in order to
mitigate the scarcity a c¢onsiderable quantity of food was served
out daily at the vessel.

It appears, however, as if an actual experience from the pre-
ceding year had been the ground of the Chukches’ weather

I

THE OPEN WATER.

prediction. For on the 6th February a south-east wind began
to blow, and the severe cold at once ceased. The temperature
rose for a few hours to and even above the freezing-point. <A
water-sky was again formed along the horizon of the ice from
north-east to north, and from the heights at the coast there was
seen an extensive opening in the ice-fields, which a little east
of Irgunnuk nearly reached the shore. Some kilometres farther
east even the shore itself was free of ice, and from the hills our
sailors thought they saw a heavy sea in the blue water borde1
which bounded the circle of vision. If this was not an illusion
caused by the unequal heating and oscillatory motion of the
lower stratum of the atmosphere, the open water may have been
of great extent. Perhaps the statement of the natives was

398 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

correct, that it extended as far as Behring’s Straits. But we
could not now place complete reliance on their statements, since
we had rewarded with extra treating some predictions, relating
to ice and weather, that were favourable to us. Even between
the vessel’s anchorage and the land various cracks had been
formed, through which the sea water had forced its way under
the snow, and in which some of us got cold foot or leg baths
during our walks to and from the land.

The Chukches at Irgunnuk were now successful m killing a
Polar bear and seventy seals, of which some were ostentatiously
set up in rows, along with frozen slices of blubber, along the
outer walls of the tents, and others were laid down in the
blubber cellars, which were soon filled to overflowing. At

THE ENCAMPMENT PITLEKSJ ABANDONED EY ITS INHABITANTS ON THE 18TH FEBRUARY, 1879.
(After a drawing by O. Nordquist.)

Yinretlen, the encampment nearer us, the hunters on the other
hand had obtained only eight seals. Gladness and want of care
for the morrow at all events prevailed here also, and our skin-
clad friends availed themselves of the opportunity to exhibit a
self-satisfied disdain of the simple provisions from the Vega.
which the day before they had begged for with gestures so pitiful,
and on which they must, in a day or two, again depend. The
children, who had fallen off during recent weeks, if not in com-
parison with European children, at least with well-fed Chukch
ones, began speedily to regain their former condition, and likewise
the older people. Begging ceased for some days, but the vessel’s

Sogo ae
deck still formed a favourite rendezvous for crowds of men,

}
|

> MILD WEATHER FOLLOWED BY SEVERE COLD. 399

women, and children. Many passed here the greater part of
the day, cheerful and gay in a temperature of —40° C, gossiped,
helped a little, but always only a little, at the work on board,
and soon. The mild weather, the prospect of our getting free,
and of an abundant fishing for the Chukches, however, soon
ceased. The temperature again sank below the freezing-point,
that is of mercury, and the sea froze so far out from the shore
that the Chukches could no longer carry on any fishing. Instéad
we saw them one morning come marching, like prisoners on an
Egyptian or Assyrian monument, in goose-march over the ice
toward the vessel, each with a burden on his shoulder, of whose
true nature, while they were at a distance, we endeavoured in
vain to form a guess. It was pieces of ice, not particularly
large, which they, self-satisfied, cheerful and happy at their new
hit, handed over to the cook to get from him in return some of
the kawka (food) they some days before had despised.

The first time the temperature of the air sank under the
freezing-point of mercury, was in January. It now became
necessary to use instead of the mercury the spirit thermometers,
which in expectation of the severe cold had been long ago hung
up in the thermometer case. When mercury freezes in a
common thermometer, it contracts so much that the column of
mercury suddenly sinks in the tube, or if it is short, goes wholly
into the ball. The position of the column is therefore no
measure of the actual degree of cold when the freezing takes
place. The reading of —89°, or even of —150°, which at a
time when it was not yet known that mercury could at a low
temperature assume the solid form, was made on a mercurial
thermometer in the north of Sweden, and which at the time
occasioned various discussions and doubts as to the trustworthi-
ness of the observer, was certaimly quite correct, and may be
repeated at any time by cooling mercury under its freezing-point
in a thermometer of sufficient length divided into degrees under
0°. The freezing of mercury * takes place from below upwards,

1 And. Hellant, Anmérkningar om en helt ovanlig kild i Torne (Remarks
on a Quite Unusual Cold in Torne), Vet.-akad. Hand]. 1759, p. 314, and
1760, p. 312. In the latter paper Hellant himself shows that the column
of mercury in a strongly cooled thermometer for a few moments sinks
farther when the ball is rapidly heated. This is caused by the expansion
of the glass when it is warmed before the heat has had time to com-
municate itself to the quicksilver in the ball, and therefore of course can
happen only at a temperature above the freezing-point of mercury.

2 That mercury solidifies in co!d was discovered by some academicians
in St. Petersburg on the 25th December, 1759, and caused at the time a
great sensation, because by this discovery various erroneous ideas were
rooted out which the chemists had inherited from the alchemists, and
which were based on the supposed property of mercury of being at the
same time a metal and a fluid.

409 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

the frozen metal as being heavier sinking down in that? portion
which is still fluid. If when it is half frozen the fluid be poured
away from the frozen portion, we obtain groups of crystals,
composed of small octohedrons, grouped together by the edges
of the cube. None of our mercurial thermometers suffered any
damage, nor was there any alteration of the position of the
freezing-point in them from the mercury having frozen in them
and again become fluid.

During the severe cold the ice naturally became thicker and
thicker; and by the continual northerly winds still higher
torosses were heaped up round the vessel, and larger and larger
snow masses were collected between it and the land, and on the
heights along the coast. All hopes or fears of an early release
were again given up, and a perceptible dullness began to make
itself felt after the bustle and festivities of the Christmas
holidays. Instead there was now arranged a series of popular
lectures which were held in the lower deck, and treated of the
history of the North-East Passage, the first circumnavigations of
the globe, the Austrian-Hungarian Expedition, the changes of
the earth’s surface, the origin of man, the importance of the
leaf to the plants, &e. It became both for the officers and
scientific men and the crew a little interruption to the monotony
of the Arctic winter life, and the lecturer could always be certain
of finding his little auditory all present and highly interested.
Some slight attempts at musical evening entertainments were
also made, but these failed for want of musical instruments and
musical gifts among the Vega men. We had among us no
suitable director of theatrical representations after the English-
Arctic pattern, and even if we had had, I fear that the director
would have found it very difficult to gather together the
dramatic talents requisite for his entertainment.

On the 17th February Lieutenant Brusewitz made an
excursion to Najtskaj, of which he gives the following
account :—

“JT and Notti left the vessel in the afternoon, and after two
hours came to Rirajtinop, Notti’s home; where we passed the
night, together with his three younger brothers and an invalid
sister, who all lived m the same tent-chamber. Immediately
after our arrival one of the brothers began to get the dog-harness
and sleigh ready for the following day’s journey, while the rest
of us went into the interior of the tent, where the invalid sister
lay with her clothes off, but wrapt in remdeer skins. She took
charge of two train-oil lamps, over which hung two cooking
vessels, one formerly a preserve tin, and the other a bucket of
tinned iron. One of the brothers came in with a tray, on
which was placed a piece of seal blubber, together with frozen

xh | BRUZEWITZ’S EXCURSION TO NAJTSKAJ. 401

vegetables, principally willow leaves. The blubber was cut into
small square pieces about the size of the thumb, after which
one of the brothers gave the sister a large portion both of the
blubber and vegetables. The food was then served out to
the others. Every piece of blubber was carefully imbedded in
vegetables before it was eaten. When the vegetables were
finished there was still some blubber, which was given to the
dogs that lay in the outer tent. After this the boiled spare-ribs
of a seal were’ partaken of, and finally a sort of soup, probably
made from seal’s blood. The sister had a first and special help-
ing of these dishes. I also got an offer of every dish, and it did
not appear to cause any offence that I did not accept the offer.
After the close of the meal the cooking vessels were set down,

NOTTI AND HIS WIFE AITANGA.
(After photographs by L. Palander.

the “pesks” taken off, and some reindeer skins taken down
from the roof and spread out. The older brothers lighted their
pipes, and the younger lay down to sleep. I was shown to one
of the side places in the tent, evidently Notti’s own. One of the
lamps was extinguished, after which all slept. During the night
the girl complained several times, when one of the brothers
always rose and attended to her. At six in the morning I
wakened the party and reminded them of our journey. All
rose immediately. Dressing proceeded slowly, because much
attention was given to the foot covering. No food was produced,
but all appeared quite pleased when I gave them of my stock,
which consisted of bread and some preserved beef-steaks. Imme-
diately after breakfast four dogs were harnessed to the sleigh, with
10) 10,

402 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

which Notti and I continued our journey to Najtskaj, I riding
and he running alongside the sleigh. At Irgunnuk, a Chukch
village about an English mile er of Rirajtinop, a short
stay was made in order to try to borrow some dogs, but without
success. We continued our journey along the shore, and at
10 o'clock A.M. arrived at Najtskaj, which is ; from fifteen to eigh-
teen kilometres E.S.E. from Irgunnuk. Here we were received
by most of our former neighbours, the inhabitants of Pitlekaj.
Of the thirteen tents of the village the *five western-
most were occupied by the former population of Pitlekaj,
while the eight lying more to the eastward were inhabited by
other Chukches. The Pitlekaj people had not pitched their
common large tents, but such as were of inconsiderable size or
small ones fastened close together. In all the tents here, as at
Rirajtinop and Irgunnuk, there was much blubber laid up; we
saw pieces of seal and whole seals piled up before the tents,
and on the way to Najtskaj we met several sledges loaded with
seals, on their way to Pidlin. At Najtskaj I went out hunting
accompanied by a Chukch. We started eight hares, but did
not succeed in getting within range of them. A red fox was
seen at a great distance but neither ptarmigan nor traces of
them could be discovered. At two in the afternoon I returned
to Irgunnuk and there got another sleigh drawn by ten dogs,
with which I soon reached the vessel.”

On the 20th February three large Chukch sledges laden with
goods and drawn by sixteen to twenty dogs stopped at the Vega.
They said they came from the eastward, and were on
their way to the market in the neighbourhood of Nischni
Kolymsk. I again by way of experiment sent with them home-
letters, for which, as they declined to take money, I gave them as
postage three bottles of rum and abundant entertainment for
men and dogs. In consideration of this payment they bound
themselves faithfully to execute their commission and promised
to return in May. And they kept their word. For on the 8th
and 9th May a large number of sledges heavily laden with rein-
deer skins and drawn by many dogs, passed along the coast from
west to east. Of course all rested at the Vega, the only house
of entertainment on the coast of the Asiatic Polar Sea, consider-
ing it as a matter of indisputable right, that they should in
return for a little talk and gossip obtain food and “ram, Very
eagerly they now informed us that a letter would come with
another dog train that might be expected in a few hours. This
was for us a very great piece of news, the importance of which
none can understand who has never hungered for months for
news from home, from the home-land and the home-world.
Eager to know if we had actually to expect a post from Europe,

XL] A FROZEN DOG. 403

we asked them how large the packet was. “Very large” was
the answer, and the “ram” was of course measured accordingly.
But when at last the letter came it was found to be only an
exceedingly short note from some of the Russian officials at
Kolyma, informing me that our letters had reached him on the
ja Avi and had been immediately sent by express to Yakutsk.
Thence they were sent on by post, reaching Irkutsk on the tu
May, and Sweden on the 2nd August.

During autumn and midwinter the sunshine was not of
course strong and continuous enough to be painful to the eyes,
but in February the light from the snow-clouds and the snow-
drifts began to be troublesome enough. On the 22nd February
accordingly snow-spectacles were distributed to all the men, an
indispensable precaution, as I have before stated, m Arctic
journeys. Many of the Chukches were also attacked with snow-
blindness somewhat later in the season, and were very desirous
of obtaining from us blue-coloured spectacles. Johnsen even
stated that one of the hares he shot was evidently snow-blind.

On the evening of the 22nd February there burst upon us
a storm with drifting snow and a cold of —36°. To be out in
such weather is not good even fora Chukch dog. Of this we
had confirmation the next day, when a Chukch who had lost his
way came on board, carrying a dog, frozen stiff, by the backbone,
like a dead hare. He had with his dog gone astray on the ice
and lain out, without eating anything, in a snow-drift for the
night. The master himself had suffered nothing, he was only
hungry, the dog on the other hand scarcely showed any sign of
life. Both were naturally treated on board the Vega with great
commiseration and kindness. They were taken to the ’tween-
decks, where neither Chukches nor Chukch dogs were otherwise
admitted ; for the man an abundant meal was served of what we
believed he would relish best, and he was then allowed, pro-
bably for the first time in his life, to sleep if not under a sooty,
at least under a wooden roof. The dog was for hours carefully
subjected to massage, with the result that he came to life again,
which struck us, and, as it appeared, not least the Chukch
himself, as something wonderful.

In the beginning of March there passed us a large number of
sledges laden with reindeer skins, and drawn by eight to ten
dogs each. Every sledge had a driver, and as usual the women
took no part in the journey. These trains were on a commercial
journey from Irkaipij to Paik at Behring’s Straits. We found
among the foremen many of our acquaintances from the preced-
ing autumn, and I need not say that this gave occasion to a
special entertainment, for the people, bread, a little spirits, soup,
some sugar, and tobacco, for the dogs, pemmican. Conversation
during such visits became very lively, and went on with little

DD 2

404 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

hindrance, since two of us were now somewhat at home in the
Chukch language. For if I except two men, Menka and Noah
Elisej, who could talk exceedingly defective Russian, there was
not one of the reindeer or dog-foremen travelling past who could
speak any European language, and notwithstanding this they
all carry on an active commerce with the Russians. But the
Chukch is proud enough to require that his own language shall
prevail in all international commerce in the north-east of Asia,
and his neighbours find their advantage in this.

During the course of the winter, Lieutenant Nordquist
collected from the Chukch foremen coming from a distance who
travelled past, information regarding the state of the ice between
Chaun Bay and Behring’s Straits at different seasons of the year.
Considering the immense importance of the question, even in
a purely practical point of view, I shall quote verbatim the
statements which he thus collected.

Statements regarding the state of the we on the coast between
Cape Yakan and Behring’s Straits by Chukches living there.

“1, A Chukch from Yekanenmitschikan, near Cape Yakan,
said that it is usual for open water to be there the whole
summer.

«9 A Chukch from Kinmankau, which lesa little to the west
of Cape Yakan, said the same.

«3, A Chukch from Yakan stated that the sea there becomes
free of ice in the end of May or beginning of June. On the
other hand it is never open in winter.

“4, Tatan from Yakan stated that the sea there is open from
the end of May or beginning of June to the latter part of
September or beginning of October, when the ice begins to drift
towards the land.

“5, Rikkion from Vankarema said that the sea there is covered
with ice in winter, but open in summer.

“6, A reindeer Chukch, Rotschitlen, who lives about twelve
English miles from the Vega’s winter quarters, said that
Kolyutschin Bay, by the Chukches called Pidlin, is clear of ice
the whole summer.

“7 Urtridlin from Kolyutschin said that neither at that island
nor in Kolyutschin Bay is there any ice in summer.

“8, Ranau, from Yinretlen, also said that Kolyutschin Bay is
always open in summer.

“9, Ettiu, from the village Nettej, between Irgunnuk and
Behring’s Straits, stated that the sea at Nettej] 1s open in
summer, independently of the wind, in winter only when the
wind is southerly.

“10. Vankatte, from Nettej, stated that the sea there becomes
open during the month “Tautinyadlin,” that is, the latter part

'
"recente Acer

X1.] TRAFFIC IN SPIRITS 405

of May and the-beginning of June, and is again covered with
ice during the month “ Kutscshkau,” or October and November,

“11. Kepljeplja, from the village Irgunnuk, lying five English
miles east of the Vega’s winter quarters at Pitlekaj, said that
the sea off these villages is open all summer, except when
northerly winds prevail. On the other hand, he said that
farther westward, as at Irkaipij, ice could nearly always be seen
from the land.

“12. Kapatljin, from Kingetschkun, a village between Irgun-
nuk and Behring’s Straits, stated on the 11th January that
there was then open water at that village. He said further,
that Behring’s Straits in winter are filled with ice when the
wind is southerly, but open when the wind is northerly. The
same day a Chukch from Nettej-Kengitschkau, also between
Irgunnuk and Behring’s Straits, stated that ice then lay off
that village. He confirmed Kapatljin’s statement regarding
Behring’s Straits.

“13. Kvano, from Uedlje, near Behring’s Straits, said that
there the sea is always open from May to the end of
September.”

On the 13th March we came to know that spirits, too, form
an article of commerce here. For, without having obtained any
liquor from the Vega, the Chukches at Yinretlen had the means
of indulging in a general fuddle, and that even their friendly
disposition gives way under the effects of the intoxication we
had a manifest proof, when the day after they came on board
with blue and yellow eyes, not a little seedy and ashamed. In
autumn a tall and stout Chukch giantess, who then paid us
a visit, informed us that her husband had been murdered in a
drunken quarrel.

Sledges of. considerable size, drawn by reindeer, began after
the middle of March to pass the Vega in pretty large numbers.
They were laden with reindeer skins and goods bought at the
Russian market-places, and intended for barter at Behring’s
Straits.

The reindeer Chukches are better clothed, and appear to be
in better circumstances and more independent than the coast
Chukches, or, as they ought to be called in correspondence with
the former name, the dog Chukches. As every one owns a
reindeer herd, all must follow the nomad mode of living, but at
the same time they carry on traffic between the savages in the
northernmost parts of America and the Russian fur-dealers in
Siberia, and many pass their whole lives in commercial journeys.
The principal market is held annually during the month of
March, on an island in the river Little Anjui, 250 versts from
Nischni Kolymsk. The barter goes on in accordance with a

406 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

normal price-list, mutually agreed upon by the Russian mer-
chants and the oldest of the Chukches. The market is in-
augurated on the part of the Russians by a mass performed by
the priest,t who always accompanies the Russian crown com-
missioner, and in the Chukches’ camp with buffoonery by one of
the Chukch Shamans. At such a market there is said to be
considerable confusion, to judge by the spirited description which
Wrangel gives of it (feise, i. p. 269). We ought, however, to
remember that this description refers to the customs that pre-
vailed sixty years ago. Now, perhaps, there is a great change
there. In the commercial relations in north-eastern Asia in the
beginning of this century, we have probably a faithful picture
of the commerce of the Beormas in former days in north-
eastern Europe. Even the goods were probably of the same
sort at both places, perhaps, also, the stand-points of the culture
of the two races.

Besides the traders, a large number of Chukches from Kol-
yutschin Island and other villages to the west, travelled past us
with empty sledges, to which were harnessed only a few dogs.
They returned in the course of a few days with their sledges
fully laden with fish which they said they had caught in a
lagoon situated to the eastward. They also sometimes sold a
delicious variety of the Coregonus taken in a lake im the
interior some distance from the coast.

Further on in winter a number of excursions were under-
taken in different directions, partly to find out these fishing
places, partly to get an idea of the mode of life of the reindeer
Chukches. I, however, never ventured to give permission for
any long absence from the vessel, because I was quite convinced
that the sea round the Vega after a few days’ constant southerly
storm might become open under circumstances which would not

1 During the market the Russian priest endeavours to make proselytes ;
he succeeds, too, by distributing tobacco to induce one or two to subject
themselves to the ceremony of baptism. No true conversion, however,
can scarcely come in question on account of the difference of language.
As an example of how this goes on, the following story of Wrangel’s may
be quoted. At the market a young Chukch had been prevailed upon, by a
gift of some pounds of tobacco, to allow himself to be baptised. The cere-
mony began in presence of a number of spectators. ‘The new convert
stood quiet and pretty decent in his place till he should step down into the
baptismal font, a large wooden tub filled with ice-cold water. In this,
according to the baptismal ritual, he ought to dip three times. But to
this he would consent on no condition. He shook his head constantly, and
brought forward a large number of reasons against it, which none under-
stood, After long exhortations by the interpreter, in which promises of
tobacco probably again played the principal part, he finally gave way and
sprang courageously down into the ice-cold water, but immediately jumped
up again trembling with cold, crying, “ My tobacco! my tobacco!” All
attempts to induce him to renew the bath were fruitless, the ceremony
was incomplete, and the Chukch only half baptised,

> 40 PALANDER’S AND KJELLMAN’S EXCURSION. 407

permit us to remain in the open road where we lay moored ;
my comrades’ desire to penetrate far into the Chukch peninsula
could not on that account be satisfied. But short as these
excursions were, they give us, however, much information re-
garding our winter life, and our contact with the little-known
tribe, on the coast of whose homeland the Vega had been beset,
and on that account, perhaps, there may be reasons for making
extracts from-some of the reports given in to me with reference

to these journeys.

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MAP OF THE REGION ROUND THE “‘ VEGA’S” WINTER QUARTERS,
Mainly after G. Bove.
1. Rotschitlen’s tent. 2. Yettugin’s tent.

Palander’s and Kjellman’s excursion to a reindeer Chukch camp
south-west of Pitlekaj, is sketched by the former thus :—

“On the 17th March, 1879, accompanied by Dr. Kjellman, I
went out with a sledge and five men, among them a native as
cuide, to the reindeer Chukch camp in the neighbourhood of
Taffelberg (Table Mountain), with a view to obtain fresh rein-
deer flesh. The expedition was fitted out with two days’ pro-
visions, tent, mattrasses, and pesks. The reindeer Chukches were
met with eleven English miles from the vessel. On an eminence
here were found two tents, of which one at the time was unin-
habited. The other was occupied by the Chukch, Rotschitlen,

408 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

his young wife, and another young pair, the latter, if I under-
stood them right, being on a visit, and properly having their
home at Irgunnuk.

“ Round the tent, which was considerably smaller than those we
daily saw at the coast, lay a number of sledges piled up on one
another. These sledges differed from the common dog-sledges
in being considerably larger and wider in the gauge. The
runners were clumsy and axed from large wood.

“ Our proposal to purchase reindeer was immediately declined,
although we offered in exchange bread, tobacco, rum, and even
guns. Asa reason for this refusal they stated that the remdeer
at this season of the year are too lean to be slaughtered. We
saw about fifty remdeer pasturing on an eminence at a distance
of several thousand feet from us.

“Tn the afternoon Kjellman and I were invited into the tent,
where we passed an hour in their sleepmg chamber. On our
entrance the lamp, which was filled with seal oil, was lighted ;
a sort of moss (sphagnum) was used as a wick. Our hostess
endeavoured to make our stay in the tent as agreeable
as possible; she rolled together remdeer skins for pillows
and made ready for us a place where, stretched at full length,
we might enjoy much needed repose. In the outer tent
the other women prepared supper, which consisted of boiled
seal’s-flesh. We received a friendly invitation to share their
meal, but as we had no taste for seal’s-flesh, we declined their
offer under the pretext that we had just had dinner. They
took their meal lying with the body in the inner tent, but with
the head under the reindeer-skin curtain in the outer, where the
food was. After the meal was partaken of, their heads were
drawn within the curtain; our host divested himself of all his
clothes, the trousers excepted, which were allowed to remain.
Our hostess let her pesk fall down from her shoulders, so that the
whole upper part of the body thus became bare. The reindeer-
skin boots were taken off, and turned outside in; they were
carefully dried and hung up in the roof over the lamp to dry
during the night. We treated the women to some sugar, which,
in consequence of their want of acquaintance with it, they at
first examined with a certain caution, finding afterwards that it
tasted exceeding well. After the meal our host appeared to
become sleepy ; we accordingly said good-night, and went to our
own tent, where it was quite otherwise than warm, the
temperature during the night being about—11° C.

“ After for the most part a sleepless night, we rose at half-past
six next morning. When we came out of the tent we saw all
the reindeer advancing in a compact troop. At the head was an
old reindeer with large horns, that went forward to his master,
who had in the meantime gone to meet the herd, and bade him

P.3 A REINDEER CHUKCH ENCAMPMENT. -409

good-morning by gently rubbing his nose against his master's
hands. While this was going on the other reindeer stood
drawn up in well-ordered ranks, like the crew in divisions on
board a man-of-war. The owner then went forward and saluted
every reindeer ; they were allowed to stroke his hands with their
noses. He on his part took every reindeer by the horn and
examined it in the most careful way. After the inspection was
ended at a sign given by the master the whole herd wheeled
round and returned in closed ranks, with the old reindeer in
front, to the previous day’s pasture.

“ The whole scene made a very favourable impression on us ; it
was not the grim hard savage showing in a coarse and barbarous
way his superiority over the animals, but the good master
treating his inferiors kindly, and having a friendly word for
each of them. Here good relations prevailed between man and
the animals. Rotschitlen himself was a stately young man,
with an intelligent appearance and a supple handsome figure.
His dress, of exceedingly good cut and of uncommonly fine
reindeer skin, sat close to his well-grown frame, and gave us an
opportunity of seeing his graceful and noble bearing, which was
most observable when he was in motion.

“On our repeating our proposal to purchase reindeer we again
met with a refusal, on which we struck our tent and commenced
our return journey. We came on board on the 18th March
at 3 oclock P.M., after a march of four hours and_three-
quarters.

“The way to the reindeer camp rose and fell gently. The
snow was hard and even, so that we could go forward rapidly.
On the way out four foxes and some ravens were seen. At one
place we found a large number of lemming passages excavated
through the snow in an oblique direction towards the ground.
Most of them were scratched up by foxes. The descent to an
untouched lemming nest was cylindrical, and four and a half
centimetres in diameter. During both days we had snow, and a
thick and foggy atmosphere, so that we could see only a short
distance before us ; we did not however go astray, thanks to the
good eyes and strongly developed sense of locality of our guide,
the native.”

Brusewitz’s and Nordquists Excursion to Nutschoitjin.

Of this Nordquist gives the following account :—

“On the 20th March, at 9 o’clock a.m. Lieut. Brusewitz,
boatswain Lustig, the Norwegian hunters Johnsen and Sievertsen,
the Chukch Notti, and I, left the Vega. Our equipment, which
consisted of provisions for eight days, cooking apparatus, canvas
tent, india-rubber mattrasses, reindeer-skin pesks, &c., we drew

410 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. (CHAP.

after us on a sledge. At 2.45 P.M. we came to Nutschoitjin
(Coregonus Lake). During our journey we passed a river
which flows between Nutschoitjin and the mountain Hotsch-
keanranga about ten English miles south of this lake and falls
into the great lagoon south of Pitlekaj. Farther ito the
interior this river, according to Notti’s statement, flows through
several lakes: he also informed us that in summer it abounds
very much in salmon (lienne). Some sandy hills formed the
watershed between it and Nutschoitjin. The only animal we
saw during our outward journey was a fox. On the other hand
we found traces of hares, ptarmigan, and a couple of lemmings.
After we had found a suitable camping-place, we began to build
a snow-house, which, however, we could not get ready till
next day.

“On the 21st Brusewitz and I went out to view our nearest
surroundings. On a hill north of the lake, where Potentilla,
Carex, and Poa stuck up through the snow-covering, we saw a
large number of traces of the fox, the hare, and the ptarmigan.
We employed the 22nd in cutting some holes in the ice, which
was about one and a half metres thick, and in setting a net. For
I wished to ascertain what species of Coregonus it is which,
according to Notti’s statement, occurs in abundance in this lake.
At the place where the net was set there was something more
than a metre of water under the ice. The bottom consisted of
mud. When we cut a hole in the middle of the lake in order to
get deeper water we found that the ice, one and a half metres
thick there, reached to the bottom.

“Next morning we got in the net eleven Coregoni, of which
the largest were about thirty-five centimetres long. Although
the weather was grey and we could not see very far, we went the
same day to the hill Hotschkeanranga ; partly to determine its
height, and partly from its summit, which is visible for a great
distance, to get a view of the appearance of the surrounding
country. After crossing the river which flows between Nuts-
choitjin and Hotchkeanranga, we began to ascend the long slope
on whose summit Hotchkanrakenljeut (Hotchkeanranga’s head)
rises with steep sides above the surrounding country. Over the
slope were scattered loose blocks of stone of an eruptive rock.
The crest of “the head” was also closely covered with loose
stones. On the north or wind side these stones were covered
with a hard beaten crust of snow nearly two feet thick; on the
south side most of them were bare. According to Brusewitz the
southern slopes are still steeper than the northern. South of
the hill he saw a large valley—probably a lake—through which
flows the river which we crossed.

“ As on the outward journey I went with Notti, he advised me
to offer a little food and brandy to the Spirit of the Lake,

X1.] EXCURSION TO NAJTSKAJ AND TJAPKA. 411

itjaken kamak, in order to get good net fishing. On my inquiring
what appearance he had, Notti replied “ winga lilapen,” “I have
never seen him.” Besides this spirit there are in his view others
also in streams, in the earth, and in some mountains. The
Chukches also sacrifice to the sun and moon. On the other
hand they do not appear, as some other races, to pay any sort of
worship to their departed friends. When I gave him a biscuit
and bade him offer it, he made with the heel a little depression
in the snow on Nutschoitjin, crumbled a little bit of the biscuit
in pieces, and threw the crumbs into the hollow. The rest of
the biscuit he gave back, declaring that kamak did not require
more, and that we should now have more fish in the net than
the first time. Notti said also that the Chukches are wont to
sacrifice something for every catch. Thus have probably arisen
all the collections of bear and seal skulls and reindeer horns,
which we often saw on the Chukch coast, especially on
eminences.

“ After we had read off the aneroid, we speedily made our way
to the snow-house, because during the interval a violent storm of
drifting snow had arisen, so that we could not see more than
half a score of paces before us. On the slope below “ the head”
we had already on our way thither seen traces of two wild
reindeer. Notti said that there are a few of them on the hill
the whole winter. The greater number, however, draw farther
southward, and approach the coast only durmg summer. Johnsen
had wounded an owl (Strix nyctea), which however made its
escape. On the 24th snow fell and drifted during the whole
day, so that we could not go out to shoot. On the 25th we
came on board again.

“ According to the aneroid observations made during the
journey, the highest summit we visited had a height of 197
metres.”

Lieutenant Bove’s Account of an Excursion to Najtskajy and
Tyapka.

“On the 19th April, at 4 o'clock AM., the hunter Johnsen
and I started on a short excursion eastward along the coast,
with a view to pay a visit to the much frequented fishing
station Najtskaj, where our old friends from Pitlekaj had settled.
We had a little sledge which we ourselves drew, and which was
laden with provisions for three days and some meteorological
and hydrographical instruments.

“ At 6 o'clock AM. we reached Rirajtinop, where we found
Notti, a serviceable, talented, and agreeable youth. The village
Rirajtinop, which formerly consisted of a great many tents, now
had only one tent, Notti’s, and it was poor enough. It gave the
inhabitants only a slight protection against wind and cold.

412 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHA?.

Among household articles im the tent I noticed a face-mask of
wood, less shapeless than those which according to Whymper’s
drawings are found among the natives along the river Youcon,
in the territory of Alaska, and according to Dr. Simpson among
the West-Eskimo. I learned afterwards that this mask came
from Pik, Behring’s Straits, whither it was probably carried
from the opposite American shore.

“The village Irgunnuk lies from three to four hundred metres
from Rirajtinop, and consists of five tents, one of which two days
before had been removed from Yinretlen. The tents are as
usual placed on earthy eminences, and have if possible the en
trance a couple of paces from some steep escarpment, manifestly
in order that the door-opening may not be too much obstructed
with snow. I reckon the population of Irgunnuk at forty persons.

“ Off this village the ice is broken up even close to the land
into ¢orosses, five to six metres high, which form a chain which

THE SLEEPING CHAMBER IN A CHUKCH TENT.

(After a drawing by the seaman Hansson.)

closely follows the shore for a distance of five to six hundred
metres to the eastward. The coast from Irgunnuk to Najtskaj
runs in astraight line, is low, and only now and then interrupted
by small earthy eminences, which all bear traces of old dwellings.
Each of these heights has its special name: first Uelkantinop,
then Tiumgatti, and lastly Tiungo, two miles west of Najtskaj.
In the neighbourhood of Uelkantinop we were overtaken by a
reindeer-Chukch, who accompanied us to Najtskaj im order
there to purchase fish and seal-blubber. At noon we reached
Najtskaj, where our arrival had been announced by a native,
who, with his dog-team, had driven past us on the way. Ac-
cordingly on our entrance we were surrounded by the youth of
the village, who deafened us with their unceasing cries for
bread (kauka), tobacco, ram, &c. After some moments the
begging urchins were joined both by women and full-grown men.

x1. ] CHUKCH LAMPS. 413

We entered a tent, which belonged to a friend or perhaps
relation of Notti. There we were very well received. In the
same tent the reindeer-Chukch also lodged who had given us his
company on the way. He went into the sleeping chamber, threw
himself down there, took part in the family’s evening meal, all
almost without uttering a word to the hostess, and the next morn-
ing he started without having saluted the host. Hospitality is here
of a peculiar kind. It may perhaps be expressed thus : Yo-day I
eat and sleep in your tent, to-morrow you eat and sleep in mine ;
and accordingly, as far as I saw, all, both rich and poor, both those
who travelled with large sledges, and those who walked on foot,
were received in the same way. All are sure to find a corner in
the tent-chamber.

“The tent-chamber, or yaranga, as this part of the tent is
called by the natives, takes up fully a third-part of the whole
tent, and is at the same time work-room, dining-room, and
sleeping chamber. Its form is that of a paralleloptped; and a

CHUICH LAMPS.
a. Wooden cup to place under the lamp. 0. Lamp of burned clay.
One-fifth of the natural size.

moderately large sleeping chamber has a height of 1°80 metre,
a length of 3°50, and a breadth of 2°20 metres. The walls.are
formed of reindeer skin with the hair inwards, which are
supported by a framework of posts and cross-bars. The floor
consists of a layer of grass undermost, on which a walrus skin is
spread. The grass and the skin do not form a very soft bed,
yet one on which even a tired European wanderer may find
rest. The interior of the sleeping-chamber is lighted and
warmed by lamps, whose number varies according to the size of
the room. A moderately large chamber has three lamps, the
largest right opposite the entrance, the two others on the cross
walls. The lamps are often made of a sort of stone, which is
called by the natives wkulscht. They have the form of a large
ladle. The fuel consists of train-oil, and moss is used for the
wick. These lamps besides require constant attention, because
half-an-hour’s neglect is sufficient to make them smoke or go

414 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

out. The flame is at one corner of the lamp, whose moss wick
is trimmed with a piece of wood of the shape shown in the
drawing. The lamp rests on a foot, and it in its turn in a basin,
In this way every drop of oil that may be possibly spilled is
collected. If there is anything that this people ought to save, it
is certainly oil, for this signifies to them both light and heat.
In the roof of the bedchamber some bars are tixed over the
lamps on which clothes and shoes are hung to dry. The lamps
are kept alight the whole day; during night they are com-
monly extinguished, as otherwise they would require continual
attention. Some clothes and fishing implements, two or three
reindeer skins to rest upon—these are the whole furniture of a
Chukch tent.

“ Every tent is besides provided with some drums (ydrar).
These are made of a wooden ring, about seventy centimetres in
diameter, on which is stretched a skin of seal or walrus gut.
The drum is beaten with a light stick of whalebone. The
sound thus produced is melancholy, and is so in a yet higher

y _ = y Z

Le 7 )

\
\Y

SECTION OF A CHUKCH LAMP,
(After a drawing by G. Bove.)

aa. The oil. b. The wick. c. The foot. d, The basin under it.
e. Stick for trimming the wick.

degree when it is accompanied by the natives’ monotonous,
commonly rhythmical songs, which appear to me to have a strong
resemblance to those we hear in Japan and China. A still
greater resemblance I thought I observed in the dances of these
peoples. Nottiis a splendid ydérar-player. After some pressing
he played several of their songs with a feeling for which I had
not given him credit. The auditors were numerous, and by their
smiles and merry eyes one could see that they were transported
by the sounds which Notti knew how to call from the drum.
Notti was also listened to in deep silence, with an admiration
like that with which in a large room we listen to a distinguished
pianist. I saw im the tent no other musical instrument than
that just mentioned.

“The day we arrived at Najtskaj] we employed in viewing the
neighbourhood of the village. We accordingly ascended a hill
about thirty metres high to the south of the village in order
to get a clear idea of the region. From the summit of the

X1.] LAGOON FISHING. 415

e

hill we had a view of the two lagoons west and east of Najtskaj.
The western appeared, with the exception of some earthy
heights, to embrace the whole stretch of coast between
Najtskaj, the hill at Yinretlen, and the mountains which are
visible in the south from the Observatory. The lagoon east
of Najtskaj is separated from the sea by a high rampart of sand,
and extends about thirty kilometres into the interior, to the foot
of the chain of hills which runs along there. To the eastward
the lagoon extends along the coast to the neighbourhood of
Serdze Kamen. This cape was clearly seen and, according to an
estimate which I do not think was far from the truth, was
situated at a distance of from twenty-five to twenty-six kilo-
metres from Najtskaj. It sinks terracewise towards the sea,
and its sides are covered with stone
pillars, like those we saw in the neigh-
bourhood of Cape Great Baranoff.
Serdze Kamen to the south is con-
nected with mountain heights which
are the higher the farther they are
from the sea. Some of these have a
conical form, others are table-shaped,
reminding us of the Ambas of Abys-
sinia. Ten or twelve miles into the
interior they appear to reach a height
of six hundred to nine hundred metres.

“The fishing in the eastern lagoon
takes place mainly in the neighbour-
hood of Najtskaj, at a distance of
about five kilometres from the village.
Hooks are exclusively used, and no
nets or other fishing implements. In
a few minutes I saw twenty cod THUS SEUSS DEE
(urokadlin) caught, and about as many —-O¢-tighth the natural size.
small fish, called by the natives nuwkio-
nukio. For the fishing the natives make a hole in the ice,
a decimetre in diameter. Round the hole they build, as
a protection against wind and drifting snow, a snow wall
eighty centimetres high, forming a circle with an inner
diameter of a metre and a half. The fish-hooks are of iron
and are not barbed. The line is about five metres long,
and is fixed to a rod nearly a metre in length. At the end of
the angling line hangs a weight of bone, and beside it the hook.
It is generally the women who fish, yet there are generally two
or three men about to open the holes, build the walls, and keep
the fishing-places clear. All the holes with their shelter-walls
lie in an arc, about a kilometre in length, whose convex side is
turned to the east. The ice in the lagoon was 17 metre thick,

416 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. . [CHAP

the water 3:2 metres deep, and the thickness of snow on the
ice 0'3 metre.

“The day after our arrival at Najtskaj we visited the village
Tjapka, which lies at a distance of six kilometres. This village
contains thirteen tents, some of which are more roomy and
better built than any Chukch tent I have previously seen.
We lodged in a tent which belonged to Erere, a friendly man
with a face that was always cheerful. His sleeping-chamber
was so large that it could hold more than one family. We
found the inmates there completely naked, Erere’s wife,
Kedlanga, not excepted. Kedlanga was well formed, her
bosom full, her stomach somewhat projecting, the thighs poor,
the legs slender, the feet small. The men appeared to have

THE COAST BETWEEN PADLJONNA AND ENJURMI.
To the west [dlidlja Island, in the background the village Tjapka, to the right the great lagoon.
(After a drawing by O. Nordquist.)

a greater disposition to stoutness than the women. Some of the
children had disproportionately large stomachs. Both men and
women wore copper rings on the legs, the wrists, and the upper
arms. On festivals they decorate themselves with iron rings,
with which some reminiscence appears to be connected, to judge
by the fact that they will not part with them.

“ Erere’s family was very numerous, according to the prevailing
state of matters here. He had five children, whose names,
according to their age, were, Hatanga, Etughi, Vedlat, Uai, and
Umonga. In all the tents which I visited I have inquired
the number of children. Only two or three wives had more
than three; the average may be estimated at two.

“The children are from their tenderest years set apart for

XL] LIFE IN A REINDEER CHUKCH TENT. 417

each other; thus Etughi, Erere’s second son, who was little
more than eight, was set apart for Keipteka, a girl of six or
seven. Etughi and Keipteka slept under the same roof, though
apart. “When they grow bigger,” said Erere to me, “their
sleeping-places will be put alongside each other.” At what
age this takes place I have not ascertained, but I suppose that
it is very early, as is common with all Oriental races.

“Right opposite Tjapka lies a small island, by the natives
ealled Idlidlja, which is about 800 metres in circumference. Its
shores rise perpendicularly on all sides except that which is
opposite Tjapka, in which direction it sinks with a steep slope.
On the north end of it we found three or four whales’ bones
and some pieces of driftwood, but nothing to indicate that
there had been any Onkilon dwellings there. The island
swarmed with hares, which the inhabitants of Tjapka hunt with
the bow. For this hunting they are accustomed to build
circular walls of snow, pierced with loopholes, through which
they shoot the unsuspecting animals.

“ Regarding life in the tent I have still the following notes:
The most troublesome work is given to the older women. They
rise early to light and attend to
the lamps, yoke the dogs, and go
fishing. The young women, on
the other hand, sleep far into
the day. The housewives return
at noon; their work is then BRACELET OF COPPER.
finished, if we do not consider as Half the natural size.
work the constant motion of the
tongue in talk and gossip. The younger people have it
assigned to them to sew clothes, arrange the fishing-lines and
nets, prepare skins, &c. Sewing-thread is made from the back
sinews of the reindeer, which they procure by barter from the
reindeer-Chukches, giving for them fish and seal-blubber.

“One cannot, without having seen it, form any idea of the
large quantity of food they can consume. One evening I saw
eight persons, including one child, eat about 30 lbs. of food.
The bill of fare was: 1, raw fish; 2, soup; 3, boiled fish;
4, seal-blubber ; 5, seal-flesh. The raw fish commonly consists
of frozen cod. The soup is made partly of vegetables, partly of
seal-blood; I saw both kinds. Vegetable soup was prepared by
boiling equal quantities of water and vegetables, till the mixture
formed a thick pap. The blood soup is cooked by boiling the
blood together with water, fish, and fat. They are very fond of
this soup. The seal-blubber they eat by stuffing into the mouth
the piece which has been served to them, and then cutting a
suitable mouthful with the knife, which they bring close to the
lips. In the same way they do with the flesh.

E E

418 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

“ With the exception of the old women’s gossip the greatest
quietness prevails in the sleepimg-chamber. It 1s not uncom-
mon for men to visit each other. Thus the first night we spent
at Najtskaj the tent where we lodged was full of people, but
without the least disturbance arising. If one had anything to
say he talked in quite a low tone, as if he were shy. He was
listened to attentively, without any interruption, First when he
had finished another began.

“ Affection between spouses and parents and children is particu-
larly strong. I have seen fathers kiss and caress their children
before they went to rest, and what I found most remarkable was

THE NORTH END OF IDLIDLJA ISLAND.
(After a drawing by O. Nordquist.)

that the children never abused this tender treatment. What-
ever one gave them, it was their first thought to divide it with
their parents. In this respect and in many others they were
far in advance of a large number of European children.”

Licutenant Bove’s Report on an Excursion along with Dr.
Almquist to the Interior of the Chukch Peninsula, from the
13th to the 17th June, 1879.

“We started from the vessel on the morning of the 15th June
with a view to penetrate as far as possible mto the interior of
the Chukch peninsula. For the journey we had hired, for a

XI.] THE INTERIOR OF THE CHUKCH PENINSULA. 419

liberal payment, two sledges drawn by dogs from Rotschitlen, a
Chukch at Irgunnuk. The dogs and sledges surpassed our
expectation. In fourteen hours we traversed a distance of
nearly forty minutes, including bends, which corresponds to a
speed of three, perhaps four, English miles an hour, if we deduct
the rests which were caused by the objects of the journey—
scientific researches. This speed strikes me as not inconsider-
able, if we consider the weight which the dogs must draw, and
the badness and unevenness of the way. For the ground was
undulating, like a sea agitated by a storm. But pleased as we
were with our sledges and dogs, we were as dissatisfied with
Rotschitlen, a famt-hearted youth, without activity or experience.
With another driver we might have been able in a few days to
penetrate as far as the bottom of Kolyutschin Bay, which differs
greatly in its form from that which Russian, English, and
German maps give to it. It is not improbable that it 1s almost
connected by lakes, lagoons, and rivers with St. Lawrence Bay or
Metschigme Bay, whose inner parts are not yet investigated.

“ After we left the lagoons at Pitlekaj and Yinretlen, the coast
began gradually to rise by escarpments, each about five metres
in height. The plains between the escarpments are full of
lagoons or marshes. Such a terrain continued until, about five
hours’ way from the vessel, we came to a height of twenty-seven
metres. From this poimt the terrace-formations cease, and the
terrain then consists of a large number of ranges of heights,
intersected by rivulets, which during the snow-melting season
must be very much flooded. Seven or eight hours’ way from
the vessel we met with such a rivulet, which farther to the
S.S.E. unites with another which runs between two rocky
escarpments twenty metres high. On one of these we pitched
our tent, in order to draw and examine some hills which were
already divested of the winter dress they had worn for nine long
months. On the top of one of the hills we found marks of two
recently-struck tents, which probably belonged to a reindeer
Chukch, who had now settled halfway between Pitlekaj and
Table Mount upon a chain of heights which appears to separate
the Irgunnuk lagoon from the rocky eastern shore of Kolyutschin
Bay. At our resting place we found a large number of reindeer
horns and a heap of broken bones.

“ After resuming our journey we came in a short time to the
foot of Table Mount, whose height I reckoned at 180 metres.
It slopes gently to the west and south (about 10°), but more
steeply to the east and north (about 15°). The animal world
there showed great activity. In less than an hour we saw more
than a dozen foxes that ran up and down the hills and circled
round us, as if they ran with a line. Fortunately for them they
kept at a respectful distance from our doctor’s sure gun,

EE 2

420 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

“On the other side of Table Mount the ground sinks regularly
towards Kolyutschin Bay. Here for a while we sought in vain
for Yettugin’s tent, in which we intended to pass thet night, and
which had been fixed upon as the starting-point of future
excursions, till at last remdeer traces and afterwards the sight of
some of these friendly animals brought us to the right way, so
that about 9 o’clock P.M. we got sight of the longed-for dwelling
in the middle of a snow-desert. At the word yaranga (tent)
the dogs pointed their ears, uttered a bark of joy, and ran at full
speed towards the goal. We arrived at 10.30 pt. In the tent
we were hospitably received by its mistress, who immediately
made the necessary preparations for our obtaimmg food and
rest. Yettugin himself was not at home, but he soon returned
with a sledge drawn by reindeer. These animals had scarcely
been unharnessed when they ran back to the herd, which
according to Yettugin’s statement was six kilometres east of
the tent.

“T have never seen a family so afflicted with ailments as
Yettugin’s. The sexagenarian father united in himself almost
all the bodily ailments which could fall to the lot of a mortal.
He was blind, leprous (?), and had no use of the left hand, the
right side of the face, and probably of the legs. His body was
nearly everywhere covered with the scars of old sores from four
to five centimetres in diameter. As Dr. Almquist and I were
compelled to pass the night im the same confined sleeping-
chamber with him, it was therefore not to be wondered at that
we drew ourselves as much as possible into our corner. The
sleeping-chamber or inner tent of a reindeer-Chukch is besides
much more habitable than that of a coast-Chukch; the air, if
not exactly pure, may at least be breathed, and the thick layer
of reindeer skins which covers the tent floor may well compare
in softness with our beds on board. Yettugin, his wife
Tengaech, and his brother Keuto, slept out of doors in order
to give us more room and not to disturb us when rising.
Keuto had inherited no small portion of his father’s calamity.
He was deaf, half idiotic, and on his body there were already
traces of such spots as on the old man’s. Keuto was however an
obliging youth, who durimg our stay in the tent did all that he
could to be of use to us, and constantly wandered about to get
birds and plants forus. He was a skilful archer; I saw him at a
distance of twenty or twenty-five paces kill a small bird with a
blunt arrow, and when I placed myself as a target he hit me right
in the middle of the breast at a distance of perhaps thirty metres.

“The 14th was employed by me in astronomical and
geodetical observations, and by Dr. Almquist in excursions in
the neighbourhood of Yettugin’s tent in order to investigate the
fauna and flora of the neighbourhood. About 10 o’clock P.M.

M.] KOLYUTSCHIN BAY. 421

he returned, quite exhausted after eight hours’ walking in deep
water-drenched snow under a perceptible solar heat. The
results of the excursion were in all respects exceedingly good,
not only in consequence of a number of finds in natural history,
but also through the discovery that the shore of Kolyutschin
Bay runs three-quarters of a mile south-west of Yettugin’s tent,
which was situated in 66° 42’ 4” North Lat., and 186° 24’ 0”
Long., east from Greenwich. Dr. Almquist had walked four or five
miles along the eastern shore of the bay, which at most places is
perpendicular with a height of fifteen metres. In consequence
of this discovery we determined to continue our hydrographical
observations as far as the bottom of the bay, which, according to
Yettugin’s account, was two days’ march from the tent. But we
could not carry out our plan in consequence of our guide’s
laziness, for he declared that on no conditions would he
accompany us farther. Neither entreaties nor threats availed
to disturb this his resolution. J endeavoured myself to drive the
sledges, but the dogs would not move out of the spot, though,
following Rotschitlen’s system, I thrashed them very soundly.

“The place where Yettugin’s tent was pitched offered us a
view of an extensive snow-plain, which was enclosed on all sides
by high hifls. In the north and north-east Table Mount and
the Tenen hill keep off the north winds, and to the south the
encampment is protected by a long and high mountain chain
from the winds coming from that quarter. I calculated the
height of some of the mountains at from 1200 to 1500 metres,
and their azure-blue colour furrowed by dark lines appears to
me to indicate the presence of ice on the slopes. One of the
summits of this mountain chain was easily recognisable. It was
a truncated cone, perhaps 1500 metres high. Kolyutschin Bay
lies between these mountains and Yettugin’s tent. Its western
shore also appears to rise perpendicularly from the sea, and it is
higher than the eastern. The bay, which appears to be much
larger than it is represented on the maps, was covered with level
ice ; only here and there a piece of ice covered with snow was
seen sticking up.

“ As we were forced to desist from visiting the interior of Koly-
utschin Bay, we determined to go to the ground where Yettugin’s
reindeer pastured. We therefore left the tent on the evening
of the 15th and travelled E.N.E. The warmth, which had now
commenced, began to make travelling over snow fields difficult ;
the dogs sank to the stomach, and not unfrequently we had to
alight in order to help the poor animals to climb the hills we were
obliged to ascend. Scarcely however had they come to the
reindeer tracks before even the most exhausted of them rushed
along at the top of their speed, which might be pleasant
enough uphill, but when they were coming down it was very

422 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

dangerous, because the slope nearly always ends with a steep
escarpment. We came once, without observing it, to the edge of
such a precipice, and if we had not succeeded in time in slackening
our speed a nice confused mass of men, dogs, and sledges would
have tumbled over it. In order to excite their draught animals
the Chukches avail themselves of their dogs’ inclination to run
after the reindeer, and during their journeys they endeavour to
spur them on yet more by now and then imitating the reindeer’s
cry. After two or three hours travelling we fell in with the
first reindeer, and then by degrees with more and more, until
finally about 11 o'clock P.M. we came to a numerous herd,
tended by Yettugin. I applied to him, asking him to barter a
reindeer in good condition for a gun which I had brought along
with me. After various evasions Yettugin at length promised
to give us next day the reindeer for the gun. He would not
however himself, or with his own knife, kill the remdeer; on
which account I requested Dr. Almquist to give it the coup
de grdce.

“In consequenee of the soft state of the snow we were obliged
to defer the commencement of our return journey to the evening
of the 16th. We now travelled over the chain of hills which
unites Table Mount with Tenen, and descended their northern
steep ‘slope towards an extensive plain, studded for the most
part with bogs and marshes. The 17th came in with mist and
considerable warmth. 'The mist limited the circle of vision to a
distance of some few metres, and the high temperature m a
short time destroyed the crust which had been formed in the
course of the preceding night on the surface of the snow, and
melted the layers of snow which still covered the northern slopes
of these two hills. The southern slopes on the other hand were
almost quite bare, and the valleys began to be filled with water.
Four or five days as warm as these and I believe there scarcely
would be any snow remaining round Kolyutschin Bay. The
illusions caused by the white fog illuminated by the sunlight were
very astonishing. Every small spot of ground appeared as an
extensive snow-free field, every tuft of grass as a bush, and a fox
in our immediate neighbourhood was for a moment taken fora
gigantic bear. Besides, during such a fog the action of the sunlight
on the eyes was exceedingly painful even in the case of those who
carried preservers. During the return Rotschitlen lost his way in
consequence of the numerous different tracks. Fortunately I
had observed how we travelled, and could with the help of
the compass pilot our two small craft to a good haven, On the
17th of June at 1.30 P.M. we were again mm good condition on
board the Vega.”

In the society on board the prospects of an alteration in the

eg THE WEATHER DURING MAY AND JUNE. 423

constant north winds, the perpetual snow-storms and the un-
ceasing cold, and the hope of a speedy release from the fetters of
the ice, were naturally constantly recurring topics of conversa-
tion. During this time many lively word-battles were fought
between the weather prophets in the gunroom, and many bets
made in jest between the optimists and pessimists. The former
won a great victory, when at noon on the 8th February the
temperature rose to + 01 C., but with the exception of this
success fortune always went against. them. The north wind, the
drifting snow and the cold, would never cease. A blue water-
sky indeed was often visible at the horizon to the north and
north-east, but the “clearing” first reached our vessel a couple
of hours before we left our winter haven for ever, and up to the
15th June the thickness of the ice was almost undiminished (14
metre). The sun rose higher and higher, but without forming
any crust upon the snow, although upon the black hull of the
Vega, perhaps with the help of the heat in the interior, it had
by the 14th March melted so much snow that small icicles were
formed at the gunwale. It was one of the many deceptive
prognostications of sprmg which were hailed with delight.
However, immediately after severe cold recommenced and
continued during the whole of the month of April, during
which the temperature of the air never rose above — 46, the
mean temperature being — 18°9.

May began with a temperature of —20°1. On the 3rd the
thermometer showed —26°8, and in the “flower-month” we
had only for a few hours mild weather with an air temperature
+1°8. Even the beginning of June was very cold; on the 3rd
we had —14°3, with a mean temperature for the twenty-four
hours of —9°4, Still on the 13th the thermometer at midnight
showed — 8-0, but the same day at noon witha gentle southerly
wind a sudden change took place, and after that date it was
only exceptionally that the thermometer in the open air sank
below the freezing-point. The melting and evaporation of snow
now began, and went on so rapidly that the land in the end of
the month was almost free of snow.

Under what circumstances this took place is shown by the
following abstract of the observations of temperature at Pitlekaj
from the 13th June to the 18th July, 1879 :—

Max. Min. Mean. Max Min. Mean.
June 13 + 3°6° — 8:0° — 1:95° =June 22 + 3°0° + 1°5° 4 2°28°
14426 +02 41-47 23441 +18 + 3:00
1654+31 +17 +28 944468 +09 + 3:18
165+ 16 —06 +090 254+44 + 0-4 + 2°30
17+30 +02 + 1.22 26-38 £06 41:77
128424 — 06 + 1:93 97 +14 LO7 + 1:02
19+36 +14 42-43 2421 +02 40-92
20-435 +17 + 2:50 29409 —10 — 012
21426 +15 + 2:07 30 + 1:0 —-1:8 —:027

424 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [owar.

Max Min. Mean, Max. Min. Mean.

July 1 + 0°8° — 0°6° + 0°07° July 10 + 1:4° + 0°5° + 0:90°
9+11.— 10 +040 11 +14 +06 + 1:00
3450 +10 + 2-98 124+9:0 +05 +473
4438 +14 + 2°68 13465 +37 +503
§+52 +20 + 3°60 14+ 54 +18 + 3°63
6433 410 + 2-28 +16 +06 +113
7+50 +14 + 2°68 1464+30 +06 + 1°52

8+ 86 +06 + 4:82 17 +115 + 3°38 + 7:80
9418 +04 + 0:97 18 +92 +62 + 7°52

The figures in the maximum column, it will be seen, are by
no means very high. That the enormous covering of snow,
which the north winds had heaped on the beach, could disap-
pear so rapidly notwithstanding this low temperature probably
depends on this, that a large portion of the heat which the solar
rays bring with ‘them acts directly i in melting the snow without
sun- warmed air being used as an intermediate agent or heat-
carrier, partly also on the circumstance that the winds pre-
vailing in spring come from the sea to the southward, and before
they reach the north coast pass over considerable mountain
heights in the interior of the country. They have therefore the
nature of fohn winds, that is to say, the whole mass of air, which
the wind carries with it, is heated, and its relative humidity is
slight, because a large portion of the water which it originally
contained has been condensed in passing over the mountain
heights. Accordingly when the dry fohn winds prevail, a con-
siderable evaporation of the snow takes place. The slight
content of watery vapour in the atmosphere diminishes its
power of absorbing the solar heat, and instead increases that
portion of it which is found remaining when the sun’s rays
penetrate to the snowdrifts, and there conduce, not to raise the
temperature, but to convert the snow into water.!

1 In Lapland, too, the melting of the snow in spring is brought about in
no inconsiderable degree by similar -causes, i.e. by dry warm winds
which come from the fells. On this point the governor of Norbotten lan,
H. A. Widmark, has sent me the following interesting letter :—

‘¢ However warm easterly and southerly winds may be in the parts of
Swedish Lapland lying next the Kélen mountains, they are not able in any
noteworthy degree to melt the masses of snow which fall in those regions
during the winter months. On the other hand there comes every year, if
we may rely on the statements of the Lapps, in the end of April or begin-
ning of May, from the west (i.e. from the fells), a wind so strong and at the
same time so warm, that in quite a short time—six to ten hours—it breaks
up the snow-masses, makes them shrink together, forces the mountain sides
from their snow covering, and changes the snow which lies on the ice of the
great fell lakes to water. I have myself been out on the fells making measure-
ments on two occasions when this wind came. On one occasion I was on
the Great Lule water in the neighbourhood of the so-called Great Lake Fall.
The night had been cold but the day became warm. Up to 1 o'clock
P.M. it was calm, but immediately after the warm westerly wind began
to blow, and by 6 o’clock p.m. all the snow on the ice was changed to

x1.}] THE AURORA AT THE VEGA’S WINTER QUARTERS, 425

The aurora is, as is well-known, a phenomenon at the same
time cosmic and terrestrial, which on the one hand is confined
within the atmosphere of our globe and stands in close con-
nection with terrestrial magnetism, and on the other side is
dependent on certain changes in the envelope of the sun, the
nature of which is as yet little known, and which are indicated
by the formation of spots on the sun; the distinguished Dutch
physicist, VON BAUMHAUER, has even placed the occurrence of
the aurora in connection with cosmic substances which fall in
the form of dust from the interstellar spaces to the surface of
the earth. This splendid natural phenomenon besides plays,
‘though unjustifiably, a great rdéle in imaginative sketches of
winter life in the high north, and it is in the popular idea so
connected with the ice and snow of the Polar lands, that most
of the readers of sketches of Arctic travel would certainly con-
sider it an indefensible omission if the author did not give an
account of the aurora as seen from his winter station. The
scientific man indeed knows that this neglect has, in most cases,
been occasioned by the great infrequency of the strongly lumi-
nous aurora just in the Franklin archipelago on the north coast
of America, where most of the Arctic winterings of this century
have taken place ; but scarcely any journey of exploration has at
all events been undertaken to the uninhabited regions of the
high north, which has not in its working plan included the
collection of new contributions towards clearing up the true
nature of the aurora and its position in the heavens. But the
scientific results have seldom corresponded to the expectations
which had been entertained. Of purely Arctic expeditions, so
far as I know, only two, the Austrian-Hungarian to Franz Josef
Land (1872-74) and the Swedish to Mussel Bay (1872-73), have
returned with full and instructive lists of auroras.1. Ross, PARRY,
Kane, McCuintock, Hayes, NArgs, and others, have on the
other hand only had opportunities of registering single auroras ;
the phenomenon in the case of their winterings has not formed
any distinctive trait of the Polar winter night. It was the less
to be expected that the Vega expedition would form an excep-
tion in this respect, as its voyage happened during one of the
water, in which we went wading to the knees, The Lapps in general
await these warm westerly winds hefore they go to the fells in
spring. Until these winds begin there is no pasture there for their rein-
deer herds.”

1 I do not include La Recherché’s wintering in 1838-39 at Bosekop, in the
northernmost part of Norway, as it took place in a region which is all the
year round inhabited by hundreds of Europeans. During this expedition
very splendid auroras were seen, and the studies of them by Lorvin,
Bravais, LILLIEHOOK, and SinsEsTROM, are among the most important
contributions to a knowledge of the aurora we possess, while we have
to thank the draughtsmen of the expedition for exceedingly faithful and
masterly representations of the phenomenon.

| " :

THE COMMON AURORA-ARC AT THE ‘‘ VEGA’S’’ WINTER QUARTERS,

DOUBLE AURORA-ARCS SEEN 20TH MARCH, 1879, AT 9.30 P.M.

ELLIPTIC AURORA SEEN 21ST MARCH, 1879, AT 2.1

= ener : ‘ = > eet I = ato =

4+~ <2 : ; pis
“N.57°W.Rv. - = SS IQS 7s ta Oa = NwWORv.

ELLIPTIO AURORA SEEN 21ST MARCH, 1879, AT 3 A.M.

428 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHaP.

years of which we knew beforehand that it would be a mini-
mum aurora year. It was just this circumstance, however,
which permitted me to study, in a region admirably suited for
the purpose, a portion of this natural phenomenon under un-
commonly favourable circumstances. For the luminous arcs,
which even in Scandinavia generally form starting-points for the
radiant auroras, have here exhibited themselves undimmed by
the more splendid forms of the aurora. I have thus, undisturbed
by subsidiary phenomena, been able to devote myself to the
collection of contributions towards the ascertaining of the posi-
tion of these luminous ares, and I believe that I have in this
way come to some very remarkable conclusions, which have been
developed in detail in a separate paper printed in The Scien-
tific Work of the Vega Expedition (Part I. p. 400). Here
space permits me only to make the following statement.

The appearance of the aurora at Behring’s Straits in 1878-79
is shown in the accompanying woodcuts. We never saw here
the magnificent bands or draperies of rays which we are so
accustomed to in Scandinavia, but only halo-like luminous arcs,
which hour after hour, day after day, were unaltered in position.
When the sky was not clouded over and the faint«light of the
aurora was not dimmed by the rays of the sun or the full moon,
these arcs commonly began to show themselves between eight
and nine o'clock P.M., and were then seen without interruption
during midwinter till six, and farther on in the year to three
o'clock in the morning. It follows from this that the aurora
even during a minimum year is a permanent natural
phenomenon. The nearly unalterable position of the arcs has
further rendered possible a number of measurements of its
height, extent, and position from which I believe I may draw the
following inferences: that our globe even durmg a minimum
aurora year is adorned with an almost constant, single, double, or
multiple luminous crown, whose inner edge is situated at a height
of about 200 kilometres or 0°03 radius of the earth above its
surface, whose centre, “the aurora-pole,” lies somewhat under the
earth’s surface, a little north of the magnetic-pole, and which,
with a diameter of 2,000 kilometres or 0°3 radius of the earth,
extends in a plane perpendicular to the radius of the earth, which
touches the centre of the circle.

I have named this luminous crown the aurora glory on account
of its form and its resemblance to the crown of rays round the
head of a saint. It stands in the same relation to the ray and
drapery auroras of Scandinavia as the trade and monsoon winds
in the south to the irregular winds and storms of the north. The
light of the crown itself is never distributed into rays, but re-
sembles the light which passes through obscured glass. When
the aurora is stronger, the extent of the light-crown is altered :

pa THE ARRIVAL OF MIGRATORY BIRDS. 429

double or multiple arcs are seen, generally lymg in about the
same plane and with a common centre, and rays are cast between
the different arcs. Arcs are seldom seen which lie irregularly to
or cross each other.

The area in which the common arc is visible is bounded by
two circles drawn upon the earth’s surface, with the aurora-pole
for a centre and radu of 8° and 28° measured on the circumference
of the globe. It touches only to a limited extent countries
inhabited by races of European origin (the northernmost part of
Scandinavia, Iceland, Danish Greenland), and even in the middle
of this:area there is a belt passing over middle Greenland, South
Spitzbergen, and Franz Josef Land, where the common are forms
only a faint, very widely extended, luminous veil in the zenith,
which perhaps is only perceptible by the winter darkness being
there considerably diminished. This belt divides the regions
where these luminous arcs are seen principally to the south from
those in which they mainly appear on the northern horizon. In
the area next the aurora-pole only the smaller, in middle
Scandinavia only the larger, more irregularly formed luminous
crowns are seen. But in the latter region, as in southern
British America, aurora storms and ray and drapery auroras are
instead common, and these appear to lie nearer the surface of the
earth than the are aurora. Most of the Polar expeditions have
wintered so near the aurora-pole that the common aurora arc
there lay under or quite near the horizon, and as the ray aurora
appears to occur seldom within this circle, the reason is easily
explained why the winter night was so seldom illuminated by
the aurora at the winter quarters of these expeditions, and why
the description of this phenomenon plays so small a part in their
sketches of travel. .

Long before the ground became bare and mild weather
commenced, migratory birds began to arrive: first the snow-
bunting on the 23rd April, then large flocks of geese, eiders, long-
tailed ducks, gulls, and several kinds of waders and song-birds.
First among the latter was the little elegant Sylvia Hwers-
manni, which in the middle of June settled in great flocks
on the only dark spot which was yet to be seen in the quarter
—the black deck of the Vega. All were evidently much
exhausted, and the first the poor things did was to look out
convenient sleeping places, of which there is abundance in the
rigging of a vessel when small birds are concerned. I need
scarcely add that our new guests, the forerunners of spring, were
disturbed on board as little as possible.

We now began industriously to collect material for a know-
ledge of the avi- and mammal-fauna of the region. The
collections, when this is being written, are not yet worked out,

430 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

and I can therefore only make the following statement on
this point : ; :

From the acquaintance I had made during my own preceding
journeys and the study of others’, with the bird-world of the high
north, I had got the erroneous idea that about the same species of
birds are to be met with everywhere in the Polar lands of Europe,
Asia, and America. Experience gained during the expedition of
the Vega shows that this is by no means the case, but that the
north-eastern promontory of Asia, the Chukch peninsula, forms
in this respect a complete exception. Birds eccur here in much
fewer numbers, but with a very much greater variety of types
than on Novaya Zemlya, Spitzbergen, and Greenland ; in con-
sequence of which the bird-world
on the Chukch peninsula has
in its entirety a character dif-
fermg wholly from that of the
Atlantic Polar lands. We indeed
meet here with types closely
allied to the glaucous gull (Larus
glaucus, Briinn.), the ivory gull
(L. eburneus, Gimel.), the kittiwake
(L. tridactylus, L.), the long-tailed
duck (Harelda glacialis, L.), the
king duck (Somateria spectabilis,
L.) the phalarope (Phalarcpus
fulicarius, | Bonap.), the purple
sandpiper (Z7inga maritima,
Briinn,), &c., of Spitzbergen and
Novaya Zemlya; but along with
these are found here many peculiar
species, for instance the American
elder (Somateria V.-nigrum, Gray),
SONG-BIRDS IN THE RIGGING OF THE ‘‘ VEGA.’” a swanlike goose, wholly white

June 1879, with black wing pomts (Anser
hyperboreus, Pall.), a greyish-brown

goose with bushy yellowish-white feather-covermg onthe head
(Anser pictus, Pall.), a species of Fuligula, elegantly coloured on
the head in velvet-black, white, and green, (Fuligula Stelleri, Pall.),
the beautifully marked, scarce Larus Rossii, Richards, of which Dr.
Almquist on the 1st July, 1879, shot a specimen from the vessel,
a little brown sandpiper with a spoonlike widened bill-point
(Lurynorhynchus pygmeus, L.), and various song-birds not found in
Sweden, &e. Besides, a number of the Scandinavian types living
here also, according to Lieutenant Nordquist, are distinguished
by less considerable differences in colour-marking and size. The

! The common eider (S, mollissima, L.) is absent here, or at least exceed-
ingly rare.

ed

XI.] THE SPOON-BILLED SANDPIPER. 431

singular spoon-billed sandpiper was at one time in spring so common
that it was twice served at the gunroom table, for which after
our return home we had to endure severe reproaches from animal
collectors. This bird is found only m some few museums. It
was first described by LINN&ZuS in Musewm Adolphi Frideriz,
Tomi secundi prodromus, Holmize- 1764, and then by C. P.
THUNBERG in the Zvransactions of the Swedish Academy of
Sciences for 1816 (p. 194), where it is stated that the homeland
of this bird is tropical America. It has since been caught a few
times in south-eastern Asia. Probably, like Sylvia Hwersmanni,
it passes the winter in the Philippine group of islands, but im
summer visits the high north. Like several other birds which
appeared in spring with the first bare spots it disappeared in
July. Perhaps it retired to the interior to breed in the bush, or,

Eurynorhynchus pygmeus, L.

At the side the bird’s bill seen from above, of the natural size.

which is more probable, went farther north to the islands or
continents not yet discovered by Europeans, which in all pro-
bability connect Wrangel ‘Land with the Franklin Archipelago.

The higher animal forms which, along with the Polar traveller,
dare to brave the cold and darkness of the Arctic night, exert
on him a peculiar attraction. Regarding these, Lieutenant
Nordquist has given me the following notes :—

“The mammal most common in winter on the north coast of
the Chukch peninsula is the hare. It differs from the fell hare
(Lepus borealis, Lillj.) by its larger size, and by the bones of its
nose not tapering so rapidly. It is generally met with in flocks
of five or six on the hills in the neighbourhood of the tents,
which are covered only with a thin layer of snow, notwith-

432 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

standing the large number of hungry dogs which wander about
there.

“The Arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus, L.) are very numerous.
The common fox (Vulpes vulgaris, Gray) appears also to be
common. <A red fox, which Lieutenant Brusewitz shot from the
vessel in October, differed considerably from the common fox,
and approached the mountain fox. The food of the fox appears
in winter to consist of hares, ptarmigan, and lemmings. I have
twice seen holes in the snow about a metre deep and at the
mouth not more than thirty centimetres wide, which the
Chukches said were excavated by foxes searching for lemmings.

“Of the lemming I have seen three varieties, viz. Myodes
obensis, M. torquatus, and Arvicola obscurus. There is found
here, also, according to the statements of the Chukches, a little
mouse, in all probability a Sorex. Myodes torquatus were got
the first time on the 12th January, AZyodes obensis on the 13th
February. Both species were afterwards frequently brought on
board by Chukches, and during the winter lemmings were seen
not unfrequently running on the snow. Myodes obensis appeared
to be more numerous than the other species. It is smgular that
all the nine specimens of Myodes torquatus I obtained during the
winter were males. Differmg from both these species, Arvicola
obscurus does not appear to show itself above the snow during
winter. Of the latter I got eight specimens from the village
Tjapka, lying between Yinretlen and Behring’s Straits. I after-
wards got another from the village Irgunnuk, situated five
English miles east of Yinretlen.

“The more uncommon land mammals wintering in these
regions are the wolf and the wild reindeer. Footprints of the
latter were seen on the 23rd March, in the mountain region,
fifteen to twenty miles south of Yinretlen. According to the
Chukches’ account some few reindeer remain on the hills along
the coast, while the greater number migrate southwards towards
winter. Besides these, two other mammals live here during
winter, though they are only seen during summer and autumn,
because they hibernate the rest of the time. These are the
land bear and the marmot (Arctomys sp.). We saw no land
bear, but on the 8th October Lieutenant Hovgaard and I found
traces of this animal two or three English miles from the coast.
The Chukches say that the land bear is not uncommon in
summer. The marmot occurs in large numbers. It was brought
on board for the first time by a Chukch, and the following day
I myself saw it sittmg on the top of a little hill, where it had
its dwelling.

“ Besides the animals enumerated above the natives talked of
another, which is called by them nennet, and is said to live by
the banks of rivers. According to their description it appears

YL] THE MAMMALIA OF CHUKCH LAND. 433

to be the common ofter. As at most places where the lemming
is common the weasel (Mustela vulgaris, Briss.) is also found
here. I got from the Chukches two skins of this animal.
Whether the beaver occurs in the part of Chukch Land which
we visited I cannot say with certainty. It is probable, because
the Chukches informed me that there was found here a weasel
which has the point of the tail black.

“ Only two sea mammals have been seen in this region in the
course of the winter, viz. the rough or bristled seal and the
Polar bear. On two occasions traces of the latter have been
observed in the neighbourhood of land. They appear, however,

MARMOTS FROM CHUKCH LAND,

for the most part to keep by openings in the ice farther out to
sea, where during our stay two of them were killed by Chukches
from the neighbouring villages. The rough seal is probably the
only species that occurs near the coast * during winter. It is
caught in great numbers, and forms, along with Toth and various
vegetable substances, the main food of the Chukches.

“Of land birds there winter in the region only three species,
viz. an owl (Strix nyctea, L.), a raven (Corvus sp.), and a ptarmi-
gan (Lagopus subalpina, Nilss.); the last-named is, the most.
common. On the 14th December, during a sledge journey into
the country I saw, about ten or twelve English ‘miles from the

FF

STEGOCEPHALUS KESSLERI (STUXB).
Natural size.

SABINEA SEPTEMCARINATA (SABINE),
Natural size.

’

EVERTEBRATES FROM THE SEA AT THE ‘‘ VEGA’S’’ WINTER QUARTERS.

ACANTHOSTEPHIA MALMGRENT, (Goiis.)
Magnified twice.

OPHIOGLYPHA NODOSA, (LUTKEN.).

Magnified twice.

LVERTEBRATES FROM THE SEA AT THE “* VEGA’S’” WINTER QUARTERS.

435 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

coast, two large coveys of ptarmigan, one of which probably
numbered over fifty. Nearer the coast, on the other hand, there
were found, especially during spring, for the most part only single
birds. The raven is common at the Chukch villages, and builds
its nest in the neighbouring cliffs. The first egg was got on the
31st May. The mountain owl was seen for the first time on the
11th March, but, according to the statements of the Chukches,
it is to be met with during the whole winter. In April and May
we also saw some mountain owls ; on the 21st May I saw two.

“ At open places in the sea there are found here in winter, the
Chukches say, two swimming birds, the loom (Uria Briinnichia,
Sabine) and the black guillemot (Uria grylle, L.). Of the
former we obtaimed two specimens for the first time on the
Ist May, of the latter on the 19th of the same month.
Possibly there winter in open places of the sea besides these
birds a species of Mergulus, one of which came to the winter
quarters of the Vega on the 3rd November, and a Fuligula, a
specimen of which was sold to us on the 9th March by a
Chukch, who said he had killed it at a clearing otf the coast.”

After the arrival of the migratory birds hunting excursions
began to form a welcome interruption in our monotonous winter
life, and the produce of the hunting a no less agreeable change
from the preserved provisions. The Chukches besides otfered
us daily a large number of different kinds of birds, especially
when they observed that we paid a higher price for many rare
kinds of birds, though small and of little use for food, than for
a big, fat goose. The Chukches killed small birds either by
throwing stones, or by shooting them with bow and arrows, in
connection with which it may be observed that most of them
were very poor archers. They also caught them with whale-
bone snares set on bare spots on the beach, generally between
two vertebrz of the whale. For pebbles are very scarce, but
the bones of the whale are found, as has been already stated, at
most places in large numbers on the strand-banks where the
tents are pitched. In June we began to get eggs of the gull,
eider, long-tailed duck, goose, and loom, in sufficient number for
table use. The supply, however, was by no means so abundant
as during the hatching season on Greenland, Spitzbergen, or
Novaya Zemlya.

A little way from the vessel there were formed, in the end of
May, two “leads,” a few fathoms in breadth. On the 31st May
IT sent some men to dredge at these places. They returned
with an abundant yield, but unfortunately the openings closed
again the next day, and when I and Lieutenant Bove visited
the place there was a large, newly-formed ¢oross thrown up along

x1] NOAH ELISEJ. A37

the edge of the former channel. Another “lead” was formed
some days after, but closed again through a new disturbance of
the position of the ice, a high ice-rampart, formed of loose
blocks, heaped one over another, indicating the position of the
former opening. Even the strongest vessel would have been
crushed in such a channel by the forcing together of the ice.
Of a different sort from both these occasional leads was an
extensive opening, which showed itself a kilometre or two north
of the vessel. It is probable that with few interruptions, which,
however, might have been difficult to pass, it extended as far as
Behring’s Straits, where, accordmg to the statements of the
Chukches, several whalers had already made their appearance.
Round the vessel itself, however, the ice still lay fast and
unbroken, Nor did the Chukches appear to expect that it
would break up very soon, to judge by the number of vehicles
drawn by dogs or reindeer which still passed us, both to the
east and west. One of these travellers must here be specially
mentioned, as his journey has been talked about as an expedition
sent to our relief.

It was the 19th June. A large number of Chukches
travellmg past us as usual came on board, partly to receive
the tribute of hospitality to which they considered themselves
entitled, partly to satisfy an easily understood curiosity and
gossip a little about the most important occurrences of the
preceding day. One of them, a middle-aged man, whom we had
not seen before, with a friendly and self-satisfied bearing, whose
face was a mere collection of wrinkles, and over whose pes/: was
drawn an old velvet shirt, presented himself with a certain
pretentiousness as the chief Noau ELises. Since the mistake
with the stately Chepurin, and since even Menka’s supposed
slave declared himself to be at least as good as Menka, we had
begun to be rather indifferent to the rank of chief among the
Chukches. Noah Elise} however, notwithstanding he thus

fo)
brought forward his pretensions, was received like a common

man, at which he appeared to be a little offended. But our
behaviour soon changed, when Notti, or some other of our daily
guests, who had become quite familiar with our fancies, tastes
and weaknesses, informed us that Noah Elisej had with him a
large,a very large letter. Old Noah thus carried a mail, perhaps
a European mail. At once he became in our eyes a man of
importance. After being stormed for a time with questions, he
took from a bag which hung from his neck the ordinary pieces
of board fastened together, which here serve as a postbag. They
were found however to contain only a letter of a couple of lines
from a Russian official at Nischni Kolymsk, without any news

from Europe, but informing us that chief Noah E lise] was sent
to us to assist us, if necessary. Noah first patted his stomach

45 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

to indicate that he was hungry and wanted food, and hawked
and pointed with his finger at his throat to let us know that a
ram would taste well. He then told us something which we did
not then exactly understand, but which we now have reason to
interpret as a statement that Noah was the leader of an expedition
sent by the Siberian authorities to our relief, and that he was
therefore willing in return for suitable compensation to give us
some reindeer. J availed myself of the offer, and purchased three
animals for sugar, tea, and a little tobacco. Noah besides was
a friendly and easy-going man, who, Christian though he was,
travelled about with two wives and a large number of children,

NOAH ELISEJ.

(After a photograph by L. Palander.)

who all of course would see the vessel and get their treat of
tobacco, clay pipes, sugar, ram, &e.

So much flood water had now begun to collect on the ice,
especially near the land, that it was exceedingly difficult to walk
from the vessel to the shore and back. Many a proposed land
excursion was broken off by somebody, immediately atter leaving
the vessel, smking into some deep hole in the ice and thus getting
a cold bath. Excursions on land however began to be exceedingly
interesting to the botanists and zoologists; and therefore to avoid
the inconveniences mentioned I caused a tent to be pitched by
the side of the large lagoon between Pitlekaj and Yinretlen, and

XI] THE FLORA AT PITLEKAJ,

a light boat to be carried thither. The bottom of the lagoon was
still filled with ice, above which however the water stood so high
that the boat floated in it. The naturalists settled by turns in
the tent, and from it made excursions in different directions, as
I hope with the result that the neighbourhood of Pitlekaj is now
the best known tract on the north of Asia, which after all is not
saying much. The first plant in flower (Cochlearia fenestrata,
R. Br.) was seen on the 23rd June. A week after the ground
began to grow green and flowers of different kinds to show
themselves in greater and greater numbers.? Some flies were

439

1 During the expedition of 1861, when we were shut up by ice in Treu-
renberg Bay on Spitzbergen (79° 57’ N.L.) the first flower (Sazxifraga opposi-
tifolia, L.), was pulled on the 22nd June. After the wintering in 1872-73,
Palander and [ during our journey round North-east Land, saw the first
flower on the same species of saxifrage as early as the 15th June, in the
bottom of Wahlenberg Bay (79° 46’ N.L.).

2 For the sake of completeness, I shall here also enumerate the plants
which Dr, Kjellman found at Pitlekaj. Those marked with an * either
themselves occur in Scandinavia or are represented by nearly allied forms.

Leucanthemum arcticum (L.) DC. * Rubus Chamemorus L.

Artemisia arctica LEss. * Comarum palustre L.

* 3 vulgaris L. f. Tilesii Potentilla fragiformis L.
LEDEB. f. parviflora TRAUTV.
Cineraria frigida RicHarps. f. villosa (PALL.)
* . palustris L. f. congesta * Sibbaldia procumbens L.
Hook. * Dryas octopetala L.

* Antennaria alpina (L.) R. Br. f.
Friesiana TRAUTV.
* Petasites frigida.
* Saussurea alpina (L.) DC. f. an-
gustifolia (DC.)
* Taraxacum officinale WEB.

Valeriana capitata PALL.
Gentiana glauca PALL.
Pedicularis sudetica WILLD.
3 Langsdorffii Fiscx.
By lanata Wittp. f. lei-
antha TRAUTV.
» capitata ADAMS.

* Polemonium cceruleum L.
* Diapensia lapponica L.
* Armeria sibirica TURCZ,
Primula nivalis Pau. f. pygmea
LEDEB.
» borealis Duy.
Loiseleuria procumbens (L.) DEsv.

Vaccinium vitis idea L.
Arctostaphylos alpina (L.) SPRENG.
Cassiope tetragona (L.) Don.
Hedysaruin obscurum L.
Oxytropisnigrescens(PALL.)FIscH.
‘f. py pe CHAM.
species ?

* kk * ke Ok

Ledum palustre L. f. decumbens AIT.

Spireea betulefolia PAL, f. typica
Maxim.
* Hippuris vulgaris L.

* Saxifraga stellaris L. f. comosa

Por.
, punctata L.

~ “ cernua L.

“S rivularis L.

* Rhodiola rosea L.

* Empetrum nigrum L,

* Cardamine bellidifolia L.

Cochlearia fenestrata R. Br.
f. typica MALMGr.
f. prostata MaLmar.
Ranunculus Pallasii SEHLECHT
Ps nivalis L.
" pygmeus Wa.
hyperboreus Rorrs.
Aconitum Napellus L. f. delphini-
folia REICHENB.
Clay tonia acutifolia WILLD.
* Wahlbergella apetala (L.) FR.
* Stellaria “longipes Goupig. f. hu-
milis FENZL,
* humifusa Rorrs.
Cerastium maximum L.
* ys alpmom: Ee CE
Kocn,

* OK KOK

*

hirsuta

440 THE VOYAGE UF THE VEGA. ‘ [cuar.

seen on a stunshiny day in May (the 27th) m motion on the
surface of the snow, but it was not until the end of June that
insects began to show themselves in any large numbers, among
them many Harpalids, two large species of Carabus; and a large
Curculionid. The insects occurring here however are not very
numerous either in respect of species or individuals, which is not
strange when we consider that the earth at a limited depth from
the surface is constantly frozen. As even the shallow layer,
which thaws in summer, is hard frozen in winter, all the insects
which occur here must in one or other phase of their develop-
ment endure being frozen solid for some time, But it may be
remarked with reason with reference to this, that if life in an
organism may so to speak be suspended for months by freezing
stiff without being destroyed, what is there to prevent this
suspension being extended over years, decades, or centuries ?

The common idea, that all animal life ceases, when the interior
animal heat sinks under the freezing-point of water, is besides
not quite correct. This is proved by the abundant evertebrate
life which is found at the bottom of the Polar Sea, even where
the water all the year round has a temperature of — 2° to — 2°°7
C.,and by the remarkable observation made during the wintering
at Mussel Bay in 1872-73, that small crustacea can live by
millions in water-drenched snow at a temperature of from — 2°
to —10°2 C. On this point I say in my account of the expedition
of 1872-73 :—?

* Halianthus peploides (L.) Fr. Glyceria vaginata J. Lar. f. con-
Alsine arctica (STEV.) FENZL. tracta J. Ler.
* Sagina nivalis (LINDBL.) Fr. * Catabrosa algida (Sox.) Fr.
* Polygonum Bistorta L. * Colpodium latifolium R. Br.
* * viviparum L. Dupontia Fischeri R. Br.
5 polymorphum LL. f. * Trisetum subspicatum (L.) P. B.
frigida CHAM. * Aira cespitosa L. f. borealis
Rumex arcticus TRAUTV. TRAUTV.
* Oxyria digyna (L.) HILL. Alopecurus alpinus SM.
Salix boganidensis Trauty. f.lati- * Hierochloa alpina (LUJEBL.) ROEM.
folia. and Scu.
», Chamissonis ANDERS. * Carex rariflora (Wa.) Sm.
» arctica PALL. * ,, aqvatilis f. epijegos Last.
»» cuneata Turcz. * ,, glareosa Wa.
* ,, qceticulata LL. as ,, lagopina WG.
» species ? * Eriophorum angustifolium Roru.
Betula glandulosa Micux.f.rotun- * 3 vaginatum L.
difolia REGEL * : russeolum FR.
Elymus mollis Trin. * Luzula parviflora (Eurn.) Desv.
* Festuca rubra L. f. arenaria * ,, Wahlenbergii Rupr.
OsB. * 4, arcuata (We.) Sw. f. con-
* Poa flexuosa Wa. fusa LINDEB.
*

Arctophila effusa J. Lar. Juncus biglumis L,
Glyceria vilfoidea (ANnps.) Tu. Fr. | Lloydia serotina (L.) REICHENB,

' 1 Redogirelse for den svenska polarexpeditionen ar 1872-73. Bihang til)
Vet.-Akad. Handl. Bd. 2, No. 18, p. 52.

X1.] PHOSPHORESCENT CRUSTACEA. 441

“Tf during winter one walks along the beach on the snow
which at ebb is dry, but at flood tide is more or less drenched
through by sea-water, there rises at every step one takes, an
exceedingly intense, beautiful, bluish-white flash of light, which
in the spectroscope gives a one-coloured labrador-blue spectrum.
This beautiful flash of light arises from the snow, before com-
pletely dark, when it is touched. The flash lasts only a few
moments after the snow is left untouched, and is so intense, that it
appears as if a sea of fire would open at every step a man takes.
It produces indeed a peculiar impression on a dark and stormy
winter day (the temperature of the air was sometimes in the
neighbourhood of the freezing-point of mercury) to walk along
in this mixture of snow and flame, which at every step one takes
splashes about in all directions, shining with a light so intense
that one is ready to fear that his shoes or clothes will take
fire.”

\
a. b.

BEETLES FROM PITLEKAJ.
a. Carabus truncaticollis EscuscHoiTz. (One and a half the natural size.)
b. Alophus sp. (One and two-thirds the natural size.)

On a closer examination it appeared that this light-pheno-
menon proceeded from a minute crustacean, which according to
the determination of Prof. W. LILLJEBORG belongs to the species
JILetridia armata, A. Boeck, and whose proper element appears
to be snow-sludge drenched with salt water cooled considerably
under 0° C. First when the temperature sinks below — 10°
does the power of this small animal to emit light appear to cease.
But as the element in which they live, the surface of the snow
nearest the beach, is in the course of the winter imnumerable
times cooled twenty degrees more, it appears improbable that
these minute animals suffer any harm by being exposed to a cold
of from — 20° to — 30°, a very remarkable circumstance, as they
certainly do not possess in their organism any means of raising
the internal animal heat in any noteworthy degree above the
temperature of the surrounding medium,

442 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

We did not see these animals at Pitlekaj, but a similar pheno-
menon, though on a smaller scale, was observed by Lieut. BELLoT!
during a sledge-journey in Polar America. He believed that the
light arose from decaying organic matter.

After the Chukches had told us that an exceedingly delicious
black fish was to be found in the fresh-water lagoon at Yinretlen,
which is wholly shut off from the sea and in winter freezes to
the bottom, we made an excursion thither on the 8th July. Our
friends at the encampment were immediately ready to help us,
especially the women, Aitanga, and the twelve-year-old, somewhat
spoiled Vega-favourite Reitinacka. They ran hither and thither

PHOSPHORESCENT CRUSTACEAN FROM MUSSEL R4Y,
Metridia armata, A. Boeck.
1, A male magnified twelve times. 2. A foot of the second pair.

like light-hearted and playful children, to put the net in order
and procure all that was needed for the fishing. We had carried
with us from the vessel a net nine metres long and one deep.
Along its upper border floats were fixed ; to the lower was bound
a long pole, to which were fastened five sticks, by which the pole
was sunk to the bottom of the lagoon, a little way from the
shore. Some natives wading in the cold water then pushed
the net towards the land with sticks and the pole, which glided
easily forward over the bottom of the lake, overgrown as it was

1 Journal d'un Voyage auaz Mers Polaires, Paris, 1854. Pp. 177
and 223. °

pl FISHING IN A FRESH-WATER LAGOON. 443

with grass. In order to keep the fish from swimming away, the
women waded at the sides of the net with their pesks much
tucked up, screaming and making a noise, and now and then
standing in order to indicate by a violent shaking that the water
was very cold. The catch was abundant. We caught by
hundreds a sort of fish altogether new to us, of a type which
we should rather have expected to find in the marshes of the
Equatorial regions than up here in the north. The fish were
transported in a dog sledge to the vessel, where part of them was

REITINACKA.
(After a photograph by L. Palander )

placed in spirits for the zoologists and the rest fried, not without
a protest from our old cook, who thought that the black slimy
fish looked remarkably nasty and uely. But the Chukches
were right: it was a veritable delicacy, in taste somewhat
resembling eel, but finer and more fleshy. These fish were
besides as “tough to kill as eels, for after lying an hour and ;

half in the air they swam, if replac ‘ed in the water, about as fast
as before. How this species of fish passes the winter is still more

enigmatical than the winter life of the insects. For the lagoon

444 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

has no outlet and appears to freeze completely to the bottom.
The mass of water which was found in autumn in the lagoon
therefore still lay there as an unmelted layer of ice not yet
broken up, which was covered with a stratum of flood water
several feet deep, by which the neighbouring grassy plains were
inundated. It was in this flood water that the fishing took place.

After our return home the Yinretlen fish was examined by
Professor F. A. Smirr in Stockholm, who stated, in an address
which he gave on it before the Swedish Academy of Sciences,
that it belongs to a new species to which Professor Smitt gave
the name Dallia delicatissima. A closely allied form occurs in
Alaska, and has been named Dallia pectoralis, Bean. These
fishes are besides nearly allied to the dog-fish (Umbra Krameri,
Fitzing), which is found in the Neusidler and Platten Lakes, and
in grottos and other water-filled subterranean cavities in southern
Europe. It is remarkable that the European species are con-
sidered uneatable, and even regarded with such loathing that

DOG-FISH FROM THE CHUKCH PENINSULA.

Dallia delicatissima, Sinitt.
Half the natural size.

the fishermen throw them away as soon as caught because they
consider them poisonous, and fear that their other fish would
be destroyed by contact with it. They also consider it an
affront if one asks them for dog-fish.1 If we had known
this we should not now have been able to certify that Dallia
delicatissima, SMITT, truly deserves its name.

In the beginning of July the ground became free of snow,
and we could now form an idea of how the region looked im
summer in which we had passed the winter. It was not Just
attractive. Far away in the south the land rose with terrace-
formed escarpments to a hill, called by us Table Mount, which
indeed was pretty high, but did not by any steep or bold cliffs
yield any contribution to such a picturesque landscape border as
is seldom wanting on the portions of Spitzbergen, Greenland, and
the north part of Novaya Zemlya which I have visited; south

? Heckel and Kner, Die Siisswasserfische Oesterreichs, p. 295.

=e] THE FROST FORMATION OF SIBERIA. 445

Novaya Zemlya has at least at most places bold picturesque
shore-cliffs. If I except the rocky promontory at Yinretlen,
where a cliff inhabited by ravens rises boldly out of the sea,
and some cliffs situated farther in along the beach of Kolyut-
schin Bay, the shore in the immediate neighbourhood of our
wintering station consisted everywhere only of a low beach
formed of coarse sand. Upon this sand, which was always
frozen, there ran parallel with the shore a broad bank or
dune, 50 to 100 metres broad, of fine sand, not water-drenched
in summer, and accordingly not bound together by ice in
winter. It is upon this dune that the Chukches erect their
tents. Marks of them are therefore met with nearly every-
where, and the dune accordingly is everywhere bestrewed with
broken implements or refuse from the chase. Indeed it may
be said without exaggeration that the whole north-eastern
coast of the Siberian Polar Sea is bordered with a belt of
sweepings and refuse of various kinds.

The coarse sand which underlies the dune is, as has been
stated, continually frozen, excepting the shallow layer which
is thawed in summer. It is here that the “frost formation ”’
of Siberia begins, that is to say, the continually frozen layer of
earth, which, with certain interruptions, extends from the Polar
Sea far to the south, not only under the treeless tundra, but
also under splendid forests and cultivated corn-fields! To
speak correctly, however, the frozen earth begins a little from
the shore wader the sea.2, For on the coast the bottom often
consists of hard frozen sand—“rock-hard sand,” as the dredgers
were accustomed to report. The frost formation in Siberia thus
embraces not only terrestrial but also marine deposits, together
with pure clear layers of ice, these last being formed in the
mouths of rivers or small lakes by the ice of the river or lake
frozen to the bottom being in spring covered with a layer
of mud sufficiently thick to protect the ice from melting durmg
summer. The frozen sea-bottom again appears to have been
formed by the sand washed down by the rivers having carried

1 Even pretty far south, in Scandinavia, there occur places with frozen
earth which seldom thaws. Thus in Egyptinkorpi mosses in Nurmi and
Pjeli parishes in Finland pinewoods are found growing over layers or
“tufts” of frozen sand; but also, in other places in Eastern Finland,
we find layers containing stumps, roots, &c., of different generations of
trees, alternating with layers of frozen mould, according to a communi-
cation from the agronome Axel Asplund. A contribution to the knowledge
of the way, or one of the ways, in which such formations arise, we
obtain from the known fact that mines with an opening to the air, so far
south as the middle of Sweden, are filled in a few years with a coherent
mass of ice if the opening is allowed to remain open, If it is shut the
ice melts again, but for this decades are required.

2 Middendorff already states that the bottom of the sea of Okotsk is
frozen. (Sibirische Reise, Bd. 4, 1, p. 502.) f

446 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. Xf.

with it when it sank some adherimg water from the warm
and almost fresh surface strata. At the sea-bottom the sand
surrounded by fresh water freezing at 0° C. thus met a stratum
of salt water whose temperature was two or three degrees under
0°, in consequence of which the grains of sand froze fast to-
gether. That it may go on thus we had a direct proof when
in spring we sank from the Vega the bodies of animals to be
skeletonised by the crustacea that swarmed at the sea-bottom.
If the sack, pierced at several places, in which the skeleton was
sunk was first allowed to fill with the shghtly salt water from
the surface and then sink rapidly to the bottom, it was found to be
so filled with ice, when it was taken up a day or two afterwards,
that the crustacea were prevented from getting at the flesh.
We had already determined to abandon the convenient cleansing
process, when I succeeded in finding means to avoid the in-
convenience; this was attained by drawing the sack, while
some distance under the surface, violently hither and thither
so that the surface water carried down with it was got rid of.
Frozen clay and ooze do not appear to occur at the bottom of
the Polar Sea. Animal life on the frozen sand was rather
scanty, but aleze were met with there though in limited numbers.

From the shore a plain commences, which is studded with
extensive lagoons and a large number of small lakes. In spring
this plam is so water-drenched and so crossed by deep rapid
snow-rivulets, that it is difficult, often impossible, to traverse it.
Immediately after the disappearance of the snow a large number
of birds at all events had settled there. The Lapp sparrow had
chosen a tuft projecting from the marshy ground on which to place
its beautiful roofed dwelling, the waders in the neighbourhood had
laid their eggs in most cases directly on the water-drenched moss
without trace of a nest, and on tufts completely surrounded by
the spring floods we met with the eggs of the loom, the long-
tailed duck, the eider and the goose. Already during our stay,
the water ran away so rapidly, that places, which one day were
covered with a watery mirror, over which a boat of light draught
could be rowed forward, were changed the next day to wet
marshy ground, covered with yellow grass-straws from the pre-
ceding year. At many places the grassy sward had been torn
up by the ice and carried away, leaving openings sharply defined
by right lines m the meadows, resembling a newly worked off
place in a peat moss.

In summer there must be found here green meadows covered
with pretty tall grass, but at the time of our departure vegetation
had not attained any great development, and the flowers that could
be discovered were few. I presume however that a beautiful
Arctic flower-world grows up here, although, in consequence of
the exposure of the coast-country to the north winds, poor in

CRAB FROM THE SEA NORTH OF BEHRING'S STRAT'S.

Chionoecetes opilio, Kroyer.

Half the natural size,

448 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

comparison with the vegetation in sheltered valleys in the interior
of the country. There are found there too pretty high bushes,
but on the other hand trees are represented at Pitlekaj only by
a low species of willow which creeps along the ground.

(Natural size.

TREE FROM PITLEKAJ.

by Yip)

Salix arctica, PALLAS.

We did not, however, see even this “wood” in full leaf.
For in order that full summer heat may begin it is necessary,
even here, that the ice break up, and this longed-for

xt] THE TIME FOR RELEASE APPROACHING. 449

moment appeared to be yet far distant. The ice indeed
became clear of snow in the beginning of July, and thus the
slush and the flood water were lessened, which during the pre-
ceding weeks had collected on its surface and made it very
difficult to walk from the vessel to land. Now, again pretty
dry-shod and on a hard blue ice-surface, we could make ex-
cursions In the neighbourhood of the vessel. We had however
to be cautious. The former cracks had m many places been
widened to greater or smaller openings by the flood water run-
ning down, and where a thin black object—a little gravel, a
piece of tin from the preserved provision-cases, &c.—had lain
on the ice there were formed round holes, resembling the seal-
holes which I saw in spring laid bare after the melting of the
snow on the ice in the fjords of Spitzbergen. The strength
of the ice besides was nearly unaltered, and on the 16th July
a heavily loaded double sledge could still be driven from the
vessel to the. shore.

On the 17th the “year’s ice” next the land at last broke up,
so that an extensive land clearmg arose. But the ground-
ices were still undisturbed, and between these the “year’s ice”
even lay so fast, that all were agreed that at least fourteen
days must still pass before there was any prospect of getting
free.

When on the 16th the reindeer-Chukch Yettugin came on’
board, and, talking of the collection of whale-bones in which
we had been engaged some days before, informed us that
there was a mammoth bone at his tent, and that a mammoth
tusk stuck out at a place where the spring floods had cut into
the bank of a river which flows from Table Mount to Riraitinop,
I therefore did not hesitate to undertake an excursion to the
place. Our absence from the vessel was reckoned at five or six
days. It was my intention to go up the river in a skin boat
belonging to Notti to the place where the mammoth tusk was,
and thence to proceed on foot to Yettugin’s tent. Yettugin
assured us that the river was sufficiently deep for the flat-
bottomed boat. But when we had travelled a little way into
the country it appeared that the river had fallen considerably
during the day that Yettugin passed on the vessel. So certain
was I however that the ice-barrier would not yet for a long
time be broken up, that I immediately after my return from the
excursion, which had thus been rendered unsuccessful, made
arrangements for a new journey in order with other means of
transport to reach the goal.

While we were thus employed the forenoon of the 18th passed.
We sat down to dinner at the usual time, without any suspicion
that the time of our release was now at hand. During dinner
it was suddenly observed that the vessel was moving slightly.

GAG

450 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cmar.

Palander rushed on deck, saw that the ice was in motion, ordered
the boiler fires to be lighted, the engine having long ago been
put in order in expectation of this moment, and in two hours, by
3.30 pM. on the 18th July, the Vega, decked with flags, was
under steam and sail again on the way to her destination.

We now found that a quite ice-free “ lead ” had arisen between
the vessel and the open water next the shore, the ice-fields
west of our ground-ices having at the same time drifted farther
out to sea, so that the clearing along the shore had widened
enough to give the Vega a sufficient depth of water. The
course was shaped at first for the N.W.in order to make a
détour round the drift-ice fields lymg nearest us, then along the
coast for Behring’s Straits. On the height at Yinretlen there
stood as we passed, the men, women, and children of the village
all assembled, looking out to sea at the fire-horse—the Chukches
would perhaps say fire-dog or fire-remdeer—which carried their
friends of the long winter months for ever away from their
cold, bleak shores. Whether they shed tears, as they often said
they would, we could not see from the distance which now
parted us from them. But it may readily have happened that
the easily moved disposition of the savage led them to do this.
Certain it is that in many of us the sadness of separation
mingled with the feelings of tempestuous joy which now rushed
through the breast of every Vega man.

The Vega met no more ice-obstacles on her course to the
Pacific. Serdze Kamen was passed at 1.30 A.M. of the 19th, but
the fog was so dense that we could not clearly distinguish the
contours of the land. Above the bank of mist at the horizon
we could only see that this cape, so famous in the history of the
navigation of the Siberian Polar Sea, is occupied by high
mountains, split up, like those east of the Bear Islands, mto
ruin-like gigantic walls or columns. The sea was mirror-bright
and nearly clear of ice, a walrus or two stuck up his head
strangely magnified by the fog in our neighbourhood, seals swam
round us in large numbers, and flocks of birds, which probably
breed on the steep cliffs of Serdze Kamen, swarmed round the
vessel. The trawl net repeatedly brought up from the sea-
bottom a very abundant yield of worms, molluscs, crustacea, &c.
A zoologist would here have had a rich working field.

The fog continued, so that on the other side of Serdze Kamen
we lost all sight of land, until on the morning of the 20th dark
heights again began to peep out. These were the mountain
summits of the easternmost promontory of Asia, East Cape, an
unsuitable name, for which I have substituted on the map that
of Cape Deschnev after the gallant Cossack who for the first
time 230 years ago circumnavigated it.

By 11 A.M. we were in the middle of the sound which unites

xui | THE NORTH-EAST PASSAGE ACHIEVED. 451

the North Polar Sea with the Pacific, and from this point the
Vega greeted the old and new worlds by a display of flags and
the firmg of a Swedish salute.

Thus finally was reached the goal towards which so many
nations had struggled, all along from the time when Sir Hugh
Willoughby, with the firing of salutes from cannon and with
hurrahs from the festive-clad seamen, in the presence of an
innumerable crowd of jubilant men certain of success, ushered
in the long series of North-East voyages. But, as I have before
related, their hopes were grimly disappointed. Sir Hugh and all
his men perished as pioneers of England's navigation and of
voyages tothe ice-encumbered sea which bounds Europe and Asia
on the north. Innumerable other marine expeditions have since
then trodden the same path, always without success, and generally
with the sacrifice of the vessel and of the life and health of
many brave seamen. Now for the first time, after the lapse of
336 years, and when most men experienced in sea matters had
declared the undertaking impossible, was the North-East Passage
at last achieved. This has taken place, thanks to the discipline,
zeal, and ability of our man-of-war’s-men and their officers,
withont the sacrifice of a single human lie, without sickness
among those who took part in the undertaking, without the
slightest damage to the vessel, and under circumstances which
show that the same thing may be done again in most, perhaps
in all years, in the course of a few weeks. It may be permitted
us to say, that under such circumstances it was with pride we
saw the blue-yellow flag rise to the mast-head and heard the
Swedish salute in the sound where the old and the new worlds
reach hands to each other. The course along which we sailed
is indeed no longer required as a commercial route between
Europe and China. But it has been granted to this and the
preceding Swedish expeditions to open a sea to navigation, and
to confer on half a continent the possibility of communicating
by sea with the oceans of the world.

CHAPTER XII.

The history, physique, disposition, and mannegs of the Chukches.

THE north coast of Siberia is now, with the exception ofits

westernmost and easternmost parts, literally a desert. In the

west there projects between the mouth of the Ob and the

southern portion of the Kara Sea the peninsula of Yalmal,

which by its remote position, its grassy plains, and rivers
GG 2

452 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHaAP.

abounding in fish, appears to form the earthly paradise of the
Samoyed of the present day. Some hundred families belonging
to this race wander about here with their numerous reindeer
herds. During winter they withdraw to the interior of the
country or southwards, and the coast is said then to be unin-
habited. Thisis the case both summer and winter, not only with
Beli Ostrov and the farthest portion of the peninsula between
the Ob and the Yenisej (Mattesol), but also with the long stretch
of coast between the mouth of the Yenise] and Chaun Bay.
During the voyage of the Vega in 1878 we did not see a single
native. No trace of man could be discovered at the places
where we landed, and though for a long time we sailed quite
near land, we saw from the sea only a single house on the shore,
viz., the before-mentioned wooden hut on the east side of
Chelyuskin peninsula. Russian simovies and native encamp-
ments are indeed still found on the rivers some distance from
their mouths, but the former coast population has withdrawn to
the interior of the country or died out, and the north coast of
Asia first begins again to be inhabited at Chaun Bay, namely,
by the tribe with whom we came in contact during the latter
part of the coast voyage of the Vega in 1878 and during the
wintering.

I have already, it is true, given an account of various traits

1 The north coast of America still forms the haunt of a not incon-
siderable Eskimo population which, for a couple of centuries, has extended
to the 80th degree of latitude. As the climate in the north part of the
Old World differs little from that which prevails in corresponding regions
of the New, as at both places there is an abundant supply of fish, and as the
seal and walrus hunting—at least between the Yenisej and the Chatanga—
ought to be as productive as on the north coast of America, this difference,
which has arisen only recently, is very striking. It appears to me to be
capable of explanation in the following way. Down to our days a large
number of small savage tribes in America have carried on war with each
other, the weaker, to escape extermination by the more powerful races,
being compelled to flee to the ice deserts of the north, deeming themselves
fortunate if they could there, in peace from their enemies, earn a living by
adopting the mode of life of the Polar races, suitable as it is to the climate
and resources of the land. The case was once the same in Siberia, and
there are many indications that fragments of, conquered tribes have
been in former times driven up from the south, not only to the
north coast of the mainland, but also beyond it to the islands lying
off it. In Siberia, however, for the last 250 years, the case has
been completely changed by the Russian conquest of the country.
The pressure of the new government has, notwithstanding many single
acts of violence, been on the whole. less destructive to the original popu-
lation than the influence which the Europeans have exerted in America.
The Russian power has at least had a wholly beneficial influence, inasmuch
as it has prevented the continual feuds between the native races. The
tribes driven to the inhospitable North have been enabled to return to
milder regions, and where this has not taken place they have, in the
absence of new migrations from the South, succumbed in the fight with cold,
hunger, and small-pox, or other diseases introduced by their new masters,

Mt] RUSSIANS AND CHUKCHES. 453

of the Chukches’ disposition and mode of life, but I believe at
all events that a more exhaustive statement of what the Vega
men experienced in this region will be interesting to my readers,
even if in the course of it [ am sometimes compelled to return
to subjects of which I have already treated.

In West-European writings the race, which inhabits the
north-easternmost portion of. Asia, is mentioned for the first
time, so far as I know, by WITSEN, who in the second edition of
his work (1705, p. 671) quotes a statement by VOLODOMIR
ATLASSOY, that the inhabitants of the northernmost portions of
Siberia are called 7's/uktst, without, however, giving any detailed
description of the people themselves. In maps from the end of
the seventeenth century names are still inscribed on this portion
of land which were borrowed from the history of High Asia, as
“Tendue,” “ Quinsai,” “Catacora,” &c., but these are left out in
VAN KEULEN’sS atlas of 1709, and instead there stands here
Zuczart. From about the same time we fall in with some
accounts of the Chukches in the narrative of the distinguished
painter CoRNELIS DE BRUIN’s travels in Russia. A Russian
merchant, MICHAEL OsTATIOF, who passed fourteen years in
travelling i in Siberia, gave de Bruin some information regarding
the countries he had travelled through ; among otaers he spoke
of Korakie and Soegtsie. The latter were sketched as a godless
pack, who worship the devil and carry with them their fathers’
bones to be used in their magical arts. The same Russian who

made these statements had also come in contact with “ stationary ”
(settled) Soegtsi, so called “ because they pass the whole winter
hibernating, lying or sitting in their tents.” I have found the
first somewhat detailed accounts of the race in the note on page
110 of the under-quoted work, Histoire généalogique des Tartares,
Leyden, 1726. They are founded on the statements of Swedish
prisoners of war in Siberia.

The Russians, however, had made a much earlier acquaintance
with the Chukches; for during their conquest of Siberia they
came in contact with this race before the middle of the seven-
teenth century. A company of hunters in 1646 sailed down the
Kolyma river to the Polar Sea. East of the Kolyma they fell
in with the Chukches, with whom they dealt in this way: they
laid down their goods on the beach and then retired, on which
the Chukches came thither, took the goods, and laid furs, walrus
tusks, or carvings in w alrus ivory, in their place.? How such

1 Cornelis de Bruin, Reizen over Moskovie, door Persie en Indie, &c.,
Amsterdam, 1711, p.12. The author’s name is also written De Bruyn
and Le Brun.

2 Herodotus already states in book iv. chapter 196, that the Cartha-
genians bartered goods in the same way with a tribe living on the coast of:

Africa beyond the Gates of Hercules. The same mode of barter was still
in use nearly two thousand years later, when the west coast of Africa

454 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [omap.

journeys were repeated and finally led to the circumnavigation
of the north-easternmost promontory of Asia belongs to a
following chapter.

During these journeys the Russians often came in contact
with the tribe which inhabited the north-eastern part of Asia, a
contact which in general was not of a friendly nature. The bold
hunters who contributed powerfully to the conquest of Siberia,
and who even at their own hand entered into conflicts with
whole armies from the heavenly empire, appear not to have
behaved well when confronted with the warriors of the Chukch
race. Even the attempts that were made with professional
soldiers to conquer the land of the Chukches were without
result, less however, perhaps, on account of the armed opposition
which the Chukches made than from the nature of the country
and the impossibility of even a small body of troops supporting
themselves. The following may be quoted as examples of these
campaigns which throw light upon the former disposition and
mode of life of this tribe.

In 1701 some Yukagires who were tributary to Russia deter-
mined to make an attack on the Chukches, and requested from
the commandant at Anadyrsk assistance against these enemies.
A body sof troops numbering twenty-four Russians and 110
Yukagires, was accordingly sent on a campaign along the coast
from Anadyrsk to Chukotskojnos. By the way they fell in with
thirteen tents, inhabited by Chukches who owned no reimdeer.
The inhabitants were required to submit and pay tribute. This
the Chukches refused to do, om which the Russians killed most
of the men and took the women and children prisoners. The
men who were not cut down killed one another, preferring death
to the loss of freedom. Some days after there was another fight
with 300 Chukches, which, however, was so unfortunate for the
latter that 200 are said to have fallen. The rest fled, but
‘returned next day with a force ten times as strong, which finally
compelled the Russo-Yukagirean troop to return with their
object unaccomplished.

A similar campaign on a small scale was undertaken in 1711,
_ but with the same issue. On ademand for tribute the Chukches
answered: “the Russians have before come to us to demand
‘tribute and hostages, but this we have refused to give, and thus
we also intend to do in future.” !

About fifteen years after this resultless campaign the Cossack
colonel AFFANASSEJ SCHESTAKOV proposed to the Government
was visited by the Venetian Cadamosto, in 1454 (Ramusio, i., 1588,
leaf 100).

1 As security for the subjection of the conquered races, the Russians
were accustomed to take a number of men ;and women from their prin-

cipal families as hostages. These persons were called amanates, and were
‘kept in a sort of slavery at the fixed winter dwellings of the Russians.

XIt.] ‘ PAULUTSKIT’S CAMPAIGN. 455

again to subdue this obstinate race, mtending also to go over to
the American side, yet known only by report, in order to render
the races living there tributary to the Russians. The proposal
was accepted. A mate, JAcoB HENS, a land-measurer, MICHAEL
GVOSDEV, an ore-tester, HERDEBOL, and ten sailors were
ordered by the Admiralty to accompany the expedition. At
Yekaterinenburg Schestakov was provided with some small
cannon and mortars with ammunition, and at Tobolsk with 400
Cossacks. In consequence of a great number of misfortunes,
among them shipwreck in the sea of Okotsk, there stood how-
ever but a small portion of this. force at his disposal when he
began his campaign by marching into the country from the
bottom of Penschina Bay. This campaign too was exceedingly
unfortunate. After only a few days’ march he came unexpect-
edly on a large body of Chukches, who themselves had gone to
war with the Koryaks. <A fight took place on the “th “March,
1730, in which Schestakov himself fell, hit by an arrow, and his
followers were killed or put to flight.

Among those who were ordered to accompany Schestakov in
this unfortunate campaign was Captain Dire PAUvLuTski.
Under his command a new campaign was undertaken against
the Chukches. With a force of 215 Russians, 160 Cossacks and
60 Yukagires, Paulutski left Anadyrsk on the 3" March,1731,
and marched east of the sources of the Anadyr to the Polar Sea,
which was only reached after two months’ march. Then he
went along the coast, partly by land, partly on the ice, to the
eastward. After fourteen days he fell in with a large Chukeh
army, and having in vain summoned it to surrender, he
delivered a blow on the *th June, and obtained a complete
victory over the enemy. During the continuation of the

campaign along the coast he was compelled to fight on two

other occasions, one on the ,'?"* and the other on the =th July,

at Chukotskojnos itself, over which promontory he wished to
march to the mouth of the Anadyr. In both cases the victory
lay with the Russians, who, according to Miiller’s account based
on the official documents, in all three engagements lost only
three Cossacks, one Yukagire and five Koryiiks. But notwith-
standing all these defeats the Chukches refused to submit and
pay tribute to the Russians, on which account the only gain of
the campaign was the honour of avenging Schestakov’s defeat
and of marching in triumph over Chukotskojnos. For this, ten
days were required. On the promontory, hills of considerable
height had to be passed. It appears as if Paulutski followed the
shore of Kolyutschin Bay to the south, and then marched over
the tongue of land which separates this bay from Anadyr Bay,
or to express it otherwise, which unites the Chukch peninsula
to the mainland of Siberia.

456 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

Many mistakes in comprehending the accounts of old travels
to these regions have arisen from our ignorance of the great
southern extension of Kolyutschin Bay, and from the same
name being frequently used to distinguish different places on
the coasts of Siberia. Thus we find on the map by A. ARROw-
SMITH annexed to Sauer’s account of Billings’ travels a Serdze
Kamen on-the south side of Chukch peninsula, and it was
perhaps just this Serdze Kamen, known and so named% by the
dwellers on the Anadyr, that is mentioned in Miiiler’s*account
of Paulutski’s campaign.

On the *** Paulutski returned to Anadyrsk, crowned with
victory indeed, but without having brought his adversaries to
lasting submission. No new attempt was made to induce the
Chukches to submit, perhaps because Paulutski’s campaign had
rendered it evident that it was easier to win victories over the
Chukches than to subdue them, and that the whole treasures of
walrus tusks and skins belonging to the tribe would scarcely
suffice to pay the expenses of the most inconsiderable
campaign.

Perhaps too the accounts of Paulutski’s victories may not
be quite correct, at least the old repute of Chukches as
a brave and savage race remained undiminished. Thus we
read in a note already quoted at page 110 of the Histoire
genéalogique des Tartares:1 “The north-eastern part of Asia is
inhabited by two allied races, Tzwktzchi and Tzchalatzki, and
south of them on the Eastern Ocean by a third, called Olutorski.
They are the most savage tribe in the whole north of Asia, and
will have nothing to do with the Russians, whom they nhumanly
kill when they fall in with them, and when any of them fall
into the hands of the Russians they kill themselves.” On the
map of LoTreRus (1765) the Chukch Peninsula is coloured in a
way differing from Russian Siberia; and there is the following
inscription: TZjuktzchi natio ferocissima et bellicosa Russorwm
mimica, qui capt se invicem interficiunt. In 1777 Groraius
says in his Beschreibung aller Nationen des Russischen Reichs
(part 1, p. 350) of the Chukches: “They are more savage,
coarse, proud, refractory, thievish, false, and revengeful, than the
neighbourmg nomads the Koryiiks. They are as bad and
dangerous as the Tunguses are friendly. Twenty Chukches will
beat fifty Koryiiks. The Ostrogs (fortified places) lying in the
neighbourhood of their country are even in continual fear of

1 The work is a translation made at Tobolsk by Swedish officers,
prisoners‘ot war from the battle of Pultava, from a Tartar manuscript by
Abulgasi Bayadur Chan. The original manuscript (?) is in the library at
Upsala, to which it was presented in 1722 by Lieutenant-Colonel Schén-
strom. The translation has notes by Bentinck, a Dutchman by birth, who
was also taken prisoner in the Swedish service at Pultava,

a = - . .
‘> lea i a
(Co Se) J

Sey
ea

<

—

XII. ] TRAVELLERS TO CHUKCH LAND. 457

them, and cost so much that the Government has recently
withdrawn the oldest Russian settlement im those regions,
Anadyrsk.” Other statements to the same effect might be
quoted, and even in our day the Chukches are, with or with-
out justification, known in Siberia for stubbornness, courage, and
love of freedom.

But what violence could not effect has been completely
accomplished in a peaceful way.1 The Chukches indeed do not
pay any other taxes than some small market tolls, but a very
active traffic is now carried on between them and the Russians,
and many travellers have without inconvenience traversed their
country, or have sailed along its pretty thickly inhabited coast.

Among former travellers on the Chukch peninsula, who visited
the encampments of the coast Chukches, besides Behring, Cook,
and other seafarers, the following may be mentioned :—

The Cossack; PETER ILiry Sin Popov, was sent in 1711 with
two interpreters to examine the country of the Chukches, and
has left some interesting accounts of his observations there
(MULLER, Sammlung Russischer Creschichten, iii. p. 56).

BILLINGS, with his companions SAUER, SARYTSCHEV, &c.,
visited Chukch-land in 1791. Among other things, accom-
companied by Dr. MreRK, two interpreters and eight men, he
made a journey from Metschigme Bay over the interior of
Chukch-land to Yakutsk. Unfortunately the account we
have of this remarkable journey is exceedingly incomplete.’

FERDINAND VON WRANGEL during his famous Siberian
travels was much in contact with the Chukches, and among his
other journeys travelled in the winter of 1823 in dog sledges
along the coast of the Polar Sea from the Kolyma to Kolyutschin
Island (Wrangel, feise, u. pp. 176-231). There are besides

1 Liitke says (Erman’s Archiv, ili. p. 464) that the peaceful relations
with the Chukches began after the conclusion of a peace which was
brought about ten years after the abandonment of Anadyrsk, where for
thirty-six years there had been a garrison of 600 men, costing over a
million roubles. This peace this formerly so quarrelsome people has
kept conscientiously down to our days with the exception of some market
brawls, which induced Treskin, Governor-General of Eastern Siberia,
to conclude with them, in 1817, a commercial treaty which appears to have
been faithfully adhered to, to the satisfaction and advantage of both
parties (Dittmar, p. 128).

2 Miiller has likewise saved from oblivion some other accounts regarding
the Chukches, collected soon after at Anadyrsk. When we now read these
accounts, we find not only that the Chukches knew the Eskimo on the
American side, but also stories regarding the Indians of Western America
penetrated to them, and further, through the authorities in Siberia, came
to Europe, a circumstance which deserves to be kept in mind in judging of
the writings of Herodotus and Marco Polo.

3 Sauer, An Account, &., pp. 255 and 319. Sarytschev, Reise, iibersetzt
von Busse, il. p. 102.

458 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

many notices of the Chukches at other places in the same
work (i. pp. 267-293 ; 11. pp. 156, 168, &c.).

FRIEDRICH VON LUTKE in the course of his circumnavigation
of the globe in 1826-29, came in contact with the population
of the Chukch peninsula, whom he described im detail in
Erman’s Archiv (ui. pp. 446-464). Here it ought to be noted
that, while the population on the North coast consists of true
Chukches, the coast population of the regiom which Liitke visited,
the stretch between the Anadyr and Cape Deschnev consists of
a tribe, Nemollo, which differs from the Chukches, and is
nearly allied to the Eskimo on the American side of
Behring’s Straits.

The English Franklin Expedition in the Plover, commanded
by Captai Moors, wintered in 1848-49 at Chukotskojnos, and,
both at the winter station and in the course of extensive
excursions with dogs along the coast and to the interior of the
country, came much into contact with the natives. The ob-
servations made during the wintering were published im a work
of great importanee for a knowledge of the tribes in question
by Lieutenant W. H. Hooper, Zen Months among the Tents of
the Tuski, London, 1853.

C. von DitrrMsr* travelled m 1853 in the north part of
Kamchatka, and there came in contact with the reindeer
nomads, especially with the Koryiiks. The information he
gives us about the Chukches (p. 126) he had obtaimed from the
Nischni-Kolymsk merchant, TRIFONOV, who had traded with
them for twenty-eight years, and had repeatedly travelled in the
interior of the country.

Interesting contributions to a knowledge of the mode of living
of the reindeer-Chukches were also collected by Baron G. von
MAYDELL, who, in 1868 and 1869, along with Dr. CARL von
NEUMANN and others, made a journey from Yakutsk by Sredni-
Kolymsk and Anjui to Kolyutschin Bay. Unfortunately, with
regard to this expedition, I have only had access to some notices
in the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (vol. 21,
London 1877, p. 213), and: Das Ausland (1880, p. 861). The
proper sketch of the journey is to be found in Jsvestija, published
by the Siberian division of the Russian Geographical Society,
parts 1 and 2.

With reference to the other travellers whose writings are
usually quoted as sources for a knowledge of the Chukches, it
may be mentioned that STELLER and KRASCHENINNIKOV only
touch in passing on the true Chukches, but instead give very
instructive and detailed accounts of the Koryiks, who are as

1 Uber die Koritiken und die ihnen sehr nahe verwandten Tschuktschen
(Bulletin historico-philologique de l’‘Académie de St. Pétersbourg, t. xiil.,
1856, p. 126.)

XIi.] THE COAST AND REINDEER CHUKCHES. 459

nearly allied to the Chukches as the Spaniards to the Portuguese,
but yet. differ considerably in their mode of life; also that
a part of these authors’ statements regarding the Chukches do
not at all refer to that tribe, but to the Eskimo. It. appears
indeed that recently, after the former national enmity had
ceased, mixed races have arisen among these tribes. But it
ought not to be forgotten that they differ widely m origin,
although the Chukches as coming at a later date to the coast
of the Polar Sea have adopted almost completely the hunting
implements and household furniture of the Eskimo; and the
Eskimo agai, in the districts where they come in contact with
the Chukches, have adopted various things from their language.
Like the Lapps and most other European and Asiatic Polar
races, the Chukches fall into two divisions speaking the same
language and belongmeg to the same race, but differmg, con-
siderably in their mode of life. One division consists of remdeer
nomads, who, with their often very numerous. reindeer herds,
wander about between Behring’s Straits, and the Indigirka
and the Penschina Bays. They live by tending reindeer and
by trade, and consider themselves the chief part of the Chukch
tribe. The other division of the race are the coast Chukches,
who do not own any reindeer, but live in fixed but easily
movable and frequently moved tents along the coast between
Chaun Bay and Behring’s Straits. But beyond East. Cape there
is found along the coast of Behring’s Sea another tribe, nearly
allied to the Eskimo. This is Wrangel’s Onkilon, Liitke’s
Namollo. Now, however, Chukches also have settled at several
points on this line of coast, and a portion of the Eskimo have
adopted the language of the superior Chukch race. Thus the
inhabitants at St. Lawrence Bay spoke Chukch, with little
mixture of foreign words, and differed in their mode of life and
appearance only inconsiderably from the Chukches, whom
during the course of the winter we learned to know from nearly
all parts of the Chukch peninsula. The same was the case with
the natives who came on board the Vega while we sailed past
East Cape, and with the two families we visited in Konyam Bay.
But the natives im the north-west part of St. Lawrence Island
talked an Eskimo dialect, quite different from Chukch. There
were, however, many Chukch words incorporated with it. At
Port Clarence on the contrary there lived pure Eskimo. Among
them we found a Chukch woman who informed us. that there
were Chukch villages also on the American side of Behring’s
Strait, north of Prince of Wales Cape. These cannot, however,
be very numerous or populous, as. they are not mentioned in the
accounts of the various English expeditions to those regions ;
they are not noticed for instance in Dr. JOHN SIMPSON’s
instructive memoir on the Eskimo at Behring’s Straits.

460 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

We were unable during the voyage of the Vega to obtain any
data for estimating the number of the reindeer-Chukches. But
the number of the coast Chukches may be arrived at in the follow-
ing way. Lieutenant Nordquist collected from the numerous
foremen who rested at the Vega information as to the names
of the encampments which are to be found at present on the
coast between Chaun Bay and Behring’s Straits, and the number
of tents at each village. He thus ascertained that the number
of the tents in the coast villages amounts to about 400. The
number of inhabitants in every tent may be, according to our
experience, averaged at five. The population on the le of coast.
in question may thus amount to about 2,000, at most to 2,500,
men, women, and children. The number of the remdeer-Chukches
appears to be about the same. The whole population of Chukch
Land may thus now amount to 4,000 or 5,000 persons. The
Cossack Popov already mentioned, reckoned in 1711 that all the
Chukches, both reindeer-owning and those with fixed dwellings,
numbered 2,000 persons.. Thus during the last two centuries,
if these estimates are correct, this Polar race has doubled its
numbers.

In order to give the reader an idea of the language of the
Chukches, I have in a preceding chapter given an extract from
the large vocabulary which Nordquist has collected. There
appear to be no dialects differmg very much from each other.
Whether foreign words borrowed from other Asiatic languages -
have been adopted in Chukch we have not been able to make
out. It is certain that no Russian words are used. The language
strikes me as articulate and euphonious. It is nearly allied to
the Koryiik, but so different from other, both East-Asiatic and
American, tongues, that philologists have not yet succeeded in
clearmg up the relationship of the Chukches to other races.

Like most other Polar tribes, the Chukches now do not belong
to any unmixed race. This one is soon convinced of, if he con-
siders attentively the inhabitants of a large tent-village. Some
are tall, with tallowlike, raven-black hair, brown complexion,
high aquiline nose—in short, with an exterior that reminds us
of the descriptions we read of the North American Indians.
Others again by their dark hair, slight beard, sunk nose or
rather projecting cheek-bones and oblique eyes, remind us
distinctly of the Mongolian race; and finally we meet among
them with very fair faces, with features and complexion which
lead us to suspect that they are descendants of runaways or
prisoners of war of purely Russian origin. The most common
type is—straight, coarse, black hair of moderate length; the
brow tapering upwards; the nose finely formed, but with its
root often flattened: eyes by no means small; well-developed
black eyebrows; projecting cheeks often swollen by frostbite,

X11] ITARDINESS OF THE CHUKCHES, 461

which is specially observable when the face is looked at from the

side ; light, slightly brown complexion, which in the young women

is often nearly as red and white as in Europeans. The beard is

always scanty. Nearly all are stout and well grown; we saw no

cripples among them. The young women often strike one as
very pretty if one can ridvoneself of the unpleasant impression of
the dirt, which is never washed away but by the drifting snow of
winter, and of the nauseous train-oil odour which in winter they

carry with them from the close tent-chamber. The children

nearly always make a pleasant impression by their healthy

appearance, and their friendly and becoming behaviour.

The Chukches are a hardy race, but exceedingly indolent
when want of food does not force them to exertion. The men
during their hunting excursions pass whole days in a cold of
—~30° to —40° out upon the ice, without protection and without
carrying with them food or fuel. In such cases they slake their
thirst with snow, and assuage their hunger, if they have been suc-
cessful in hunting, with the blood and flesh of the animals they
have killed. Women nearly naked often during severe cold leave
for a while the inner tent, or tent-chamber, where the train-oil
lamp maintains a heat that is at times oppressive. <A foreigner’s
visit induces the completely naked children to half creep out from
under the curtain of reindeer skin which separates the sleeping

chamber from the exterior tent, in which, as it is not heated, the
- temperature is generally little higher than that of the air outside.
In this temperature the mothers do not hesitate to show their
naked children, one or two years of age, to visitors for some
moments.

Diseases are notwithstanding uncommon, with the exception
that in autumn, before the severe cold commences, nearly all
suffer from a cough and cold. Very bad skin eruptions and
sores also occur so frequently that a stay in the inner tent is
thereby commonly rendered disgusting to Europeans. Some of
the sores however are merely frostbites, which most Chukches
bring on themselves by the carelessness with which during
high winds they expose the bare neck, breast, and wrists to
the lowest temperature. When frostbite has happened it is
treated, even though of considerable extent, with extreme care-
lessness. They endeavour merely to thaw the frozen place as fast
as possible partly by chafing, partly by heating. On the other
hand we never saw any one “who had had a deep frostbite on the
hands or feet, a circumstance which must be ascribed to the
serviceable nature of their shoes and gloves. From the beginning
of October 1878 to the middle of July 1879 no death appears
to have happened at any of the encampments near us. During
the same time the number of the inhabitants was increased by
two or three births, During the wife’s pregnancy the husband

MAN
WRN

AK

TYPICAL CHUKCH FACES,

1. Manschetsko, a man from Pitlekaj. 2. Young man from Irgunnuk. 38. Chajdodlin, a man from
Irgunnuk, 4, Reindeer-Chukch. 5. Old man from Irgunnuk. 6. Man from Yinretlen.

(After photographs by L. Palander.)

ee;

i

Z
Fey!
‘tA

At

LA
LF

TYPICAL CHUKCH FACES

karema

an

5. Young man from V

3, 4. Rotschitlen,

Young man from Irgunnuk.

itlekaj.

6.

an from P.

Nautsing, a wom

9

1,

(After photographs by L. Palander.)

464 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

was very affectionate to her, gave her his constant company in
the tent, kissed and fondled her frequently in the presence of
strangers, and appeared to take a pride in showing her to
visitors.

We had no opportunity of witnessing any burial or marriage.
It appears as if the Chukches sometimes burn their dead, some-
times expose them on the tundra as food for beasts of prey, with
weapons, sledges, and household articles. They have perhaps
begun to abandon the old custom of burning the dead, since the
hunting has failen off so that the supply of blubber for burning
has diminished. I have before described the pits filled with
burned bones which Dr. Stuxberg found on the 9th September,
1878, by the bank of a dried-up rivulet. We took them for
graves, but not having seen any more at our winter station, we
began to entertain doubts as to the correctness of our observa-
tion.’ It is at least certain that the inhabitants of Pitlekaj
exclusively bury their dead by laying them out on the tundra.

AA
CACY

PLAN OF A CHUKCH GRAVE.
After a drawing by A. Stuxberg.)

Regarding the man, buried or exposed in this way, whom
Johnsen found on the 15th October, Dr. Almquist, who himself
visited the place the next day, makes the following statement :—

“The place was situated five to seven kilometres from the
village Yinretlen, near the bottom of the little valley which
runs from this village in a southerly direction into the interior.
The body was exposed on a little low knoll only two fathoms
across. It was covered with loose snow, and was not frozen very
hard. When it was loosened there was no proper pit to be seen in
the underlying snow and ice. The corpse lay from true N.N.W.
to S.8.E., with the head to the former quarter. Under the head
lay two black rounded stones, such as the Chukches use in

1 That the Chukches burn their dead with various ceremonies is stated
by Sarytschev on the ground of communications by the interpreter Daurkin,
who lived among the reindeer-Chukches from 1787 to 1791, in order to
learn their language and customs, and to announce the arrival of Billings’
expedition (Sarytschev’s Reise, ii. p. 108). The statement is thus certainly
quite trustworthy. The coast population with whom Hooper came in
contact, on the other hand, laid out their dead on special stages, where
Fae were allowed to be eaten up by ravens or to decay (Joc. cit.
p: 88).

XIL.] CHUKCH GRAVES. 465

housekeeping. Besides these there was no trace of anything
underlying or covering the corpse. The clothes had been torn
by beasts of prey from the body ; the back was quite untouched,
but the face and breast were much wasted, and the arms and
legs almost wholly eaten up. On the knoll evident traces of
the wolf, the fox, and the raven were visible. Close to the
right side of the corpse had lain the weapons which Johnsen had
brought home the day before. Near the feet was found a sledge
completely broken in pieces, evidently new and smashed on the
spot. Not far off, we found lying on the snow pieces of a pesk
and of foot-coverings, both new and of the finest quality.
Beasts of prey had undoubtedly torn them off and pulled them
about. On the knoll there were found besides five or six other
graves, distinguished by small stones or a wooden block lying on
the even ground. Two of the graves were ornamented by a
collection of reindeer horns. The severe cold prevented me
from ascertaining whether these stones concealed the remains
of buried corpses. I considered that I might take the Chukch’s
head, as otherwise the wolves would doubtless have eaten it up.
It was taken on board and skeletonised.”

In the spring of 1879, after the snow was melted, we had
further opportunities of seemg a large number of burying-
places, or more correctly of places where dead Chukches had
been laid out. They were marked by stones placed ina peculiar
way, and were measured and examined in detail by Dr. Stuxberg,
who gives the following description of them :—

“The Chukch graves on the heights south of Pitlekaj and
Yinretlen, which were examined by me on the 4th and 7th
July, 1879, were nearly fifty in number. Every grave consisted
of an oval formed of large lying stones. At one end there was
generally a large stone raised on its edge, and from the opposite
end there went out one or two pieces of wood lying on the
ground. The area within the stone circle was sometimes over-
laid with small stones, sometimes free and overgrown with grass.
At all the graves, at a distance of four to seven paces from the
stone standing on its edge in the longitudinal axis of the grave
or a little to the side of it, there was another smaller circle of
stones inclosing a heap of reindeer horns, commonly containing
also broken seals’ skulls and other fragments of bones. Only
in one grave were found pieces of human bones. The graves
were evidently very old, for the bits of wood at the ends were
generally much decayed and almost wholly covered with earth,
and the stones were completely overgrown with lichens on the
upper side. I estimate the age of these graves at about two
hundred years.”

Hy Hi

466 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

The Chukches do not dwell in snow huts, nor in wooden
houses, because wood for building is not to be found in the
country of the coast Chukches, and because wooden houses are
unsuitable for the remdeer nomad. They live summer and
winter in tents of a peculiar construction, not used by any other
race. For in order to afford protection from the cold the tent is
double ; the outer envelope inclosing an inner tent or sleeping
chamber. This has the form of a parallelopiped, about 3°5
metres long, 2°2 metres broad, and 1°8 metre high. It is sur-
rounded by thick, warm, reindeer skins, and is further covered
with a layer of grass. The floor consists of a walrus skin
stretched over a foundation of twigs and straw. At night the
floor is covered with a carpet of reindeer skins, which is taken
away during the day. The rooms at the sides of the imner tent
are also shut off by curtains, and serve as pantries. The imner tent

TENT FRAME AT PITLEKAJ.
(After a drawing by G. Bove.)

is warmed by three train-oil lamps, which together with the heat
given off by the numerous human beings packed together in the
tent, raise the temperature to such a height that the inhabitants
even during the severest winter cold may be completely naked.
The work of the women and the cooking are carried on in winter in
this tent-chamber, very often also the calls of nature are obeyed
init. All this conduces to make the atmosphere prevailing there
unendurable. There are also, however, cleanlier families, in
whose sleeping chamber the air is not so disgusting.

In summer they live during the day, and cook and work, in
the outer tent. This consists of seal and walrus skins sewed
together, which however are generally so old, hairless, and full
of holes, that they appear to have been used by several genera-
tions. The skins of the outer tent are stretched over wooden

XL] CHUKCHES’ TENTS. 467

ribs, which are carefully bound together by thongs of skin.
The ribs rest partly-on posts, partly on tripods of driftwood.
The posts are driven into the ground, and the tripods get the
necessary steadiness by a heavy stone or a seal-skin sack filled
with sand being suspended from the middle of them. In order
further to steady the tent a yet heavier stone is in the same
way suspended by a strap from the top of the tent-roof, or the
summit of the roof is made fast to the ground by thick
thongs. At one place a tackle from a wrecked vessel was
used for this purpose, being tightened with a block between
the top of the roof and an iron hook frozen into the ground.
The ribs in every tent are besides supported by T-formed
cross stays.

The entrance consists of a low door, which, when necessary,
may be closed with a reindeer skin. The floor of the outer
tent consists of the bare ground. This is kept very clean, and
the few household articles are hung up carefully and in an
orderly manner along the walls on the inner and outer sides of
the tent. Near the tent are some posts, as high as a man,
driven into the ground, with cross pieces on which skin boats,
oars, Javelins, &c., are laid, and from which fishing and seal nets
are suspended.

In the neighbourhood of the dwellings the storehouse is placed.
It consists of a cellar excavated at some suitable place. The
sites of old Onkilon dwellings are often used for this purpose.
The descent is commonly covered with pieces of driftwood which
are loaded with stones; at one place the door, or rather the
hatch, of the cellar consisted of a whale’s shoulder-blade. In
consequence of the unlimited confidence which otherwise was
wont to prevail between the natives and us, we were surprised
to find them unwilling to give the Vega men admittance to
their storehouses. Possibly the report of our excavations for
old implements at the sites of Onkilon dwellings at Irkaipij had
spread to Kolyutschin, and been interpreted as attempts at
plunder.

The tents were always situated on the sea shore, generally on
the small neck of land which separates the strand lagoons from
the sea. They are erected and taken down in a few hours. A
Chukch family can therefore easily change its place of residence,
and does remove very often from one village to another. Some-
times it appears to own the wooden frame of a tent at several
places, and in such cases at removal there are taken along
only the tent covering, the dogs, and the most necessary skin
and household articles. The others are left without inclosure,
lock, or watch, at the former dwelling-place, and one is certain
to find all untouched on his return. During short stays at
a place there are used, even when the temperature of the air

HH 2

468 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

is considerably under the freezing-point, exceedingly defective
tents or huts made with the skin boats that may happen to
be available. Thus a young couple who returned in spring to
Pitlekay lived happy and content in a single thin and ragged
tent or conical skin hut which below where it was broadest was
only two and a half metres across. An accurate mmventory,
which I took during the absence of the newly married pair,
showed that their whole household furniture consisted of a bad
lamp, a good American axe, some reindeer skins,
a small piece of mirror, a great many empty
preserve tins from the Vega, which among other
things were used for cooking, a fire-drill, a comb,
leather for a pair of moccasins, some sewing im-
plements, and some very incomplete and defective
tools.

The boats are made of walrus skin, sewed together
and stretched over a hght frame-work of wood and
pieces of bone. The different parts of the frame-
work are bound together with thongs of skin or
strings of whalebone. In form and _ size the
Chukches’ large boat, atkuat, called by the
Russians baydar, corresponds completely with the
Greenlander’s wmiak or woman’s boat. It is so
light that four men can take it upon their
shoulders, and yet so roomy that thirty men can
be conveyed init. One seldom sees anathuat, or
boats intended for only one man; they are much
worse built and uglier than the Greenlander’s
kayak. The large boats are rowed with broad-
bladed oars, of which every man or woman
manages only one. By means of these oars a
sufficient number of rowers can for a little raise
the speed of the boat to ten kilometres per hour.
Like the Greenlanders, however, they often cease
rowing in order to rest, laugh, and chatter, then
row furiously for some minutes rest themselves
again, row rapidly, and so on. When the sea is
' covered with thin newly formed ice they put two
One troe men in the fore of the boat with one leg over

ne-sixteenth of . ° : .
the natural size. In order to trample the ice in pieces.

During winter the boats are laid up, and instead
the dog-sledges are put in order. These are of a different con-
struction from the Greenland sledges, commonly very lght and
narrow, made of some flexible kind of wood, and shod with plates
of whales’ jawbones, whales’ ribs, or whalebone. In order to m-
prove the running, the runners before the start are carefully
covered with a layer of ice from two or three millimetres in

XII. ] DOG SLEDGES. 469

thickness by repeatedly pouring water over them. The dif-
ferent parts of the sledge are not fastened together by nails, but
are bound together by strips of skin or strings of whalebone.
On the low uncomfortable seat there commonly lies a piece of
skin, generally of the Polar bear. The number of dogs that are
harnessed to each sledge is variable. I have seen a Chukch
riding behind two small lean dogs, who however appeared to
draw their heavy load over even hard snow without any extra-
ordinary exertion. At other sledges I have seen ten or twelve
dogs, and a sledge laden with goods was drawn by a team of
twenty-eight. The dogs are generally harnessed one pair before
another to a long lime common to all,? sometimes in the case of
short excursions more than two abreast, or so irregularly that
their position in relation to the sledge appears to have depended
merely on the accidental length of the draught-line and the
caprice of the driver. The dogs are guided not by reins but by
continual crying and shouting, accompanied by lashes from a
long whip. There is, besides, in every properly equipped sledge
a short and thick staff mounted with iron, with a number
of iron rings attached to the upper end. When nothing else
will do, this staff is thrown at the offending animal. The staff
is so heavy that the animal may readily get its death by such a
throw. The dogs know this, and in consequence are so afraid of
this grim implement that the rattling of the rings is sufficient
to induce them to put forth extreme efforts. During rests the
team is tied to the staff, which is driven into the snow. -

The dog harness is made of inch-wide straps of skin, forming
a neck or shoulder band, united on both sides by a strap to. a
girth, to one side of which the draught strap is fastened.
Thanks to the excellent protection against the harness galling
which the bushy coat of the dogs affords, little attention is
neéded for the harness, and I have never seen a single dog that
was idle in consequence of sores from the harness. On the
other hand, their feet are often hurt by the sharp snow. On
this account the equipment of every sledge embraces a number

1 If the runners are not shod with ice in this way the friction between
them and the hard snow is very gyeat during severe cold, and the draught
accordingly exceedingly heavy.

2 Nearly all the travellers from a great distance who passed the Vega
had their dogs harnessed in this way. On the other hand, Sarytschev says
that at St. Lawrence Bay all the dogs were harnessed abreast, and that this
was the practice at Moore’s winter quarters at Chukotskojnos is shown by
the drawing at p. 71 of Hooper’s work, already quoted. We ought to
remember that at both these places the population were Eskimos who
had adopted the Chukch language. The Greenland Eskimo have their
dogs harnessed abreast, the Kamchadales in a long row. Naturally dogs
harnessed abreast are unsuitable for wooded regions. The different
methods of harnessing dogs mentioned here, therefore, indicate that the
Eskimo have lived longer than the Chukches north of the limit of trees.

470 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

of dog shoes of the appearance shown in the accompanying
woodeut. They are used only in case of need.

The Chukch dogs are of the same breed, but smaller, than
the Eskimo dogs in Danish Greenland. They resemble wolves,
are long-legged, long-haired, and shaggy. The ears are short,
commonly upright ; their colour very variable, from black or
white, and black or white spotted, to grey or yellowish-brown.
For innumerable generations they have been used as draught
animals, while as watch dogs they have not been required in a
country where theft or robbery appears never to take place.
The power of barking they have therefore completely lost, or
perhaps they never possessed it. Hven a Kuropean may come
into the outer tent without any of the dogs there imforming
their owners sleeping in the inner tent by a sound of the
foreigner’s arrival.

On the other hand, they are good though slow draught
animals, being capable of long-continued exer-
tion. They are as dirty and as peaceable
as their owners. There are no fights made
between dog-teams belonging to different
tents, and they are rare between the dogs of
an encampment and those of strangers. In
Kurope dogs are the friends of their masters
and the enemies of each other; here they
are the friends of each other and the slaves
of their masters. In winter they appear
in case of necessity to get along with very

little food; they are then exceedingly lean,

ROAR | and for the most part lie motionless im some

Ta Garal size, snow-drift. They seldom leave the neighbour-

hood of the tent alone, not even to search for
food or hunt at their own hand and for their own account.
This appears to me so much the more remarkable, as they
are often several days, I am inclined to say weeks, in suc-
cession without getting any food from their masters. A
piece of a whale, with the skin and part of the flesh
adhering, washed out of frozen sandy strata thus lay un-
touched some thousand paces from Pitlekaj; and the neigh-
bourhood of the tents, where the hungry dogs were constantly
wandering about, formed, as has been already stated, a favourite
haunt for ptarmigan and hares during winter. Young dogs
some months old are already harnessed along with the team in
order that they may in time become accustomed to the draught
tackle. During the cold season the dogs are permitted to live
in the outer tent, the females with their young even in the
inner. We had two Scotch collies with us on the Vega. They
at first frightened the natives very much with their bark.

XI1.] CHUKCH DOGS. 471

To the dogs of Chukches they soon took the same superior
standing as the European claims for himself in relation to the
savage. The dog was distinctly preferred by the female Chukch
canine population, ‘and that too without the fights to which
such favour on the part of the fair commonly gives rise. A
numerous canine progeny of mixed Scotch- Chukeh breed has
thus arisen at Pitlekaj. The young dogs had a complete
resemblance to their father, and the natives were quite charmed
with them.

When a dog is to be killed the Chukch stabs it with his
spear, and then lets it bleed to death. Even when the scarcity
was so great that the natives at Pitlekaj and Yinretlen lived
mainly on the food we gave them, they did not eat the dogs
they killed. On the other hand they had no objection to eating
a shot crow.

When the Chukch goes out on the ice to hunt seals he takes
his dogs with him, and it is these which take home the catch,
commonly with the draught- line fastened directly to the head
of the killed seal, which is then turned on its back and dragged
over the ice without anything under it. One of the mbhabi-
tants of Yinretlen returned from the open water off the coast
after a successful hunting expedition with five seals, of which
the smallest was laid on the sledge, the others being fastened
one behind the other in a long row. After the last was drawn
a long pole, which was used in setting the net.

The dress of the Chukches is made of reindeer or seal-skin.
The former, because it is warmer, is preferred as material for
the winter dress. The men in winter are clad in two pesks ;
that which is worn next the body is of thin skin with the hair
inwards, the outer is of thick skin with the hair outwards.
Besides, they wear, when it rains or wet snow falls, a great coat
of gut or of cotton cloth, which they call calico. On one oc-
easion I saw such an overcoat made of a kind of reindeer-
chamois leather, which was of excellent quality and evidently
of home manufacture. It had been originally white, but was or-
namented with broad brown painted borders. Some red and blue
woollen shirts which we gave them were also worn above the
skin clothes, and by their showy colours awakened great satisfac-
tion in the owners. The Chukch pesk is shorter than the Lapp
one. It does not reach quite to the knees, and is confined at
the waist with a belt. Under the pesk are worn two pairs of
trousers, the inner pair with the hair inwards, and the outer with
the hair outwards. The trousers are well made, close fitting, and
terminate above the foot. The foot-covering consists of remdeer
or seal-skin moccasins, which above the foot are fastened to
the trousers in the way common among the Lapps. The soles
are of walrus-skin or bear-skin, and have the hair side inwards.

472 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

On the other parts of the moccasin the hair is outwards. Within
the shoes are seal-skin stockings and hay. The head covering
consists of a hood embroidered with beads, over which in severe
cold is drawn an outer hood bordered with dog-skin. The outer
hood is often quite close under the chin, and extends im a very
well-fitting way over the shoulders. To a complete dress there
also belong a skin neckerchief or boa, and a neck covering of
multiple reindeer-skins, or of different kinds of skins sewn
together in chess-board-like squares. In summer and far into
the autumn the men go bareheaded, although they clip the hair
on the crown of the head close to the root.

During the warm season of the year a number of the winter
wraps are laid off in proportion to the increase of the heat, so

CHUKCH FACE-TATTOOING.
(After a drawing by A. Stuxberg.)

that the dress finally consists merely of a pesk, an overcoat, and
a pair of trousers. The summer moccasins are often as long in
the leg as our sea-boots. In the tent the men wear only short
trousers reaching to the hip, together with leather belts (health-
belts) at the waist and on the arms. The man’s dress is not
much ornamented. On the other hand the men often wear
strings of beads in the ears, or a skin band set with large,
tastefully arranged beads or a leather band with some large
beads on the brow. ‘The leather band they will not willingly
part with, and a woman told us that the beads in it indicate
the number of enemies the wearer has killed. I am, however,
quite certain that this was only an empty boast. Probably our

XU. ] CHUKCH DRESS. 73

informant referred to a tradition handed down from former war-
like periods to the present time, and thus we have here only a
Chukch form of the boasting about martial feats common even
among civilised nations.
To the dress of the men there belongs further a screen for the
eyes, which is often beautifully ornamented with beads and
silver mounting. This screen is worn especially in spring as a
protection from the strong sunlight reflected from the snow-
plains. At this season of the year snow-blindness is very
common, but notwithstanding this snow-spectacles of the kind
which the Eskimo and even the Samoyeds use are unknown
here.

CHUKCH CHILDREN.

a. Girl from Irgunnnk. (After a photograph by L. Palander.) b. Boy from Pitlekaj, with his
mother’s hood on. (After a drawing by the seaman Hansson.)

The men are not tattooed, but have sometimes a black or red
cross painted on the cheek. They wear the hair cut close to
the root, with the exception of a short tuft right on the crown
of the head and a short fringe above the brow. The women
have long hair, parted right in the middle, and plaited along
with strings of beads into plaits which hang down by the
ears. They are generally tattooed on the face, sometimes also
on the arms or other parts of the body. The tattooing is done
by degrees ; possibly certain lines are first made at marriage.

The dress of the women, like that of the men, is double
during winter. The outer pesh, which is longer and wider than

474 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHaP.

the man’s, passes downwards into a sort of very wide trousers.
The sleeves too are exceedingly wide, so that the arm may easily
be drawn in and stuck out. Under the outer pesk there is an
inner pesk, or skin-shirt, and under them a pair of very short
trousers is worn. Where the outer pesk ends the moccasins
begin. At the neck the pesk is much cut away, so that a part
of the back is bare. I have seen girls go with the upper part
of the back exposed in this way even in a cold of — 30° or — 40°.
The stockings have the hair inwards, they are bordered with
dog-skin, and go to the knees. The moccasins, chin-covers,
hoods, and neckerchiefs differ little from the corresponding
articles of men’s dress. The woman’s dress is in general more
ornamented than the man’s, and the skins used for it appear to
be more carefully chosen and prepared. In the inner tent the
women go nearly naked, only with quite short under-trousers of
skin or calico or a narrow cingulum pudicitie. On the naked

SNOW-SHOES.

a. The common kind. 6. Intended to be used in the way shown in the drawing on the
opposite page.

(One-thirteenth of the natural size.)

body there are worn besides one or two leather bands on one
arm, a leather band on the throat, another round the waist, and
some bracelets of iron or less frequently of copper on the wrists.
The younger women however do not like to show themselves in
this dress to foreigners, and they therefore hasten at their
entrance to cover the lower part of the body with the pesk, or
some other piece of dress that may be at hand.

When the children are some years old they get the same
dress as their parents, ditferent for boys and girls. While small
they are put into a wide skin coverimg with the legs and arms
sewed together downwards. Behind there is a four-cornered
opening through which moss (the white, dead part of
Sphagnum), intended to absorb the excreta, is put in and
changed. At the ends of the arms two loops are fastened,
through which the child’s legs are passed when the mother

xm] SNOW-SHOES. 475

wishes to put it away in some corner of the tent. The dress
itself appears not to be changed until it has become too small.
In the inner tent the children go completely naked.

Both men and women use snow-shoes during winter. With-
out them they will not willingly undertake any long walk in
loose snow. They consider such a walk so tiresome, that they
loudly commiserated one of my crew, who had to walk without
snow-shoes after drifting weather from the village Yinretlen to
the vessel, about three kilometres distant. Finally a woman’s
compassion went so far that she presented him with a pair; an
instance of generosity on the part of our Chukch friends which
otherwise was exceedingly rare. The frame of the snow-shoes
is made of wood, the cross-pieces are of strong and well-stretched
thongs. This snow-shoe corresponds completely with that of
the Indians, and is exceedingly serviceable and easy to get

AN AINO MAN SKATING AFTER A REINDEER.

(Japanese drawing.)

accustomed to. Another implement for travelling over snow
was offered by a Chukch who drove past the vessel in the
beginning of February. It consisted of a pair of immensely
wide skates of thin wood, covered with seal-skin, and raised at
both sides. I had difficulty in understanding how these broad
shapeless articles could be used with advantage until I learned
from the accompanying drawing that they may be employed as
a sort of sledges. The drawing is taken from a Japanese work,
whose title when translated runs thus: A Journey to the
north part of Japan (Yezo), 1804 (No. 565 of the Japanese
library I brought home with me).

In consequence of the difficulty which the Chukch has during
winter in procuring water by melting snow over the train-oil
lamp, there can be no washing of the body at that season of the
year. Faces are however whipped clean by the drifting snow,

476 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. (CHAP, X11.

but at the same time are generally swollen or sore from frost-
bite. On the whole, the disposition of the Chukches to clean-
liness is shght, and above all, their ideas of what is clean or
unclean differs considerably from ours. Thus the women use
urine as a wash for the face. Ata common meal the hand is
often used as a spoon, and after it is finished, a bowl filled with
newly-passed urme instead of water is handed round the
company for washing the hands. Change of clothes takes place
seldom, and even when the outer dress is clean, new and well
cut, of carefully-chosen beautiful skins, the under-dress is very
dirty, and vermin numerous enough, though
less so than might have been expected.
Food is often eaten in a way which we
consider disgusting, a titbit, for instance, is
passed from mouth to mouth. The vessels
in which food is served are used in many
ways and seldom cleaned. On the other
hand it may be stated that, in order not to
make a stay in the confined tent-chamber
too uncomfortable, certain rules are strictly
observed. Thus, for instance, it is not per-
mitted in the interior of the tent to spit on
the floor, but this must be done into a vessel
which in case of necessity is used as a night-
utensil. In every outer tent there hes a
specially carved reindeer horn, with which
snow is removed from the clothes ; the outer
pesk is usually put off before one goes into
the inner tent and the shoes are carefully
freed from snow. The carpet of walrus-
skin, which covers the floor of the inner
; ___ tent, is accordingly dry and clean. Even

@. HUNTING cup (sucking :

tube). (One-fourth of the outer tent is swept clean and free from
re ay sca loose snow, and the snow is daily shovelled
“eighth of the natural away from the tent doors with a spade

Be of whalebone. Every article both in

the outer and inner tent is laid in its
proper place, and so on.

As ornaments glass beads are principally used, some of them
being suspended from the neck and ears, others sewed upon
the hood and other articles of dress, or plaited into the hair.
Embroidery of very pleasing patterns is also employed. In
order to embellish the pesks strips of skin or marmots’ and
squirrels’ tails, &e., are sewed upon them. Often a variega-
ted artificial tail of different skins is fixed to the hood be-
hind, or the skin of the hood is so chosen that the ears of
the animal project on both sides of the head. Along with

\ beh Me
Say
ney

CHUKCH WEAPONS AND HUNTING IMPLEMENTS.

1. Harpoon (one-fifteenth of the natural size). 2. Spear found at a grave (one-fourth). 3. Bi
sling (one-eighth). 4. Darts with whip-sling for casting them (erie noventih iy ene
with wooden handle for throwing (one-twelfth). 6. Leister of bone (one-fourth). 7. Ivory
coat of mail (one-ninth).

478 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ouap,

the beads are fixed amulets, wooden tongs, small bone heads

CHUKCH BOW AND QUIVER.
(One-eighth of the natural size.)

or bone figures, pieces of metal,
coins, &e. One child had sus-
pended from its neck an old
Chinese coin with a square
hole im the middle, together
with a new American five-
cent piece,

In former times beautiful
and good weapons were pro-
bably highly prized by so war-
like a people as the Chukches,
but now weapons are properly
scarce antiquities, which, how-
ever, are still regarded with a
certain respect, and therefore
are not readily parted with.
The lance which was found
beside the corpse (fig. 2 on
p. 477) shows by its still par-
tially preserved gold decora-
tions that it had been forged
by the hand of an artist.
Probably it has formed part
of the booty won long ago m
the fights with the Cossacks.
I procured by barter an ivory
coat of mail (fig. 7 on p. 477),
and remains of another. The
ivory plates of the coat of mail
are twelve centimetres in
Jeneth, four in breadth, and
nearly one in thickness, holes
being bored at their edges
for the leather thongs by
which the plates are bound
together. This binding has
been so arranged that the
whole coat of mail, when not
in use, may be rolled together.

Along with the spear and
the coat of mail the old
Chukches used the bow for
martial purposes. Now this
weapon is employed only for
hunting, but it appears as if
even for this purpose it would

XI1.] THE BOW AND ARROW USED IN HUNTING. 479

soon go out of use. Some of the natives, however, use
the bow with great accuracy of aim. The bows which I
procured commonly consisted of a badly worked, slightly
bent, elastic piece of wood, with the ends drawn together by
askin thong. Only some old bows had a finer form. They
were larger, and made with care; for instance, they were
covered with birch-bark, and strengthened by an artistic
plaiting of sinews on the outer side. The arrows are of many

CHUKCH ARROWS.
(One-ninth of the natural size.) a. An arrowhead (one-half the natural size).

kinds, partly with bone or wooden, and partly with iron, points.
Feathers are generally wanting. The shaft is a clumsily worked
piece of wood. Crossbows are occasionally used. We have
even seen bows for playthings, with carefully made, iron-pointed
arrows. At the encampments near the winter station we found
a couple of percussion-lock guns, with caps, powder and lead.
They were evidently little used, and my attempt to induce the
Chukches to undertake long journeys by promises of a gun
with the necessary supply of powder and lead completely
failed. When the Chukch, who carried our letters to Nischni

480 ~ THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA, [CHAP.

Kolymsk, was after his return rewarded with a red shirt, a
gun, caps, powder and ball, he wished to exchange the gun and
ammunition for an axe.

The principal livelihood of the Chukches is derived from
hunting and fishing. Both are very abundant at certain seasons
of the year, but are less productive during the cold season, in
which case, in consequence of the little forethought of the
savage, there arises great scarcity both of food and fuel and
the means of melting snow. Of their hunting and _ fishing
implements I cannot give so complete accounts as I should
wish, because they very carefully avoided taking any of the
Vega’s hunters with them on their hunting excursions.

The rough seal is taken with nets, made of strong’ seal-skin
thongs. The nets are set In summer among the ground-ices
along the shore. The animal gets entangled in the net and is
suffocated, as it can no longer come to the surface to breathe.
In winter the seal is taken partly with nets in “leads” among
the ice, partly with the harpoon when it crawls out of its hole ;
it is also taken by means of a noose of thongs placed over its
hole. In order to avoid the loss of the valuable seal-blood,
which is considered an extraordinary delicacy by the Chukches,
the animal is never killed by an edged tool, if that can be
avoided, but by repeated blows on the head. The bear is killed
by the lance or knife, the latter, according to the statement of a
Chukch, being the surest weapon; the walrus and the largest
kind of seals with the harpoon (fig. 1, p. 477), or a lance
resembling the Greenlander’s. Even the whale is harpooned,
but with a harpoon considerably larger than the common, and
to which as many as six inflated seal-skins are fastened. In
order to kill a whale a great many such harpoons must be
struck into it. Birds are taken in snares, or killed with bird-
javelins, arrows, and slings. The last mentioned (fig. 3, p. 477)
consist of a number of round balls of bone fastened to leather
thongs, which are knotted together. Some feathers are often
fixed to the knot in order to increase the resistance of the air to
this part of the sling. When the sling is thrown the bone balls
are thereby scattered in all directions, and the probability of
hitting becomes greater. Every man and boy in summer carries
with him such a sling, often bound round his head, and is
immediately prepared to cast it at flocks of birds flying past.
Common slings are also used, consisting of two thongs and a
piece of skin fastened to them. The bird-dart (fig. 5, p. 477)
completely resembles that used by the Eskimo. A kind of
snare was used by the boys at Yinretlen to catch small birds
for our zoologist. They were made of whalebone fibres.

Fish are caught partly with nets, partly with the hook or with
a sort of leister (fig. 6, p. 477). The nets are made of sinew-

XI] - THE FOOD OF THE CHUKCHES. 481

thread. I procured several of these, and was surprised at the
small value which the natives set upon them, notwithstanding
the hard labour which must have been required for preparing
the thread and making the net. The nets are also sometimes
used as drift-nets. The fishing-rod consists of a shaft only
thirty centimetres long, to which is fixed a short line made of
sinews. The extreme end of the line passes through a large
sinker of ivory, to which are attached two or three “tufts each
with its hook of bone only, or of bone and copper, or bone and
iron. The hook has three or four points projecting in different
directions. I have before described how the hook is used in
autumn in fishing for roach, also how the productive fishing
goes on in the neighbourhood of Tjapka.

Even for the coast Chukch reindeer flesh appears to form an
important article of food. He probably purchases his stock of
it from the remdeer-Chukches for train-oil, skin straps, walrus
tusks, and perhaps fish. I suppose that part of the frozen
reindeer blood, which the inhabitants of the villages at our
winter station used for soup, had been obtained in the same
way. Wild reindeer, or reimdeer that had run wild, were
hunted with the lasso. Such animals, however, do not appear
now to be found in any large numbers on the Chukch peninsula.

Besides fish and flesh the Chukches consume immense quanti-
ties of herbs and other substances from the vegetable kingdom.1
The most important of these are the leaves and young branches
of a great many different plants (for instance Salix, Rhodiola,
&e.) which are collected and after bemg cleaned are preserved
in seal-skin sacks. Intentionally or unintentionally the contents
of the sacks sour during the course of the summer. In autumn
they freeze together to a lump of the form of the stretched
seal-skin. The frozen mass is cut in pieces and used with flesh,
much in the same way as we eat bread. Occasionally a vegetable
soup is made from the pieces along with water, and is eaten
warm. In the same way the contents of the reindeer stomach
is used. Algze and different kinds of roots are also eaten, among
the latter a kind of wrinkled tubers, which, as already stated
at p. 340, have a very agreeable taste.

In summer the Chukches eat cloud-berries, red bilberries, and
other berries, which are said to be found in great abundance in
the interior of the country. The quantity of vegetable matter
which is collected for food at that season of the year is very
considerable, and the natives do not appear to be very particular
in their choice, if the leaves are only green, juicy, and free from

1 An exhaustive treatise on the food-substances which the Chukches
gather from the vegetable kingdom, written by Dr. Kjellman, is to be
found in The Scientific Work of the Vega Expedition. Popov already states
that the Chukches eat many berries, roots, and herbs (Miller, iii. p. 59).

TE

482 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

any bitter taste. When the inhabitants, in consequence of
scarcity of food, removed in the beginning of February from
Pitlekaj, they carried with them several sacks of frozen veget-
ables, and there were still some left in the cellars to be taken
away as required. In the tents at St. Lawrence Bay there lay
heaps of leaf-clad willow-twigs and sacks filled with leaves and
stalks of Rhodiola. The writers who quote the Chukches as
an example of a race living exclusively on substances derived
from the animal kingdom thus commit a complete mistake. On
the contrary, they appear at certain seasons of the year to be more

“graminivorous” than any other people I know, and with respect
to this their taste appears to me to give the anthropologist a hint
of certain traits of the mode of life of the people of the Stone Age
which have been completely overlooked. To judge from the
Chukches our primitive ancestors by no means so much re-
sembled beasts of prey as they are commonly imagined to have
done, and it may, perhaps, have been the case that “bellum
omnium inter omnes” was first brought in with the higher
culture of the Bronze or Iron Age.

The cooking of the Chukches, like that of most wild races,
is very simple. After a successful catch all the dwellers in the
tent gormandise on the killed animal, and appear to find a
special pleasure in making their faces and hands as bloody as
possible. Alternately with the raw flesh are eaten pieces of
blubber and marrow, and bits of the intestines which have been
freed from their contents merely by pressing between the fingers.
Fish is eaten not only in a raw state, but also frozen so hard
that it can be broken in pieces. When opportunity offers the
Chukches do not, however, neglect to boil their food, or to roast
pieces of flesh over the train-oil lamp—the word roast ought
however in this case to be exchanged for soot. Ata visit which
Lieutenant Hovgaard made at Najtskaj, the natives in the tent
where he was a guest ate for supper first seal-flesh soup, then
boiled fish, and lastly, boiled seal-flesh. They thus observed
completely the order of eating approved in Europe. The
Chukches are unacquainted with other forks than their fingers,
and even the use of the spoon is not common. Many carry
about with them a spoon of copper, tinned iron, or bone (fig. 8,
p. 486). The soup is often drunk directly out of the cooking
vessel, or sucked up through hollow bones (see the figure on
p. 476). These are used as drinking cups, and like the spoons
are worn in the belt. As examples of Chukch dishes I may
further mention, vegetable soup, boiled seal-flesh, boiled fish,
blood soup, soup of seal-blood and blubber. To these we may
add soup from finely crushed bones, or from seal-flesh, blubber,
and bones. For crushing the bones there is in every tent a
hammer, consisting of en oval stone with a hollow round it for

xu.] STONE HAMMERS. 483

a skin thong, with which the stone is fastened to the short shaft
of wood or bone. The bones which are used for food are finely
crushed with this implement against a stone anvil or a
whale’s vertebra, and then boiled with water and blood, before
being eaten. At first we believed that this dish was mtended
for the dogs, but afterwards I had an opportunity of convincing
myself that the natives themselves ate it; and that long before
the time when they suffered from scarcity of provisions. The
hammer is further of interest as forming one of the stone 1m-
plements which are most frequently found in graves from the
Stone Age. That the hammer was mainly intended for kitchen
purposes appears from the circumstance that the women alone
had it at their disposal, and were consulted when it was parted
with. Along with such hammers there was to be found in every

STONE HAMMERS AND ANVIL FOR CRUSHING BONES.
(One-sixth of the natural size.)

tent an anvil, consisting of a whale’s vertebra or a large round
stone with a bowl-formed depression worn or cut out in the
middle of it.

During winter a great portion of the inhabitants of Yinretlen,
Pitlekaj, and as far as from JIrgunnuk, came daily on board to
beg or buy themselves provisions, and during this period they
were fed mainly by us. They soon accustomed themselves to
our food. They appeared specially fond of pea-soup and por-
ridge. The latter they generally laid out on a snow-drift to
freeze, and then took it in the frozen form to the tents.
Coffee they did not care for unless it was well sugared. Salt
they did not use, but with sugar they were all highly delighted.
They also drank tea with pleasure. Otherwise water forms
their principal drmk. They were, however, often compelled in

Ela

484 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

winter, in consequence of the difficulty of melting over the
train-oil lamps a sufficient :quantity of snow, to quench their
thirst with snow. On board they often asked for water, and
drank at once large quantities of it.

Spirits, to which they are exceedingly addicted, they : call,
as has been already stated, in conversation with Europeans,

‘ram,’ the pronouncing of the word being often accompanied
by a hawking noise, a happy expression, and a distinctive ges-
ture, which consisted in carrying the open right hand from “the
mouth to the waist, or in counterfeiting the unintelligible talk
of a drunken man. Among themselves they call itt fire-water

(akmimil). The promise of it was the most efficient means of

getting an obstinate Chukch to comply with one’s wishes. In
case they undertook to drive us with their dog-teams, they were
never desirous of finding out whether any stock of provisions

was taken along, but warned by our parsimony in dealing out
spirituous liquor, they were unwilling to start until they had ex-
amined the stock of “ram.” That drunkenness, not the satisfying
of the taste, was in this case the main object, is shown by the
circumstance that they often fixed, as price for the articles they
saw we were anxious to have, such a quantity of brandy as
would make them completely intoxicated. When on one oc-
casion I appeared very desirous of purchasing a fire-drill, which
was found in a tent inhabited by a newly-wedded pair, the
young and very pretty housewife undertook the negotiation,
and immediately began by declaring that her husband could not
part with the fire-producing implement unless I gave him the
means of getting quite drunk, for which, according to her
statement, which was illustrated by lively gesticulations repre-
senting the different degrees of intoxication, eight glasses were
required. Not until the man had got so many would he be
content, that is, dead drunk. I have myself observed, however,
on several occasions that two small glasses are sufficient to make
them unsteady on the legs. Under the influence of liquor they
are cheerful, merry, and friendly, but troublesome by their ex-
cessive caressing. When in the company of intoxicated natives,
one must take good care that he does not unexpectedly get a
kiss from some old greasy seal-hunter. Even the women readily
took a glass, though evidently less addicted to imtoxicants than
the men. They however got their share, as did even the
youngest of the children. When, as happened twice in the
course of the winter, an encampment was fortunate enough to
get a large stock of brandy sent it from Behring’s Straits, the
intoxication was general, and, as I have already stated, the
bluish-yellow eyes the next day showed that quarrelsomeness
had been called forth even among this peace-loving people by
their dear akmimil. During our stay at the villages nearer

X11] SPIRITS AN ARTICLE OF COMMERCE, 485

Behring’s Straits two murders even took place, of which one at
least was committed by an intoxicated man.

However slight the contact the Chukches have with the
world that has reached the standpoint of the brandy industry is,
this means of enjoyment, however, appears to be the object of
regular barter. Many of the Chukches who travelled past us
were intoxicated, and shook with pride a not quite empty keg
or seal-skin sack, to let us hear by the dashing that it con-
tained liquid. One of the crew, whom I asked to ascertain
what sort of spirit it was, made friends with the owner, and
induced him at last to part with about a thimbleful of it ;-more
could not be given. According to the sailor’s statement it was
without colour and flavour, clear as crystal, but weak. It was
thus probably Russian corn brandy, not gin.

During a visit which Lieutenants Hovgaard and Nordquist
made in the autumn of 1878 to the remdeer-Chukches in the
interior of the country, much diluted American gin was on the
contrary presented, and the tent-owner showed his guests a
tin drinking-cup with the inscription, “Capt. Ravens, Brig
Timandra, 1878.’ Some of the natives stated distinctly that
they could purchase brandy at Behring’s Straits all the year
round, All the men in the tent village, and most of the
women, but not the children, had at the time got completely
intoxicated in order to celebrate the arrival of the foreigners, or
perhaps rather that of the stock of brandy. As there are no
Europeans settled at Behring’s Straits, at least on the Asiatic
side, we learn from the traffic in brandy that there are actually
natives abstemious enough to be able to deal in it.

Tobacco is in common use, both for smoking and chewing.!
Every native carries with him a pipe resembling that of the
Tunguse, and a tobacco-pouch (fig. 7, p. 486). The tobacco
is of many kinds, both Russian and American, and when the
stock of it is finished native substitutes are used. Preference
is given to the sweet, strong chewing tobacco, which sailors
generally use. In order to make the tobacco sweet which has
not before been drenched with molasses, the men are accus-
tomed, when they get a piece of sugar, to break it down and
place it in the tobacco-pouch. The tobacco is often first chewed,
then dried behind the ear, and kept in a separate pouch’ sus-
pended from the neck, to be afterwards smoked. The pipes are
so small that, like those of the Japanese, they may be smoked
out with a few strong whiffs. The smoke is swallowed.
Even the women and children smoke and chew, and they begin
to do so at so tender an age that we have seen a child, who

1 Already, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, all the Siberian
tribes, men and women, old and young, smoked passionately (Hist.
Généalog. des Tartares, p. 66).

—_— =

2

WUIES

IF

LL

CHUKCH IMPLEMENTS.

enth of the natural size).

1 from its hole, with bone amu
7. Pipe and tobacco-pouch (one-

3. Ice-seraper

2, Awls (one-half).
4. Bone

Seraper for currying (one-sev'
intended for decoying the sea let affixed (one-Falf).
knife (one-half). 5, 6. Amulets of bone (natural size).
third). 8. Metal spoons (one-third),

OHAP. XII.] MODE OF TRADING WITH THE CHUKCHES. 487

could indeed walk, but still sucked his mother, both chew
tobacco, smoke, and take a “ram.”

Some bundles of Ukraine tobacco, which I took with me for
barter with the natives, put it into my power to procure a large
number of contributions to the ethnological collection, which
in the absence of other wares for barter I would otherwise have
been unable to obtain. For the Chukches do not understand
money. ‘This is so much the more remarkable as they carry on
a very extensive trade, and evidently are good mercantile men.
According to von Dittmar (loc. cit. p. 129) there exists, or still
existed in 1856, a steady, slow, but regular transport of goods
along the whole north coast of Asia and America, by which
Russian goods were conveyed to the innermost parts of Polar
America, and furs instead found their way to the bazaars of
Moscow and St. Petersburg. This traffic is carried on at five
market places, of which three are situated in America, one on
the islands at Behring’s Straits, and one at Anjui near Kolyma.
The last-mentioned is called by the Chukches “the fifth beaver
market.” ?

The Chukches’ principal articles of commerce consist of seal-
skin, train-oil, fox-skins and other furs, walrus tusks, whalebone,
&e. Instead they purchase tobacco, articles of iron, reindeer
skin and reindeer flesh, and, when it can be had, spirit. A
bargain is concluded very cautiously after long-continited con-
sultation in a whispering tone between those present. I
employed spirit as an article for barter only in the last
necessity, but they soon observed that the desire to become
owner of an uncommon article of art or antiquity overcame my
determination, and they soon learned to avail themselves of
this, especially as in all cases I made full payment for the
article and gave the fire-water into the bargain.

The lamp (see the figures at pp. 413, 414), with which light is
maintained in the tent, consists of a flat trough of wood, bone
of the whale, soap-stone or burned clay, broader behind than
before, and divided by an isolated toothed comb into two
divisions. In the front division wicks of moss (Sphagnum sp.)
are laid in a long thin row along the whole edge. Under the

1 Dr. John Simpson gives good information regarding the American
markets in his Observations on the Western Esquimaux, He enumerates
three market places in America besides that at Behring’s Straits. At the
markets people are occupied also with dancing and games, which are
carried on in such a lively manner that the market people scarcely sleep
during the whole time. Matiuschin gives a very lively sketch of the
market at Anjui, to which, in 1821, the Chukches still went fully armed
with spears, bows, and arrows (Wrangel’s Reise, i. p. 270), and a visit to it
in 1868 is described by C. von Neumann, who took part as Astronomer in
von Maydell’s expedition to Chukch Land (Kine Messe im Hochnorden ;
Das Ausland, 1880, p. 861).

488 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

lamp there is always another vessel intended to receive the
train-oil which may possibly be spilled.

In summer the natives also cook with wood in the open air
or in the outer tent, in winter only in the greatest necessity in
the latter. For they find the smoke, which the wood gives off,
in the close tent, unendurable. Although driftwood is to be
found in great abundance on the beach, scarcity of train-oil
was evidently considered by the natives as great a misfortune
as scarcity of food. Uinga eek, no fuel (properly, no fire), was
_ the constant cry even of those who drew loads of driftwood
on board to earn bread for themselves. The circumstance that
their fuel does not give off any smoke has the advantage that
the eyes of the Chukches are not usually nearly so much
attacked as those of the Lapps.

In the tent the women have always a watchful eye over the
trimming of the lamp and the keeping up of the fire. The
wooden pins she uses to trim the wick, and which naturally are
drenched with train-oil, are used when required as a lght
or torch in the outer tent, to light pipes, &c. In the same way
other pins dipped im train-oil are used.’ Clay lamps are made
by the Chukches themselves, the clay being well kneaded and
moistened with urine. The burning is incomplete, and is indeed
often wholly omitted.

Train-oil and other liquid wares are often kept in sacks of
seal-skin, consisting of whole hides, out of which the body has
been taken through the opening made by cutting off the head,
and in which all holes, either natural or caused by the killing of
the animal, have been firmly closed. In one of the forepaws
there is then inserted with great skill a wooden air- and water-
tight cock with spigot and faucet. In sacks intended for dry
wares the paws are also cut off, and the opening through which
the contents are put in and taken out is made right across the
breast immediately below the forepaws.

Fire is lighted partly in the way common in Sweden some
decades ago by means of flint and steel, partly by means of a
drillimplement. In the former case the steel generally consists
of a piece of a file or some other old steel tool, or of pieces of
iron or steel which have been specially forged for the purpose.
Commonly the form of this tool indicates a European or
Russian-Siberian origin, but I also acquired clumsily hammered
pieces of iron, which appeared to form specimens of native skill
in forging. A Chukch showed me a large fire-steel of the last
mentioned kind, provided with a special handle of copper
beautifully polished by long-continued use. He evidently

1 T have seen such pins, also oblong stones, sooty at one end, which,
after having been dipped in train-oil, have been used as torches, laid by the
side of corpses in old Eskimo graves in north-western Greenland.

XII.] THE FIRE-DRILL. 489

regarded it as a very precious thing, and I could not persuade
him to part with it. On the supposition that the metal of the
clumsily hammered pieces of iron might possibly be of meteoric
origin I purchased as many of them as I could. But the ex-
amination, to which they were subjected after our return,
showed that they contain no traces of nickel. The iron was
thus not meteoric.

The flint consists of a beautiful chalcedony or agate, which
has been formed in cavities in the volcanic rocks which occur so
abundantly in north-eastern Asia, and which probably are also
found here and there as pebbles in the beds of the tundra
rivers. As tinder, are used partly the woolly hair of various
animals, partly dry fragments of different kinds of plants. The
steel and a large number of pieces of flint are kept in a skin
pouch suspended from the neck. Within this pouch there is a
smaller one, containing the tinder. It is thus kept warm by

FIRE-DRILL.
One-eighth of the natural size.

the heat of the body, and protected from wet by its double
envelope. Along with it the men often carry on their persons
a sort of match of white, well-dried, and crushed willows, which
are plaited together and placed in even rolls. This match
burns slowly, evenly, and well.

The other sort of fire-implement consists of a dry wooden
pin, which by a common bow-drill is made to rub against a
block of dry half-blackened wood. The upper part of this pin
runs ina drill block of wood or bone. In one of the tools
which I purchased, the astragalus of a reindeer was used for
this purpose. In the light-stock holes have been made to give
support to the pin, and perhaps to facilitate the formation of the
half-carbonised wood-meal which the drilling loosens from the
light-stock and in which the red heat arises. When fire is to
be lighted by means of this implement, the lower part of the
drill pin is daubed over with a little train-oil, one foot holds

490 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

the light-stock firm agaimst the ground, the bowstring is put
round the drill pin, the left hand presses the pin with the drill
block against the light-stock, and the bow is carried backwards
and forwards, not very rapidly, but evenly, steadily, and un-
interruptedly, until fire appears. A couple of minutes are
generally required to complete the process. The women appear
to be more accustomed than the men to the use of this
implement. An improved form of it consisted of a wooden pin
on whose lower part a lense-formed and perforated block of wood
was fixed. This block served as fly-wheel and weight. Across
the wooden pin ran a perforated cross-bar which was fastened
with two sinews to its upper end. By carrying this cross-bar
backwards and forwards the pin could be turned round with
great rapidity. The implement appears to me the more re-
markable as it shows a new way of using the stone or brick
lenses, which are often found in graves or old house-sites from
the Stone Age.

Among the Chukches, as among many other wild races,
lucifer matches have obtained the honour of being the first
of the inventions of the civilised races that have been recognised
as indisputably superior to their own. <A request for lucifer
matches was therefore one of the most common of those with
which our friends at Behring’s Straits tormented us during
winter, and they were willing for a single box to offer things
that im comparison were very valuable. Unfortunately we had
no superfluous supply of this necessary article, or perhaps I
ought to say fortunately, for if the Chukches for some years
were able to get a couple of boxes of matches for a walrus tusk,
I believe that with their usual carelessness they would soon
completely forget the use of their own fire-implements.

Among household articles I may further mention the
following :—

The hide-scraper (fig. 1, p.486) is of stone or iron and fastened
to a wooden handle. With this tool the moistened hide is
cleaned very particularly, and is then rubbed, stretched, and
kneaded so carefully that several days go to the preparation
of a single reindeer skin. That this is hard work is also shown
by the woman who is employed at it in the tent dripping with
perspiration. While thus employed she sits on a part of the
skin and stretches out the other part with the united help of
the hands and the bare feet. When the skin has been
sufficiently worked, she fills a vessel with her own urine, mixes
this with comminuted willow bark, which has been dried over
the lamp, and rubs the blood-warm liquid into the reimdeer
skin. In order to give this a red colour on one side, the bark
of a species of Pinus (?) is mixed with the tanning liquid. The
skins are made very soft by this process, and on the inner side

eit] ICE MATTOCKS. 491

almost resemble chamois leather. Sometimes too the reindeer
skin is tanned to real chamois of very excellent quality. _

Two sorts of ice mattocks ; the shaft is of wood, the blade of
the spade-formed one of whalebone, of the others of a walrus
tusk; it is fixed to the shaft by skin thongs with great skill.
Sometimes both the shaft and blade are of bone, fastened
together in a somewhat different way.

Hones of native clay-slate. These are often perforated at one
end and carried along with the knife, the spoon, and the sucking-
tube, fastened with an ivory tongs in the belt.

ICE MATTOCKS.
- One-ninth of the natural size.

Home-made vessels of wood, bone of the whale, whalebone, and
skin of different kinds.

Knives, boring tools, axes and pots of European, American, or
Siberian origin, and in addition casks, pieces of cable, iron
scrap, preserved-meat tins, glasses, bottles, &c., obtained from
ships which have anchored along the coast. Vessels have
regularly visited the sea north of Behring’s Straits only during
the latest decades, and the contact between the sailors and the
Chukches has not yet exerted any considerable influence on the

492 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. (cmap.

mode of life of the latter. The natives, however, complain that
the whalers destroy the walrus-hunting, while on the other
hand they see with pleasure trading vessels occasionally visiting
their coasts.

During our stay off the considerable encampment, Irkaipi,
we believed, as I have already stated, that we had found a chief
in anative named Chepurin, who, to judge by his dress, appeared
to be somewhat better off than the others, had two wives and a
stately exterior. He was accordingly entertained in the gun-
room, got the finest presents, and was in many ways the object
of special attention. Chepurin took his elevation easily, and
showed himself worthy of it by a grave and serious, perhaps
somewhat condescending behaviour, which further confirmed our
supposition and naturally increased the number of our presents.
Afterwards, however, we were quite convinced that we had
in this case committed a complete mistake, and that now there
are to be found among the Chukches living at the coast neither
any recognised chiefs nor any trace of social organisation.
During the former martial period of the history of the race
the state of things here was perhaps different, but now the
most complete anarchy prevails here, if by that word we
may denote a state of society in which disputes, crimes,
and punishments are unknown, or at least exceedingly rare.*
A sort of chieftaimship appears, at all events, to be found among
the reindeer-Chukches lving in the interior of the country.
At least there are among them men who can show commissions
from the Russian authorities. Such a man was the starost
Menka, of whose visit I have already given an account. Every-
thing, however, dicated that his influence was exceedingly
small. He could neither read, write, nor speak Russian, and he
had no idea of the existence of a Russian Czar. All the tribute
he had delivered for several years, according to receipts which he
showed to us, consisted of some few fox-skins, which he had
probably received as market-tolls at Anjui and Markova. Menka
was attended on his visit to the vessel by two ill-clad men with a
type of face differmg considerably from that common among the

1 In the accounts which were collected regarding the Chukches at
Anadyrsk in the beginning of the eighteenth century, it is also stated that
they lived without any government. On the contrary, in M. von Krusen-
stern’s Voyage autour du monde, 1803-1806 (Paris, 1821, ii. p. 151), a report
of Governor Koscheleff is given on some negotiations which he had with
a “chief of the whole Chukch nation.” I take it for granted that the
chiefship was of little account, and Koscheleff’s whole sketch of his
meeting with the supposed chief bears an altogether too lively European
romantic stamp to be in any degree true to nature. At the same place itis
also said that a brother of Governor Koscheleff, in the winter of 1805-1806, —
made a journey among the Chukches, on which, after his return, he sent a
report, accompanied by a Chukch vocabulary, to von Krusenstern,

Xt. | THE SUPERSTITIONS OF THE CHUKCHES. 493

Chukches. Their standing appeared to be so inferior that we
took them for slaves, although mistakenly, at least with respect
to one of them—Yettugimm. He afterwards boasted that he
owned a much larger reindeer-herd than Menka’s, and talked
readily, with a certain scorn, of Menka’s chieftain pretensions.
According to Russian authors there are actual slaves, probably
the descendants of former prisoners of war, among the Chukches
in the interior of the country. Among the dwellers on the
coast, on the contrary, there is the most complete equality. We
could never discover the smallest trace of any man exercising
the least authority beyond his own family or his own tent.

The coast Chukches are not only heathens, but are also, so
fir as we could observe, devoid of every conception of higher
beings. There are, however, superstitions. Thus most of them
wear round the neck leather straps, to which small wooden tongs,
or wooden carvings, are fixed. These are not parted with, and
are not readily shown to foreigners. A boy had a band of beads
sewed to his hood, and in front there was fastened an ivory
carving, probably intended to represent a bear's head (fig. 6, on
p- 486). It was so small, and so inartistically cut, that a
man could undoubtedly make a dozen of them in a day. I, how-
ever, offered the father unsuccessfully a clasp-knife and tobacco
for it, but the boy himself, having heard our bargaining,
exchanged it soon after for a piece of sugar. When the father
knew this he laughed good-naturedly, without making any
attempt to get the bargain undone.

To certain tools small wooden images are affixed, as to the
scraper figured above (fig. 3, p. 486), and similar images are
found in large numbers in the lumber-room of the tent, where
pieces of ivory, bits of agate and scrap iron, are preserved. A
selection from the large collection of such images which I made
is here reproduced in woodcuts. If, also, these carvings may, in
fact, be considered as representations of higher beings, the
religious ideas which are connected with them, even judged
from the Shaman standpoint, are exceedingly indistinct, less a
consciousness, which still lives among the people, than a re-
miniscence from former times. Most of the figures bear an
evident stamp of the present dress and mode of life of the
people. It appears to me to be remarkable, that in all the
bone or wood carvings I have met with, the face has been cut
flatter than it is in reality in this race of men. Some of the
carvings appear to remind me of an ancient Buddhist image.

The drum, or more correctly, tambourine, so common among
most of the Polar peoples, European, Asiatic, and American ;
among the Lapps, the Samoyeds, the Tunguses, and the Eskimo
(see drawing on p. 415), is found in every Chukch tent. A
certain superstition is also attached to it. They did not willingly

oon

i

“f

fil

HUMAN ‘FIGURES.

0 4 is of wood. No. 6 of wood with eyes of

f ivory.

N

represent women with tattoved faces.

Nos. 1, 3, and 5

the rest are o

tin;

CHAP. XII] THE DRUM AND ITS USE. 495

play it im our presence, and they were unwilling to part with it.
If time permitted it was concealed on our entrance into the
tent. The drum consists of the peritoneum of a seal, stretched
over a narrow wooden ring fixed to a short handle. The drum-
stick consists of a splinter of whalebone 300 to 400 millimetres
long, which towards the end runs into a point so fine and flexible,
that it forms a sort of whipcord. When the thicker part of the
piece of whalebone is struck against the edge of the drum-skin,
the other end whips against the middle, and the skin is thus struck
twice at the same time. The drum is commonly played by the
man, and the playing is accompanied by a very monotonous
song. We have not seen it accompanied by dancing, twisting of
the countenance, or any other Shaman trick.

We did not see among the Chukches we met with any
Shamans. They are described by Wrangel, Hooper, and other
travellers. Wrangel states (vol. 1. p. 284) that the Shamans in
the year 1814, when a severe epidemic broke out among the
Chukches and their reindeer at Anjui, declared that in order to
propitiate the spirits they must sacrifice Kotschen, one of the
most highly esteemed men of the tribe. He was so much
respected that no one would execute the sentence, but attempts
were made to get it altered, first by presents to the prophets,
and then by flogging them. But when this did not succeed,
as the disease continued to ravage, and no one would execute the
doom, Kotschen ordered his own son to do it. He was thus
compelled to stab his own father to death and give up the corpse
to the Shamans. The whole narrative conflicts absolutely with
the disposition and manners of the people with whom we
made acquaintance at Behring’s Straits sixty-five years after
this occurrence, and I would be disposed to dispute entirely
the truthfulness of the statement, had not the history of our
own part of the world taught us that blood has flowed in
streams for dogmatic hair-splittings, which no one now troubles
himself about. Perhaps the breath of indifferentism has reached
even the ice-deserts of the Polar lands.

The drum has besides also another use, which appears to have
little connection with its property of Shaman psychograph or
church bell. When the ladies unravel and comb their long
black hair, this is done carefully over the drum, on whose
bottom the numerous beings which the comb brings with it
from the warm hearth of home out into the cold wide world, are
collected and cracked—in case they are not eaten up. They
taste well according to the Chukch opinion, and are exceedingly
good for the breast. Even gorm (the large, fully developed, fat
larva of the reindeer fly, Oestrus tarandi) is pressed out of
the skin of the reindeer and eaten; as well as the full-grown
reindeer fly.

496 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

Some more of the superstitious traits which we observed
among the Chukches may here be stated. After the good
hunting in February we endeavoured without success to induce
the Chukches to give us a head or a skull of some of the seals
they had killed. Even brandy was unsuccessfully offered for it,
and it was only in the greatest secrecy that Notti, one of our best
friends from Irgunnuk, dared to give us the feetus of a seal. A
raven was once shot in the neighbourhood of the ice-house.
The shot then went to the magnetical observatory, but before he
entered, laid down the shot bird, the gun, and other articles in
the before-mentioned implement chest placed in front of the
observatory. A short time after there was great excitement
before the tent. Some men, women, and children among the
natives crowded round the chest screaming and shouting. For
the Chukches had observed that the raven, having been only
stunned by the shot, had begun to scream and flutter in the chest,
and they now indicated by word and gesture that a great mis-
fortune was about to happen. Pity is not, as is well known, one
of the good qualities of the savage. It was clear that in this case
too it was not this feeling, but fear of the evil which the wounded
crow could bring about, that caused this scene, and when a sailor
immediately after twisted the neck of the bird, the Chukches
had no objection to receive and eat it.

The winter of 1878-1879 appears to have been uncommonly
severe, and hunting less productive than usual. This was
ascribed to our presence. The Chukches asked us anxiously
several times, whether we intended to raise the water so high
that the sea would reach their tents. When on the 11th
February, after the hunting had failed for a long time, they
succeeded at last in catchmg a number of seals, they threw
water in their mouths before they were carried into the tents.
This was done, they said, in order that the open “ leads” in the
ice should not close too soon.

Besides the drum the Chukches also use as a musical instru-
ment a piece of wood, cloven into two halves, and again united
after the crack has been somewhat widened in the middle, with
a piece of whalebone inserted between the two halves. They
also during the course of the winter made several attempts to
make violins after patterns seen on board, and actually
succeeded in making a better sounding-box than could have
been expected beforehand. On the draught-strap of the dog
sledge there was often a small bell bought from the Russians,
and the reindeer-Chukches are said sometimes to wear bells in
the belt.

The dance I saw consisted in two women or children taking
each other by the shoulders, and then hopping now on the one
foot now on the other. When many took part in the dance, they

XI] DANCING, AND ART. 497

placed themselves in rows, sang a monotonous, meaningless song,
hopped in time, turned the eyes out and in, and threw them-
selves with spasmodic movements, clearly denoting pleasure
and pain, now to the right, now to the left. “La saison” for
dance and song, the time of slaughtering reindeer, however, did
not happen during our stay, on which account our experience of
the Chukches’ abilities in this way is exceedingly limited,

All sport they entered into with special delight; for instance,
some trial shooting which Palander set on foot on New Year’s Day
afternoon, with a small rifled
cannon on the Vega. At
first the women sat aft with
the children, far from the
dreadful shooting weapon,
and indicated their feelings
by almost the same gestures
as on such occasions are
wont to distinguish the
weaker and fairer sex of
European race. But soon
curiosity took the upper
hand. They pressed forward
where they could see best,
and broke out in a_ loud
“Ho, ho, ho!” when the
shot was fired and the shells
exploded in the air.

Of what sort is the art-
sense of the Chukches? As
they still almost belong to
the Stone Age, and as their
contact with Europeans has
been so limited that it has
not perhaps conduced to
alter their taste and skill in
art, this question appears rf pate Aen
to me to have Zz great inter- 1. Whistle-pipe, natural size. 2. Whistle-instru-
est both for the historian ment, one-eighth of natural size: a. mouth-hole.
of art, who here obtains
information as to the nature of the seed from which at last the
skill of the master has been developed in the course of ages and
millenniums, and for the archeologist, who finds here a starting
point for forming a judgment both of the Scandimavian rock-
etchings and the palolithic drawings, which in recent times
have played so great a part in enabling us to understand
the oldest history of the human race. We have therefore
zealously collected all that we could of Chukch carvings,

K K

DRAWINGS MADE BY CHUKCHES.

a ho

DRAWINGS MADE BY CHUKCHES.

500 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA, [cHAP.

drawings, and patterns. The most remarkable of these in one
respect or another are to be found delineated in the woodcuts on
the preceding pages.

Many of the ivory carvings are old and worn, showing that
they have been long in use, probably as amulets. Various
of the animal images are the fruit of the imagination, and as
such may be instructive. In general the carvings are clumsy,
though showing a distinctive style. If we compare them with
the Samoyed images we brought home with us, it appears that
the genius of the Chukches for art has reached an incomparably
higher development than that of the Polar race which mhabits
the western portion of the north coast of Asia ; on the other hand,
they are in this respect evidently inferior to the Eskimo at Port
Clarence. The Chukch drawings too are roughly and clumsily
executed, but many of them exhibit a certain power of hitting
off the object. These figures appear to me to show that the
objections which have been raised to the genuineness of various
palzolithic etchings, just on the ground of the artist's com-
paratively sure hand, are not justified. Even patterns and ivory
buckles show a certain taste. Embroidery is done commonly on
red-coloured strips of skin partly with white reindeer hair, partly
with red and black wool, obtained in small quantity by barter
from Behring’s Straits. The supply of colourmg material is not
particularly abundant. It is obtaimed partly from the mineral
kingdom (limonite of different colours, and graphite), partly from
the vegetable kingdom (bark of various trees). The mineral
colours are ground with water between flat stones. Bark is
probably treated with urime. Red is the Chukches’ favourite
colour.

In order to make a contribution towards an answer to-the
disputed question, in what degree is the colour-sense developed
among savages, Dr. Almquist during the course of the winter
instituted comprehensive researches according to the method.
worked out by Professor Fr. HOLMGREN. A detailed account
of these is to be found in The Scientific Work of the Vega
Expedition, and in various scientific journals. Here I shall only
state that Dr. Almquist gives the following as the final result

1 The originals of the drawings reproduced in the woodcuts are made on
paper, part with the lead pencil, part with red ochre, The different groups
represent on the first page—1, a dog-team; 2, 3, whales; 4, hunting the
Polar bear and the walrus; 5, bullhead and cod; 6, man fishing ; 7, hare-
hunting; 8, birds; 9, wood-chopper; 10, man leading a reindeer; 11,
walrus hunt—7 and 9 represent Europeans. On the second page—l, a rein-
deer train ; 2, a reindeer taken with a lasso by two men; 3, a man throw-
ing a harpoon; 4, seal hunt from boat; 5, bear hunt; 6, the man in the
moon ; 7, man leading a reindeer; 8, reindeer; 9, Chukch with staff and
an archer; 10, reindeer with herd; 11, reindeer; 12, two tents, man riding
on a dog sledge, &c.

xu]. THE COLOUR-SENSE OF THE CHUKCHES. 501

of his investigation: “That the Chukches in general possess as
good an organ for distinguishing colours as we Swedes. On the
other hand, they appear not to be accustomed to observe colours,
and to distinguish sharply any other colour than red. They
bring together all reds as something special, but consider that
green of a moderate brightness corresponds less with a green of
less brightness than with a blue of the same brightness. In
order to bring all greens together the Chukches thus require to
learn a new abstraction.” Of 300 persons who were examined,
273 had a fully developed colour-sense, nine were completely
colour-blind, and eighteen imcompletely colour-blind, or gave
uncertain indications.

From what has been stated above it appears that the coast
Chukches are without noteworthy religion, social organisation
or government. Had not experience from the Polar races of
America taught us differently we.should have believed that with
such a literally anarchic and godless crew there would be no
security for life and property, immorality would be boundless,
and the weaker without any protection from the violence of the
stronger sex. This, however, is so far from. being the case that
criminal statistics have been rendered impossible for want of
crimes, if we except acts of violence.committed under the
influence of liquor.

During the winter the Vega was visited daily, as has been
stated in the account of the.wintering, by the people from the
neighbouring villages, while our vessel at the same time formed
a resting-place for all the equipages which travelled from the
western tent-villages to the.islands in Behring’s Straits, and vice
versd. Not only our neighbours,:but people from a distance
whom we had never seen before, and probably would not see
again, came and went without hindrance among a great number
of objects which in their hands would have been precious
indeed. We had never any cause to regret the confidence we
placed in them. Even during the.very hard time, when hunt-
ing completely failed, and when most of them lived on the food
which was served out on board, the large dépét of provisions,
which we had placed on land without special watch, in case any
misfortune should befall our vessel, was untouched. On the
other hand, there were two instances in which they secretly
repossessed themselves of fish they had already sold, and which
were kept in a place on deck accessible to them. And with
the most innocent countenance in the world they then sold
them over again. This sort of dishonesty they evidently did
not regard as theft but as a permissible commercial trick.

This was not the only proof that the Chukches consider
deception in trade not only quite justifiable, but almost credit-

502 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. XII.

able. While their own things were always made with the
greatest care, all that they did specially for us was done with
extreme carelessness, and they were seldom pleased with the
price that was offered, until they becamé convinced that they
could not get more. When they saw that we were anxious to
get ptarmigan, they offered us from their winter stock under
this name the young of Larus eburnews, which is marked in the
same way, but of little use as food. When I with delight pur-
chased this bird, which in its youthful dress is rare, and there-
fore valuable to the ornithologist, a self-satisfied smile passed
over the countenance of the seller. He was evidently proud of

CHUKCH BUCKLES AND HOOKS OF IVORY.
Half the natural size.

_his successful trick. Some prejudice, as has been already stated,
prevented the Chukches from parting with the heads of the seal,
though, in order to ascertain the species existing here, we offered
a high price for them. “Irgatti” (to-morrow), or “ Isgatti,” if the
promise was given by a woman, was the usual answer. But the
promise was never kept. At last a boy came and gave us a
skull, which he said belonged to a seal. On a more minute
examination, however, it was found not to have belonged to a
seal, but to an old dog, whose head it was evidently thought
might, without any damage to the hunting, be handed over to

. . . . . . i=) .
the white magicians. This time it went worse with the counter-

os
CHUKCH BONE CARVINGS.

1. Dog, natural size. 2, 3. Hares, natural size. 4. Woman carrying her child on her shoulders, two-
thirds. 5, Molluse from the inland lakes (Branchypus?), natural size. 6. Monster, natural size.
7. Fox, natural size. 8. Animal with three heads, two-thirds. 9 Asterid, natura! size. 10. Fish
natural size.

BOL THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

feitor than in the case of the ptarmigan bargain. For a couple
of my comrades undertook to make the boy ashamed in the
presence of the other Chukches, saying with a laugh “that he,
a Chukch, must have been very stupid to commit such a mis-
take,” and it actually appeared as if the scoff had in this case
fallen into good ground. Another time, while I was in my
watch in the ice-house, there came a native to me and informed
me that he had driven a man from Irgunnuk to the vessel, but
that the man had not paid him, and asked me on that account
to give him a box of matches. When I replied that he must
have been already well paid on the vessel for his drive, he said
in a whining tone, “only a very little piece of bread.” He was
not the least embarrassed when I only laughed at the, as I well
knew, untruthful statement, and did not give him what he
asked.

The Chukches commonly live in monogamy; it is only
exceptionally that they have two wives, as was the case with
Chepurin, who has been already mentioned. It appeared as if
the wives were faithful to their husbands. It was only seldom
that cases occurred in which women, either in jest or earnest,
gave out that they wished a white man as a lover. A woman
not exactly eminent for beauty or cleanliness said, for instance,
on one occasion, that she had had two children by Chukches,
and now she wished to have a third by one of the ship’s folk.
The young women were modest, often very pretty, and evidently
felt the same necessity of attracting attention by small
coquettish artifices as Eve’s daughters of European race. We
may also understand their peculiar pronunciation of the lan-
guage as an expression of feminine coquetry. For when they
wish to be attractive they replace the man’s 7-sound with a soft
s; thus, korang (reindeer) is pronounced by the women kosang,
tirkir (the sun) ¢askis, and so on.

The women work very hard. Not only the management of
the children, the cooking, the melting of the ice, the putting
the tent in order, the sewing, and other “ woman’s work,” lie to
their hand, but they receive the catch, in winter in the tent, in
summer at the beach, cut it in pieces, help with the fishing, at
least when it is in the neighbourhood of the tent, and carry rout
the exceedingly laborious tanning of the hides, and prepare
thread from smews. In summer they collect green plants
in the meadows and hill-slopes in the neighbourhood of the
tents. They are therefore generally at home, and always busy.
The men have it for their share to procure for their family food
from the animal kingdom by hunting and fishing. With this pur-
pose in view they are often out on Tong excursions. In the tent
the man is for the most part without occupation, sleeps, eats,
gossips, chats with his children, and so on, if he does not pass

XII. ] BEGGING, 505

the time in putting his hunting implements in order in a quite
leisurely manner.

Within the family the most remarkable unanimity prevails,
so that we never heard a hard word exchanged, either between
man and wife, parents and children, or between the married
pair who own the tent and the unmarried who occasionally live in
it. The power of the woman appears to be very great. In
making the more important bargains, even about weapons and
hunting implements, she is, as a rule, consulted, and her advice
is taken. A number of things which form women’s tools she
can barter away on her own responsibility, or in any other
way employ as she pleases. When the man has by barter pro-
cured a piece of cloth, tobacco, sugar, or such like, he generally
hands it over to his wife to keep.

The children are neither chastised
nor scolded; they are, however, the
best behaved I have ever seen. Their
behaviour in the tent is equal to that
of the best-brought-up European chil-
dren inthe parlour. They are not, per-
haps, so wild as ours, but are addicted
to games which closely resemble those
common among us in the country.
Playthings are also in use, for instance,
dolls, bows, windmills with two sails,
&e. If the parents get any delicacy
they always give each of their chil-
dren a bit, and there is never any
quarrel as to the size of each child’s
portion. Ifa piece of sugar is given
to one of the children in a crowd it
goes from mouth to mouth round the
whole company. Inthe same way the child offers its father and
mother a taste of the bit of sugar or piece of bread it has
got. Even in childhood the Chukches are exceedingly patient.
A girl who fell down from the ship’s stair, head foremost,
and thus got so violent a blow that she was almost deprived
of hearing, scarcely uttered a cry. <A boy, three or four years
of age, much rolled up in furs, who fell down into a ditch
cut in the ice on the ship’s deck, and in consequence of
his inconvenient dress could not get up, lay quietly still until
he was observed and helped up by one of the crew.

The Chukches’ most troublesome fault is a disposition to
begging that is limited by no feeling of self-respect. This is
probably counterbalanced by their unbounded hospitality and
great kindness to each other, and is, perhaps, often caused by
actual necessity. But they thus became veritable torments,

CHUKCH DOLL.
One-eighth of the natural size.

CHUKCH BONE CARVINGS. 4

Seals, walrusses, a sea-bear (the lowest figure to the left). The four lowest are of the natura size,
the otbers two-thirds of the natural size.

‘

13

CHUKCH BONE CARVINGS.

Fishes, larye of flies (gorm), molluses, and whales. Nos. 1 to 9 and 14, natural size,

thirds of the natural size.

Nos. 10 to 18, two-

508 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cuap.

putting to a hard test the patience, not only of the scientific
men and officers, but also of the crew. The good nature with
which our sailors met their demands was above all praise.

There was never any trace of disagreement between the
natives and us, and I have every reason to suppose that our
wintering will long be held in grateful remembrance by them,
especially as, in order not to spoil their seal-hunting, I strictly
forbade all unnecessary interference with it.

It is probably impossible for a Chukch to take the place of a
European workman. It has, however, happened that Chukches
have gone with whalers to the Sandwich Islands, and have
become serviceable seamen. During our wintering two young
men got accustomed to come on board and there to take a hand,
in quite a leisurely way, at work of various kinds, as sawing
wood, shovelling snow, getting ice on board, &c. In return they
got food that had been left over, and thus, for the most part,
maintained not only themselves, but also their families, during
the time we remained in their neighbourhood.

If what I have here stated be compared with Sir Epwarp
Parry's masterly sketches of the Eskimo at Winter Island and
Igloik, and Dr. Stpson’s of the Eskimo in North-western
America, or with the numerous accounts we possess of the
Eskimo in Danish Greenland, a great resemblance will be
found to exist between the natural disposition, mode of life,
failings and good qualities of the Chukches, the savage Eskimo,
and the Greenlanders. This resemblance is so much more
striking, as the Chukch and the Eskimo belong to different
races, and speak quite different languages, and, as the former, to
Judge by old accounts of this people,-did not, until the most
recent generations, sink to the unwarlike, peace-loving, harmless,
anarchic, and non-religious standpoint which they have now
reached. It ought to be observed, however, that im the Eskimo
of Danish Greenland no considerable alteration has been brought
about by their all having learned to read and write and profess
the Christian religion—although with an indifference to the
consequences of original sin, the mysteries of redemption, and
the punishments of hell, which all imaginable missionary zeal
_has not succeeded in overcoming. Their mnocent natural state
has not been altered in any considerable degree by being
subjected to these conditions of culture. It is certaim besides,
that the blood which flows: in the veins of the Greenlander is
not pure Eskimo blood, but is mingled with the blood of some of
the proudest martial races in the world. When we consider how
rapidly, even now, when Greenland is in constant communica-
tion with the European mother-country, all descendants of
mixed blood become complete Eskimo in language and mode of
life, how difficult it often is, even for parents of pure European

xu] THE CHUKCHES A MIXTURE OF RACES. 509

descent, to get their children to speak any other language than
that of the natives, and how they, on their part, seldom borrow
a word from the Europeans, how common mixed marriages and
natives of mixed blood are even now—in view of all this it
appears to me much more probable that Erik the Red’s
colonists were quietly and peacefully converted into Eskimo,
than that they were killed by the Eskimo. A single century’s
complete separation from EHurope would be sufficient to

CHUKCH BONE CARVINGS OF BIRDS.
Size of the originals.

carry out thoroughly this alteration of the present European
population of Greenland, and by the end of that period the
traditions of Danish rule would be very obscure in that land.
Perhaps some trifling quarrel between a ruler of the colony and
a native would take the foremost place among the surviving
traditions, and be interpreted as a reminiscence from a war of

- extermination.

Even the present Chukches form, without doubt, a mixture of

510 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

several races, formerly savage and warlike, who have been
driven by foreign invaders from south to north, where they have
adopted a common language, and on whom the food-conditions
of the shore of the Polar Sea, the cold, snow, and darkness of
the Arctic night, the pure, light atmosphere of the Polar
summer, have impressed their ineffaceable stamp, a stamp which
meets us with little variation, not only among the people now
in question, but also—with the necessary allowance for the
changes, not always favourable,.caused by constant mtercourse
with Europeans—among the Lapps of Scandinavia and the
Samoyeds of Russia.

It would be of great psychological interest to ascertain
whether the change which has taken place in a peaceful
direction is progress or decadence. Notwithstanding all the
interest which the honesty, peaceableness, and innocent friend-
liness of the Polar tribes have for us, it 1s my belief that the
answer must be—decadence. For it strikes us as if we witness
here the conversion of a savage, coarse, and cruel man into a
being, nobler, indeed, but one in whom just those qualities
which distinguish man from the animals, and to which at once
the great deeds and the crimes of humanity have been due,
have been more and more effaced, and who, if special protection
or specially favourable circumstances be absent, will not be able
to maintain the struggle for existence with new races that may
seek to force their way into the country.

CHAPTER XIII.

The development of our knowledge of the north coast of Asia—Hero-
dotus—Strabo—Pliny—Marco Polo—Herberstein’s map—The conquest
of Siberia by the Russians—Deschnev’s voyages—Coast navigation
between the Lena and the Kolyma—Accounts of islands in the Polar
Sea and old voyages to them—The discovery of Kamchatka—The
navigation of the Sea of Okotsk is opened by Swedish prisoners-of-
war—The Great Northern Expedition—Behring—Schalaurov—Andre-
yev’s Land—The New Siberian islands—Hedenstrém’s expeditions—
Anjou and Wrangel—Voyages from Behring’s Straits westward—
Fictitious Polar voyages.

Now that the north-eastern promontory of Asia has been at last
circumnavigated, and vessels have thus sailed along all the
coasts of the old world, I shall, before proceeding farther in my
sketch of the voyage of the Veg ga, give a short account of the
development of our knowledge of the north coast of Asia.
Already in primitive times the Greeks assumed that all the

= en

XI11.] MERODOTUS. 511

countries of the earth were surrounded by the ocean. STRAzo,
in the first century before Christ, after having shown that
HoMER favoured this view, brings together in the first chapter
of the First Book of his geography reasons in support of it in the
following terms :—

“Tn all directions in which man has penetrated to the utter-
most boundary of the earth, he has met the sea, that is, the
ocean. He has sailed round the east coast towards India, the
west coast towards Iberia and Mauritia, and a great part of the
south and north coast. The remaining portion which has not
yet been sailed round im consequence of the voyages which have
been undertaken from both sides not having been connected, is
inconsiderable. For those who have attempted to circumnavi-
gate the earth and have turned, declare that their undertaking
did not fail in consequence of their having met with land, but
in consequence of want of provisions and of complete timidity
.... At sea they could always have gone further. .. . This
view (that the earth is surrounded by water) also accords better
with the phenomena of the tides, for as the ebb and flow are
everywhere the same, or at least do not vary much, the cause of
this motion is to be sought for in a single ocean.” !

But if men were thus agreed that the north coast of Asia and
Europe was bounded by the sea, there was for sixteen hundred
years after the birth of Christ no actual knowledge of the nature
of the Asiatic portion of this line of coast. Obscure statements
regarding it, however, were current at an early period.

While Heroportus, in the forty-fifth chapter of his Fourth
Book, expressly says that no man, so far as was then known, had
discovered whether the eastern and northern countries of Europe
are surrounded by the sea, he gives in the twenty-third and
twenty-fourth chapters of the same book the following account
of the countries lying to the north-east :—

“ As far as the territory of the Scythians all the land which
we have described is an uninterrupted plain, with cultivable
soul, but beyond that the ground is stony and rugged. And on
the other side of this extensive stone-bound tract there live at
the foot of a high mountaim-chain men who are bald from their
birth, both men and women; they are also flat-nosed and have
large chins. They speak a peculiar language, wear the Scythian
dress and live on the fruit of a tree. The tree on which they
live is called Lonticon, is about as large as the wild fig-tree,
and bears fruit which resembles a bean, but has a kernel.

1 T quote this because the movement of the tides is still, in our own time,

made use of to determine whether certain parts of the Polar seas are
connected with each other or not.

512 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. | [onap.

When this fruit is ripe, they strain it. through a cloth, and the
juice which flows from it is thick and black and called asciy.
This juice they suck or drink mixed with milk, and of the
pressed fruits they make cakes which they eat; for they have
not many cattle because the pasture is poor. . . . As far as to these
bald people the land is now sufficiently well known, also the
races on this side of them, because they are visited by Scythians.
From them it is not difficult to collect information, which is
also to be had from the Greeks at the port of the Borysthenes
and other ports in Pontus. The Scythians who travel thither
do business with the assistance of seven interpreters In seven
languages. So far our knowledge extends. But of the land on
the other side of the bald men none can give any trustworthy
account because it is shut off by a separating wall of lofty track-
less mountains, which no man can cross. But these bald men
say—which, however, I do not believe—that men with goat’s
feet live on the mountains, and on the other side of them other
men who sleep six months at a time. The latter statement,
however, I cannot at all admit. On the other hand, the land east
of the bald men, in which the Issedones live, is well known, but
what is farther to the north, both on the other side of the bald
men and of the Issedones, is only known by the statements of
these tribes. . . . Above the Issedones live the one-eyed men,
and the gold-guarding griffins. This information the Scythians
have got from the Issedones and we from the Scythians, and we
call the one-eyed race by the Scythian name Arimaspi, for in the
Scythian language arima signifies one and spow the eye. The
whole of the country which I have been speaking of has so hard
and severe a winter, that there prevails there for eight months
an altogether msupportable cold, so that if you pour water on
the ground you will not make mud, but if you light a fire you
will make mud. Even the sea freezes, and the whole Cimmerian
Bosphorus, and the Scythians who live within the trench travel
on the ice and drive over it in waggons. . . . Again, with refer-
ence to the feathers with which the Scythians say the air is filled,
and which prevent the whole land lying beyond from being seen
or travelled through, I entertain the following opinion. In the
upper parts of this country it snows continually, but, as is natural,
less in summer than in winter. And whoever has seen snow
falling thick near him will know what I mean. For snow re-
sembles feathers, and on account of the winter being so severe
the northern parts of this continent cannot be inhabited. I
beheve then that the Scythians and their neighbours called
snow feathers, on account of the resemblance between them.
This is what is stated regarding the most remote regions.”

These and other similar statements, notwithstanding the

XII] STRABO. 513

absurdities mixed up with them, are founded im the first
instance on the accounts of eye-witnesses, which have passed
from mouth to mouth, from tribe to tribe, before they were
noted down. Still several centuries after the time of Herodotus,
when the Roman power had reached its highest point, little
more was known of the more remote parts of north Asia. While
Herodotus, in the two hundred and third chapter of his First

is qvarta pars trans ocemumm
Te mcogmta nobis est

SARANAMTES

Wh
Wy
es tall yi yy
GETAUL = jc US))),|\)! iy
Mo Wp
4g

4 MAP OF THE WORLD, SAID TO BE OF THE TENTH CENTURY.
a Found in a manuscript of the twelfth century in the Library at Turin.
5 (From Santarem’s Atlas.)

Book, says that “the Caspian is a sea by itself having no

: communication with any other sea,” Strabo, induced by evidence

furnished by the commander of a Greek fleet in that sea, states

i (Book II. chapters 1. and iv.) that the Caspian is a gulf of the

Northern Ocean, from which it is possible to sail to India.

PLINY THE ELDER (fistoria Naturalis, Book VI. chapters xiii.
L L

X
TE

i Pea °
D Q) Oo zi 2° PS
60 oo Cy lobo as
5 AE D
> MARE INDICUM (e) z S08
F fo o a0
J g = 9

MAP OF THE WORLD SHOWING ASIA TO BE CONTINUOUS WITH AFRICA.
(From Nicolai Doni’s edition of Ptolemei Cosmographia, Ulm 1482.)

CHAP. XIII. ] MARCO POLO. 515

and xvi.) states that the north part of Asia is occupied by
extensive deserts bounded on the north by the Scythian
Sea, that these deserts run out to a headland, Promontoriwm
Scythicum, which is uninhabitable on account of snow. Then
there is a land inhabited by man-eating Scythians, then deserts,
then Scythians again, then deserts with wild animals to a
mountain ridge rising out of the sea, which is called Zabin. The
first people that are known beyond this are the Seri. PToLEMy
and his successors again supposed, though perhaps not ignorant
of the old statement that Africa had been circumnavigated
under Pharaoh Necho, that the Indian Ocean was an inland
sea, everywhere surrounded by land, which united southern
Africa with the eastern part of Asia, an idea which was first
completely abandoned by the chartographers of the fifteenth
century after the circumnavigation of Africa by VAsco DA
GAMA.

The knowledge of the geography of north Asia remained at
this point until MArco Poto,'in the narrative of his remarkable
journeys among the peoples of Middle Asia, gave some in-
formation regarding the most northerly lands of this quarter
of the world also. The chapters which treat of this subject
bear the distinctive titles: “On the land of the Tartars living
in the north,” “On another region to which merchants only
travel in waggons drawn by dogs,” and “On the region where
darkness prevails” (De regione tenebrarum). From the state-
ments in these chapters it follows that hunters and _ traders

1 Marco Polo, in 1271, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, accompanied
his father Nicolo, and his uncle Maffeo Polo, to High Asia. He remained
there until 1295, and during that time came into great favour with Kubla,
Khan,. who employed him, among other things, in a great number ot
important public commissions, whereby he became well acquainted with
the widely extended lands which lay under the sceptre of that ruler. After
his return home he caused a great sensation by the riches he brought with
him, which procured him the name 7] Millione, a name however which,
according to others, was an expression of the doubts that were long enter-
tained regarding the truthfulness of his, as we now know, mainly true
accounts of the number of the people and the abundance of wealth in
Kublai Khan’s lands, “II Millione,”’ in the meantime, became a popular
carnival character, whose cue was to relate as many and as wonderful
“ yarns ” as possible, and in his narratives to deal preferably with millions,
It is possible that the predecessor of Columbus might have descended to
posterity merely as the original of this character if he had not, soon after
his return home, taken part in a war against Genoa, in the course of which
he was taken prisoner, and, during his imprisonment, related his recol-
lections of his travels to a fellow-prisoner, who committed them to writing,
in what language is still uncertain. The work attracted great attention and
was soon spread, first in written copies, then by the press in a large number
of different languages. It has not been translated into Swedish, but in the
Royal Library in Stockholm there is a very important and hitherto little
known manuscript of it from the middle of the fourteenth century, of
which an edition is in course of publication in photo-lithographic facsimile.

Va a

516 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

already inhabited or wandered about in the present Siberia, and
brought thence valuable furs of the black fox, sable, beaver, &c.
The northernmost living men were said to be handsome, tall and
stout, but very pale for want of the sun. They obeyed no king
or chief, but were coarse and uncivilised and lived as beasts.
Among the products of the northern countries white bears are
mentioned, from which it appears that at that time the hunters

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MAP OF THE WORLD AFTER FRA MAURO FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

(From Il mappamondo di Fra Mauro Camaldolese descritto ed illustrato da D. Placido Zurla,
Venezia, 1806.)

had already reached the coast of the Polar Sea. But Marco
Polo nowhere says expressly that Asia is bounded on the north
by the sea.

All the maps of North Asia which have been published down

1 Homines illius regionis sunt pulchri, magni, et corpulenti, sed sunt mul-
tum pallidi.... et sunt homines inculti, et immorigerati et bestialiter
viventes.

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XIII. ] OLD MAPS OF ASIA. ong

to the middle of the sixteenth century, are based to a greater or
less extent on interpretations of the accounts of Herodotus,
Pliny, and Marco Polo. When they do not surround the whole
Indian Ocean with land, they give to Asia a much less extent
in the north and east than it actually possesses, make the land
in this direction completely bounded by sea, and delineate two
headlands projecting towards the north from the mainland. To
these they give the names Promontorium Scythicum and Tabin,
and they besides place in the neighbourhood of the north coast
a large island to which they give “the name that already occurs
in Pliny, Insula Tazata, which reminds us, perhaps by an
accidental resemblance of sound, of the name of the river and
bay, Tas, between the Ob and the Yeniseyj. Finally, the borders
of the maps are often adorned with pictures of wonderfully
formed men, whose dwellings the hunters placed in those
regions, the names being at the same time given of a larger
or smaller number of peoples and cities mentioned by Marco
Polo.

On the whole, the voyages of the Portuguese to India and
the Eastern archipelago, the discovery of America and the
first circumnavigation of the globe, exerted little influence on the
current ideas regarding the geography of North Asia. A new
period in respect of our knowledge of this part of the old world
first began with the publication of HERBERSTEIN’s Lerwm
Moscoviticarum Commentarii, Vindobone 1549. This work has
annexed to it a map with the title “Moscovia Sigismundi
liberi baronis im Herberstein Neiperg et Gutnhag. Anno
MDXLIX. MHanc tabulam absolvit AuG. HirsroceL Vienne
Austriz cum gra. et privi. imp.,’* which mdeed embraces only.
a small part of Siberia, but shows that a knowledge of North
Russia now began to be based on actual observations. A large
gulf, marked with the name Mare Glaciale (the present White
Sea) here projects into the north coast of Russia; from the

1 See note at page 45, for an aceount of von Herberstein and his
Ww orks.

2 As the copy of the original map to which I have had access, being
coloured, is unsuitable for photo- lithographing, I give here instead a photo-
lithographic reproduction of the map in the Italian edition printed in 1550,
The map itself is unchanged im any essential particular, but the drawing
and engraving are better. There is, besides, a still older map of Russia in
the first edition of Sebastian Munster’s Cosmographia Universalis. I have
not had access to this edition, but have had to the third edition of the same
work printed at Basel in 1550. A very incomplete map of Russia engraved
on wood, on which, however, the Obi and the “Sybir” are to be found, is
inserted in this work at page 910. The Dwina here falls not into the White
Sea but into the Gulf of Finland, through a lake to which the name Ladoga
is now given; places like Astracan, Asof, Viborg, Calmahori (Kolmogor),
Solowki (Solovets), &c., are indicated pretty correctly, and in the White Sea
there is to be seen a very faithful representation of a walrus swimming.

518 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

south there falls mto it a large river, called the Dwina. On
the banks of the Dwina there are forts or towns with the
names Solovoka (Solovets), Pinega, Colmogor, &c. There are
to be found on the map besides, the names Mesen, Peczora,
Oby,! Tumen, &c. Oby runs out of a large lake named Kythay
lacus. In the text, mention is made of Irtisch and Papingorod,
of walruses and white bears? by the coast of the Polar Sea, of
the Siberian cedar-tree, of the word Samoyed signifying self-
eaters, &c.? The walrus is described in great detail. It is
mentioned further that the Russian Grand Duke sent out two
men, SIMEON THEODOROVITSCH KURBSKI and Knes PIETRO
UcHATOI, to explore the lands east of the Petchora, Xe.

Herberstein’s work, where the narrative of Istoma’s circum-
navigation of the northern extremity of Hurope, which has been
already quoted, is to be found, was published only a few years
before the first north-east voyages of the English and the Dutch,
of which I have before given a detailed account. Through
these the northernmost part of European Russia and_ the
westernmost part of the Asiatic Polar Sea were mapped, but an
actual knowledge of the north coast of Asia in its entirety
was obtained through the conquest of Siberia by the Russians.
It is impossible here to give an account of the campaigns, by
which the whole of this enormous territory was brought under
the sceptre of the Czar of Moscow, or of the private journeys for
sport, trade, and the collecting of tribute, by which this conquest
was facilitated. But as nearly every step which the Russian
invaders took forward, also extended the knowledge of
regions previously quite unknown, I shall mention the years in
which during this conquest the most important occurrences in a
geographical point of view took place, and give a rather more
detailed account of the exploratory or military expeditions which
led directly to important results affecting the extension of our
knowledge of the geography of the region now in question.

The way was prepared for the conquest of Siberia through
peaceful commercial treaties * which a rich Russian peasant

1 The river Ob is mentioned the first time in 1492, in the negotiations
which the Austrian ambassador, Michael Snups, carried on in Moscow in
order to obtain permission to travel in the interior of Russia (Adelung,
Uebersicht der Reisenden in Russland, p. 157).

2 As before stated, Marco Polo mentions Polar bears but not walruses.

3 Herodotus places Andropagi in nearly the same regions which are
now inhabited by the Samoyeds. Pliny also speaks of man-eating
Scythians,

4 Arctic literature contains a nearly contemporaneous sketch of the first
Russian-Siberian commercial undertakings, Beschryvinghe vander Samoyeden
Landt in Tartarien, nieulijcks onder’'t ghebiedt der Moscoviten gebracht. Wt
de Russche tale overgheset, Anno 1609. Amsterdam, Hessel Gerritsz, 1612 ;
inserted in Latin, in 1613, in the same publisher’s Descriptio ac Delineatio

XUI, ] RUSSIAN CONQUEST OF SIBERIA, 519

ANIKA, ancestor of the StRoGANOV family, entered into with
the wild races settled in Western Siberia, whom he even partially
induced to pay a yearly tribute to the Czar of Moscow. In con-
nection with this he and his sons, in the middle of the sixteenth
century, obtained large grants of land on the rivers Kama and
Chusovaja and their tributaries, with the right to build towns
and forts there, whereby their riches, previously very considerable,
‘were much increased. The family’s extensive possessions, how-
ever, were threatened in 1577 by a great danger, when a host of
Cossack freebooters, six to seven thousand strong, under the
leadership of YERMAK TIMOFEJEV, took flight to the country
round Chusovaja in order to avoid the troops which the Czar
sent to subdue them and punish them for all the depredations
they had committed on the Don, the Caspian Sea and the Volga.
In order to get rid of the freebooters, MAXIM STROGANOV,
Anika’s grandson, not only provided Yermak and his men with
the necessary sustenance, but supported in every way the bold
adventurer’s plan of entering on a campaign for the conquest of
Siberia. This was begun in 1579. In 1580 Yermak passed the
Ural, and after several engagements marched in particular
against the Tartars living in Western Siberia, along the rivers
Tagil and Tura to Tjumen, and thence in 1581 farther along
the Tobol and Irtisch to Kutschum Khan’s residence Sibir,
situated in the neighbourhood of the present Tobolsk. It was
this fortress, long since destroyed, which gave its name to the
whole north part of Asia.

From this point the Russians, mainly following the great
rivers, and passing from one river territory to another at the
places where the tributaries almost met, spread out rapidly ™
all directions. Yermak himself indeed was drowned on the 7th
August, 1584, in the river Irtisch, but the adventurers who
accompanied him overran in a few decades the whole of the
enormous territory lying north of the deserts of Central Asia
from Ural to the Pacific, everywhere strengthening their
dominion by building Ostrogs, or small fortresses, at suitable
places. It was the noble fur-yielding animals of the extensive
forests of Siberia which played the same part with the Russian
promyschleni, as gold with the Spanish adventurers in South
America.

At the close of the sixteenth century the Cossacks had
already possessed themselves of the greater part of the river
territory of the Irtisch-Ob, and sable-hunters had already gone

Geographica Detectionis Freti (Photo-lithographic reproduction, by Fre-
derick Muller, Amsterdam, 1878). The same work, or more correctly,
collection of small geographical pamphlets, contains also Isak Massa’s
map of the coast of the Polar Sea between the Kola peninsula and the
Pjiisna, which I have reproduced,

520 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

as far north-east’ as the river Tas, where the sable-hunting
was at one time very productive and occasioned the founding of
a town, Mangasej, which however was soon abandoned. In 1610
the Russian fur-hunters went from the river territory of the
Tas to the Yenisej, where the town Turuchansk was soon after
founded on the Turuchan, a tributary of the Yenisej. The
attempt to row down in boats from this pomt to the Polar Sea,
with the view of penetrating farther along the sea coast, failed
in consequence of ice obstacles, but led to the discovery of the
river Pjiisina and to the levying of tribute from the Samoyeds
living there. To get farther eastward the tributaries of
the Yenise} were made use of instead of the sea route.
Following these the Russians on the upper course of the
Tunguska met with the mountain ridge which separates the
river territory of the Yenise] from that of the Lena. This ridge
was crossed, and on the other side of it a new stream was met
with, which in the year 1627 led the adventurers to the Lena,
over whose river territory the Cossacks and fur-hunters, faithful to
their customs, immediately spread themselves in order to hunt,
purchase furs, and above all to impose “ jassak” upon the tribes
living thereabouts. But they were not satisfied with this.
Already in 1636 the Cossack ELISES BUSA was sent out with an
express commission to explore the rivers beyond, falling into the
Polar Sea, and to render tributary the natives living on their
banks. He was accompanied by ten Cossacks, to whose
company forty fur-hunters afterwards attached themselves. In
1637 he came to the western mouth-arm of the Lena, from
which he went along the coast to the river Olenek, where he
passed the winter. Next year he returned by land to the Lena,
and built there two “kotsches,’* in which he descended the
river to the Polar Sea. After five days’ successful rowing along
the coast to the eastward he discovered the mouth of the Yana.
After three days’ march up the river he fell in with a Yakut
tribe, from whom he got a rich booty of sable and other furs.
Here he passed the winter of 1638-39, here too he built
himself a new craft, and again starting for the Polar Sea, he

1 Tt is a peculiar circumstance that the vanguard of the Russian stream
of emigration which spread over Siberia, advanced along the northernmost
part of the country by the Tas, Turuchansk, Yakutsk, Kolyma, and Ana-
dyrsk. This depended in the first place upon the races living there
having less power of resistance against the invaders, who were often very
few in number, than the tribes in the south, but also on the fact that the most
precious and most transportable treasures of Siberia—sable, beaver, and fox-
skins—were obtained in greatest quantity from these northern regions.

* Flat-bottomed, half-decked boats, twelve fathoms in length. The
planks were fastened by wooden pins, the anchors were pieces of wood
with large stones bound to them, the rigging of thongs, and the sails often
of tanned reindeer hides (J. E. Fischer, Sibirische Geschichte, St. Peters-
burg, 1768, i. p. 517).

xi.] THE COSSACKS PENETRATE TO THE KOLYMA. | 521

came to another river falling into the eastern mouth-arm of the
Yana, where he found a Yukagir tribe, living in earth huts, with
whom he passed two years more, collecting tribute from the
tribes living in the neighbourhood.

At the same time Ivanov PosTNIK discovered by land the
river Indigirka. As usual, tribute was collected from the
neighbourmg Yukagir tribes, yet not without fights, in which
the natives at first directed their weapons against the horses
the Cossacks had along with them, thinking that the horses
were more dangerous than the men. They had not seen
horses before. A simovie was established, at which sixteen
Cossacks were left behind. They built boats, sailed down the
river to the Polar Sea to collect tribute, and discovered the
river Alasej.

Some years after the river Kolyma appears to have been
discovered, and in 1644 the Cossack, MIcHAILO STADUCHIN,
founded on that river a simovie, which afterwards increased to
a small town, Nischni Kolymsk. Here Staduchin got three
pieces of information which exerted considerable influence on
later exploratory expeditions, for he acquired knowledge of the
Chukches, at that time a military race, who possessed the part
of North Asia which lay a little further to the east. Further,
the natives and the Russian hunters, who swarmed in the
region before Staduchin, informed him that in the Polar Sea
off the mouths of the Yana and the Indigirka there was a large
island, which in clear weather could be seen from land, and
which the Chukches reached in winter with reindeer sledges in
one day from Chukotska, a river debouching in the Polar Sea
east of the Kolyma. They brought home walrus tusks from
the island, which was of considerable size, and the hunters
supposed “that 1t was a continuation of Novaya Zemlya, which
is visited by people from Mesen.” Wrangel is of opinion that
this account refers to no other than Krestovski Island, one of
the Bear Islands. This, however, appears to me to be im-
probable. It is much more likely that It refers partly to the
New Siberian Islands, partly to Wrangel Land, and perhaps
even to America. That the Russians themselves had not then
discovered Lyjachoff’s, or as it was then also called, Blischni
Island, which hes so near the mainland, and is so high that it
is impossible to avoid seeing it when one in clear weather sails
past Svjatoinos, which lies east of the Yana, is a proof that at
that time they had not sailed along the coast between the
mouths of the Yana and the Indigirka, Finally, a great river,
the Pogytscha, was spoken of, which could be reached in three
or four days’ sailing eastward from the mouth of the Kolyma.
This was the first account which reached the conquerors of
Siberia of the great river Anadyr which falls into the Pacific.

522 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

These accounts were sufficient to incite the Cossacks and
hunters to new expeditions. The beginning was made by Isai
IGNATIEV from Mesen, who, along with several hunters, tra-
velled down the Kolyma in 1646 to the Polar Sea, and then
along the coast eastwards. The sea was full of ice, but next
the land there was an open channel, in which the explorers
sailed two days. They then came to a bay, near whose shore
they anchored. Here the Russians had their first meeting with
the Chukches, to which reference has already been made.
Hence Ignatiev returned to the Kolyma; and the booty was
considered so rich and his account of his journey so promising,
that preparations were immediately made in order next year
to send off a new maritime expedition fitted out on a larger
scale to the coast of the Polar Sea.

This time Fropor ALEXEJEV from Rifineat was chief of
the expedition, but along with him was sent, at the request of
the hunters, a Cossack in the Russian service in order to guard
the mghts of the crown. His name was SmmEon Ivanov SIN
DESCHNEV; in geographical writings he is commonly known
under the name of DESCHNEV. It was intended to search for
the mouth of the great river lying towards the east, regarding
which some information had been obtained from the natives,
and which was believed to fall into the Polar Sea. The first
voyage in 1647, with four vessels, was unsuccessful, it is said,
because the sea was blocked with ice. But that this was not
the real reason 1s shown by the fact that a new and larger
expedition was fitted out the following year with full expecta-
tion of success. The crews of the four boats had more probably
been considered too weak a force to venture among the
Chukches, and the ice had to bear the blame of the retreat.
What man could not reproach the conquerors of Siberia with,
was pusillanimity and want of perseverance in carrying out a
plan which had once been sketched. Resistance always in-
creased their power of action; so also now. Seven boats were
fitted out the following year, 1648, all which were to sail down
to the Polar Sea, and then along the coast eastwards. The
object was to examine closely the unknown land and people
there, and to their own advantage and the extension of the
Russian power, to collect tribute from the tribes met with
during the expedition. Miiller states that every boat was
manned with about thirty men—a number which appears to
me somewhat exaggerated, if we consider the nature of the
Siberian craft and the difficulty of feeding so large a number
either with provisions carried along with them or obtained
by hunting.

Four of the boats are not mentioned further in the narrative ;
they appear to have returned at an early period, The three

XIII. DESCHNEV’S. VOYAGES 523

others, on the contrary, made a highly remarkable journey.
The commanders of them were the Cossacks, GERASIM
-ANKUDINOV and SrmEoN DESCHNEV, and the hunter FEODOT
ALEXEJEY. Deschnev entertained such hopes of success that
before his departure he promised to collect a tribute of seven
times forty sable skins. The Siberian archives, according to
Miller, contain the following details.1

On >th June, 1648, a start was made from the Kolyma. The

sea was open; at least the boats came without any adventure
which Deschnev thought worth the trouble of noting in his
narrative to Great Chukotskojnos. Of this cape Deschnev
says that it is quite different from the cape at the river
Chukotskaja. For it lies between north and north-east, and
bends with a rounding towards the Anadyr. On the Russian
side a rivulet runs into the sea, at which the Chukches had
raised a heap of whales’ bones. Right off the cape lie two
islands, on which people of Chukch race with perforated lips
were seen. From this cape it is possible with a favourable
wind to sail to the Anadyr in three days, and the way is not
longer by land, because the Anadyr falls into a gulf of the
sea. At Chukotskojnos or, according to Wrangel at a “holy
promontory,’ Svjatoinos (Serdze Kamen?) previously reached,
Ankudinov’s craft was shipwrecked. The crew were saved,
and distributed on Deschnev’s and Alexejev’s boats. On the
“th September the Russians had a fight with the Chukches
living on the coast, in which fight Alexejey was wounded.
Soon after Deschney’s and Alexejev’s “ kotsches” were parted
never to meet again.

Deschnev was driven about by storms and head-winds until
past the beginning of October. Finally his vessel stranded near
the mouth of the river Olutorsk, in 61° N.L. Hence he marched
with his twenty-five men to the Anadyr. He had expected
to meet with some natives in its lower course, but the region
was uninhabited, which caused the invaders much trouble,
because they suffered from want of provisions. Although

1G,P. Muller, Sammlung Russischer Geschichte, St. Petersburg, 1758. Miiller
asserts In this work that it was he who, in 1736, first drew from the repositories
of the Yakutsk archives the account of Deschnev’s voyage, which before
that time was known neither at the court of the Czar nor in the remotest
parts of Siberia. This, however, is not quite correct, for long before
Miller, the Swedish prisoner-of-war, Strahlenberg, knew that the Russians
travelled by sea from the Kolyma to Kamchatka, which appears from his
map of Asia, constructed during his stay in Siberia, and published in Das
Nord- und Ostliche Theil von Europa und Asia, Stockholm, 1730. On this
map there is the following inscription in the sea north of the Kolyma:—
‘Hic Rutheni ab initio per Moles glaciales, que flante Borea ad Littora,
flanteque Austro versus Mare iterum pulsantur, magno Labore et Vite
Discrimine transvecti sunt ad Regionem Kamtszatkam.”’

524 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

Deschnev could not obtain from the natives any augmentation
of the certainly very small supply of food which he carried
with him, he succeeded nevertheless in passg the winter in
that region. First in the course of the followmg summer did
he fall in with natives, from whom a large tribute was collected,
but not without fierce conflicts. A. simovie was built at the
place where afterwards Anadyrski Ostrog was founded. While
Deschnev remained here, at a loss as to how, when the boats
were broken up, he would be able to return to the Kolyma,
or find a way thither by land, there came suddenly on the
mae 1650, a new party of hunters to his winter hut.

For the accounts of islands in the Polar Sea, and of the river
Pogytscha, which was said to fall into the sea three or four days’
journey beyond the Kolyma, had led to the sending out of another
expedition under the Cossack STADUCHIN. He started from
Yakutsk in boats on the ?th June, 1647, wintered on the Yana,
travelled thence in sledges to Indigirka, and there again built
boats in which he rowed to the Kolyma. It is to be observed
that Staduchin, just because he preferred the land-route to the
sea-route between the Yana and the Indigirka, missed discover-
ing the large island in the Polar Sea, of which so much has
been said. Next summer (1649) Staduchin again sailed down
the river Kolyma to the sea, and then for seven days along its
coast eastwards, without finding the mouth of the river sought for
by him. He therefore returned with his object unaccomplished,
carrying with him a heap of walrus-tusks, which were sent
to Yakutsk as an appendix to a proposal to send out hunters
to the Polar Sea to hunt for these animals. In the mean-
time a true idea of the course of the Anadyr had been obtained
through statements collected from the natives, and a land-route
had become known between its territory and that of the Kolyma.
Several Cossacks and hunters now petitioned for the right to
settle on the Anadyr, and collect tribute from the tribes m that
neighbourhood. This was granted. Some natives were forced
to act as guides. The party started under the command of
SIMEON Morora, and came finally to Deschnev’s simovie on the
Anadyr. Staduchin followed, and traversed the way in seven
weeks. He however soon quarrelled with Deschnev and Motora,
and parting from them on that account, betook himself to the
river Penschina. Deschnev and Motora built themselves boats
on the Anadyr in order to prosecute exploratory voyages, but
the latter was killed in 1651 in a fight with natives called
Anauls. They had been the first of all the natives of the
Pacific coast of North Asia to pay “jassak”’ to Deschnev, and
he had already at that time come into collision with them
and extirpated one of their tribes.

In 1652 Deschnev travelled down the Anadyr to the river

SSELT. | FATE OF ANKUDINOV’S PARTY. 525

mouth, where he discovered a walrus-bank, whence he brought
home walrus-tusks. There afterwards arose a dispute between
~ Deschnev and Selivestrov' regarding the rights founded on the
discovery of this walrus-bank, which came before the authorities
at Yakutsk, and it was from the documents relating to it that
Miller obtained the information that enabled him to give a
narrative of Deschnev’s expedition. Only in this way have
the particulars of this remarkable voyage been rescued from
complete oblivion.”

In 1653 Deschnev gave orders to collect wood to build craft
in which he mtended to carry home by sea the tribute. he
had collected to the Kolyma, but he was compelled to desist
from want of the necessary materials for the building and. equip-
ment of the boats, comforting himself with the statement of
the natives that the sea was not always so open as during
his first voyage. Compelled by necessity, he remained a year
longer at the Anadyr, and in 1654 undertook a new hunting
voyage to the walrus-bank, where he met with the before-
mentioned Selivestrov. He here came in contact with the
natives (Koryaks), and found among them a Yakut woman, who
had belonged to Ankudinov. On asking her where her master
had gone to, she answered that Feodot and Gerasim (Ankudinoy)
had died of scurvy, and that their companions had been killed
with the exception of some few, who had saved themselves in
boats. It appears as if the latter had penetrated along the
coast as far as to the river Kamchatka. For when Kamchatka
was conquered by Atlassov in 1697 the natives stated that a
long time before one FEODOTOV (probably a son of Feodot
Alexejev) had lived among them along with some companions,
and had married their women. They were venerated almost
as gods. They were believed to be invulnerable until they
struck another, when the Kamchadals saw their mistake and
killed them?

By the expeditions of Deschnev, Staduchin, and _ their
companions, the Russians had by degrees become acquainted
with the course of the Anadyr and with the tribes living on
its banks. But it still remaimed for them to acquire a more

1 Selivestrov had accompanied Staduchin during his Polar Sea voyage,
and had, at his instance, been sent out to collect walrus-tusks on account of
the State. He appears to have come to the Anadyr by land.

2 Strahlenberg must have collected the main details of this voyage by
oral communications from Russian hunters and traders.

3 According to Muller. Krascheninnikov (Histoire et description du
Kamtschatka, Amsterdam, 1770, ii. p, 292) states, evidently from infor-
mation obtained in Kamchatka, that the river Nikul is called Feodot-
ovchina after Feodot Alexejev, who not only penetrated thither, but also
sailed round the southern promontory of Kamchatka to the River Tigil,
where he and his followers perished in the way described by Miller.

526 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

complete knowledge of the islands which were said to be situated
in the Polar Sea, and one must be surprised at the extreme
difficulties which were encountered in attempting, the solution
of this apparently very simple geographical problem. The
reason indeed was that the Siberian seamen never ventured
to leave the immediate neighbourhood of the coast, a precaution
which besides is very easily explaimed when the bad construction
of their craft is considered. Along the shore of the Polar Sea
on the other hand, a very active communication appears to have
taken place between the Lena and the Kolyma, though of those
voyages we only know such as in one way or another gave rise
to actions before the courts or were characterised by specially
remarkable dangers or losses.

In 1650 ANDREJ GORELOJ was sent by sea from Yakutsk
to impose tribute on the tribes that lived at the sources of
the Indigirka, and on the Moma, a tributary of the Indigirka.
He passed Svjatoinos successfully, and reached the mouth of
the Kroma, but was there beset by ice, with which he drifted
out to sea. After drifting about ten days he was compelled
to abandon the vessel, which was soon after nipped, and
go on foot over the ice to land. On the ="* November he
came to the simovie Ujandino, where famine prevailed durme
the winter, because the vessels, that should have brought pro-
visions to the place, had either been lost or been compelled to
turn; a statement which proves that at that time a regular
navigation took place between certam parts of the coast of the
Polar Sea.

The same year, the Cossack, TrmorEy BULDAKOV travelled
by sea from the Lena to the Kolyma to take over the command
of the neighbouring region. He reached the Kroma success-
fully, but was beset there and drifted out to sea. He then
determined to endeavour to get to land over the ice. But this
was no easy matter. The ice, which already was three feet
thick, went suddenly into a thousand pieces, while the vessel
drove before a furious gale farther and farther from the shore.
This was repeated several times. When the sea at last froze
over, the vessel was abandoned, and the party finally succeeded,
worn out as they were by hunger, scurvy, work, and cold, in
reaching land at the mouth of the Indigirka. The narrative of
Buldakov’s voyage is, besides, exceedingly remarkable, because a
meeting is there spoken of with twelve “kotsches,” filled with
Cossacks, traders, and hunters, bound partly from the Lena to
the rivers lying to the eastward, partly from the Kolyma and
Indigirka to the Lena, a circumstance which shows how active
the communication then was in the part of the Siberian Polar
Sea in question. This is further confirmed by a narrative of
Nikiror Mauein. While Knes IvAN PerrovirscH BARJATIN-

re eo ee

XII. ] MERCUREJ WAGIN. 527

SKY was vojvode at Yakutsk (1667-75), Malgin travelled along
with a trader, ANDREJ WoRIPAJEY, by sea from the Lena to the
Kolyma. During this voyage the pilot directed the attention of
all on board to an island, lying far out at sea, west of the mouth
of the Kolyma. In course of a conversation regarding it, after
Malgin had succeeded in reaching the Kolyma, ‘another trader,
JAKOB WIATKA, stated that on one occasion when he was sailing
with nine “kotsches” between the Lena and the Kolyma, three
of them had been driven by wind to this island, and that
the men who had been sent ashore there, found traces of
unknown animals, but no inhabitants.

All these narratives, however, do not appear to have met with
full credence. In the beginning of the eighteenth century,
accordingly, new explorations and new expeditions were under-
taken. A Cossack, JAKOB PERMAKOY, stated that during a
voyage between the Lena and the Kolyma, he had seen off
Syjatomos an-island, of which he knew not whether it was
inhabited or not, and likewise, that off the mouth of the Kolyma
there was an island which could be seen from land. In order to
make sure of the correctness of this statement, a Cossack,
MERCURE WAGIN, was sent out. He travelled along with
Permakov, in the month of May, in dog-sledges over the
ice from Svjatoinos to the island lyme off it, that Permakov
had seen. They landed there, found it uninhabited and treeless,
and fixed its circumference at nie to twelve days’ journey.
Beyond this island Wagin saw another, which, however, he could
not reach fer want of provisions. He therefore determined to
turn, in order to undertake the journey the following year im a
better state of preparation. During the return journey the
party suffered severely from hunger, and in order to avoid
a renewal of the dangerous and difficult journey of exploration,
the men at last murdered Permakov, Wagin, and his son. The
crime was discovered, and the knowledge we. possess of this
expedition is founded on the confused mformation obtained
during the examination of the murderers. Miiller even throws
doubts on the truth of the whole narrative.

The attempts which were afterwards made to reach those
islands, partly by sea in 1712, by WASILEJ STADUCHIN, partly
by dog-sledges in 1714 by ALEXEJ Markov and GRIGOREJ
Kusakov, yielded no result. Ten years afterwards, “the old
saga” of the islands in the Polar Sea, duced one SIn BAJORSKI
Fropot Amossov to undertake an expedition with a view to
impose tribute on their inhabitants, but he was prevented by
ice from reaching his goal. On the way he met with a hunter,
IVAN WILLEGIN, who said, that along with another hunter,
GRIGOREJ SANKIN, he had travelled over the ice to these islands
from the mouth of the river Chukotskaja. He had seen neither

528 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

o

men nor trees, but some abandoned huts. “ Probably this land ex-
tends all the way from the mouth of the Yana, past the Indigirka
and Kolyma to the region which is inhabited by the Schelags, a
Chukch tribe.’ He had learned this from a Schelag named
Kopai, at whose home he had been the preceding year. In
order to reach this land by sea it was necessary to start from
the coast which the Schelags inhabited, because the sea was less
covered by ice there.

As Amossov could not reach his goal by sea he travelled
thither the same year, in November, 1724, over the ice, but his
description of the land differs widely from that of his prede-
cessor, and Miiller appears to entertain great doubts of the
truthfulness of the narrative On the ground of a map con-
structed by the Cossack, Colonel SCHESTAKOV, who, however, ac-
cording to Miller, could neither read nor write, this new land was
introduced into DELISLE and BUACHE’S map, with the addition
that the Schelag Kopai lived there, and had there been taken
prisoner by the Russians. This is so far meorrect, as Kopai did
not live on any island, but on the mainland, and never was
prisoner with the Russians, although after having paid tribute
to them, he tired of doing so, and killed some of Amossov’s
people, after which no more was heard of him. Miiller com-
plains loudly of the incorrect statement regarding Kopai, but
the learned academician commits a much greater mistake, inas-
much as he considers that he ought to leave the numerous
accounts of hunters and Cossacks about land and islands in the
Siberian Polar Sea completely out of account. All these lands
are therefore left out of the map published by the Petersburg
Academy in the year 1758.2 It is in this respect much more
incomplete than the map which accompanies Strahlenberg’s
book.

Before I begin to sketch the explorations of the great

1 But we ought to remember that the oldest accounts of islands in the
Polar Sea relate to no fewer than four different lands, viz., 1. The New
Siberian Islands lying off the mouth of the Lena and Svjatoinos; 2.
The Bear Islands; 3. Wrangel Land; 4. The north-western part of
America. Contradictions in accounts of the islands in the Polar Sea
probably depend on the uninhabited and treeless New Siberian islands
being confused with America, which, in comparison with North Siberia, is
thickly peopled and well wooded, with the small Bear Islands, with
Wrangel Land, &e.

2 Nouvelle carte.des découvertes faites par des vaisseaux russiens aux
cétes inconnues de 7 Amérique Septentrionale avec les pais adiacentes, dressée
sur des mémoires authentiques des ceux qui ont assisté a ces décowvertes
et sur d'autres connoissances dont on rend raison dans un mémoire separé.
St. Petersbourg, Académie Impériale des Sciences, 1758.

3 In this sketch of the discovery and conquest of Siberia I have followed
J. E. Fischer, Sibirische Geschichte, St. Petersburg, 1768, and G. P. Miiller,
Sammlung Russischer Geschichte, St. Petersburg, 1758.

xi.] THE DISCOVERY OF KAMCHATKA. 529

northern expedition, some account remains to be given of the
discovery of Kamchatka. It appears from the preceding that
Kamchatka was already reached by some of Deschnev’s fol-
lowers, but their important discovery was completely unknown
in Moscow. Kamchatka is, however, already mentioned in the
narrative of Evert Ysbrants Ides’ embassy to China in 1693-95 ;*
accounts of it had probably been obtained from the Siberian
natives, who are accustomed to wander far and near. These
accounts, however, are exceedingly incomplete, and therefore,
VOLODOMIR ATLASSOV, pidtidesdtnik (i.c., commander of fifty
men) at Anadyrsk, is considered the proper discoverer of
Kamchatka.

While Atlassov was commander at Anadyrsk, he sent out in

1696, the Cossack LucAS SEMENOV Sin Morosko with sixteen -
men to bring the tribe living to the south under tribute, The
commission was executed, and on his return Morosko stated that
he not only was among the Koryiiks, but had also penetrated to
the neighbourhood of the river Kamchatka, and that- he took
a Kamchadal “ ostrog,’ and found in it some manuscripts in an
unknown language, which, according to information afterwards
obtained, had belonged to some Japanese who had stranded on
the coast of Kamchatka. It was the first hint the conquerors
of Siberia obtained of their being in the neighbourhood of
Japan.
_ The year after Atlassov, with a larger force, followed the way
which Morosko had opened up, and penetrated to the river
Kamchatka, where as a sign that he had taken possession of the
land, he erected a cross with an inscription, which when trans-
lated runs thus: Jn the year 7205 (1.e. 1697) on the 13th July
this cross was erected by the pidtidesdtnik Volodomir Atlassov and
his followers, 55 men. Atlassov then built on the Kamchatka
river a simovie, which was afterwards fortified and named Verchni
Kamtschatskoj] Ostrog. Hence the Russians extended their
power over the land, yet not without resistance, which was
first completely broken by the cruel suppression of the rebellion
of 1730.

In 1700 Atlassov travelled to Moscow, carrying with him

1 In the twentieth chapter of Dreyjihrige Reise nach China, &c., Frank-
fort, 1707. The first edition came out at Hamburg in 1698.

2 Miller, ili. p. 19. An account of Atlassov’s conquest of Kamchatka
(Bericht gedaen door zeker Moskovisch krygqs-bediende Wolodimer Otlasofd,
hooft-man over vyftig, &c.) is besides to be found in Witsen (1705, Nieuwe
uitguaf, 1785, p. 670). An account, written from oral communication by
Atlassov himself, is to be found inserted in Strahlenberg’s Travels, p. 431.
Strahlenberg considers Kamchatka and Yezo to be the same land. A
history of the conquest of Kamchatka, evidently written according to
traditions current in the country, is to be found in Krascheninnikov (French

edition of 1770, ii. p. 291). In this account 1698 and 1699 are given as the
years of Morosko’s and Atlassov’s expeditions.

MM

530 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA, [cHAP.

a Japanese, who had been taken prisoner after being ship-
wrecked on the coast of Kamchatka, and the collected tribute
which consisted of the skins of 3,200 sables, 10 sea-otters,
7 beavers, 4 otters, 10 grey foxes and 191 red foxes. He was
received graciously, and sent back as commander of the Cossacks
in Yakutsk with orders to complete the conquest of Kamchatka.
An interruption however happened for some time in the path
of Atlassov as a warrior and discoverer, in consequence of his
having during his return journey to Yakutsk plundered a
Russian vessel laden with Chinese goods, an accessory circum-
stance which deserves to be mentioned for the light which it
throws on the character of this Pizarro of Kamchatka. He
was not set free until the year 1706, and then recovered his
command in Kamchatka, with strict orders to desist from all
arbitrary proceedings and acts of violence, and to do his best
for the discovery of new lands. The first part of this order, he
however complied with only to a limited extent, which gave
occasion to repeated complaints! and revolts among the already
unbridled Cossacks. Finally, in 1711, Atlassov and several
other officers were murdered by their own countrymen. In
order to atone for this crime, and perhaps to get a little farther
from the arm of justice, their murderers, ANZIPHOROV and IVAN
KOSIREVSKOJ,? undertook to subdue the not yet conquered part
of Kamchatka, and the two northernmost of the Kurile
Islands. Further information about the countries lying farther
south was obtained from some Japanese who were shipwrecked
in 1710 on Kamchatka.

At first in order to get to Kamchatka the difficult detour by
Anadyrsk was taken. But in the year 1711 the commander at
Okotsk, Stn BoJARskI PETER GUTUROV, was ordered, by the
energetic promoter of exploratory expeditions in Eastern Siberia,
the Yakutsk voivode, DoROFEJ TRAUERNICHT, to proceed by sea
from Okotsk to Kamchatka. But this voyage could not come

1 Complaints were made, among other things, that in order to obtain
metal for making a still, he ordered all the copper belonging to the crown
which he carried with him, to be melted down. When the Cossacks first
came to Kamchatka and were, almost without a contest, acknowledged as
masters of the country, they found life there singularly agreeable, with one
drawback—there were no means of getting drunk. Finally, necessity
compelled the wild adventurers to betake themselves to what we should
now call chemico-technical experiments, which are described in con-
siderable detail by Krascheninnikoy (doc. cit. ii. p. 369). After many
failures they finally succeeded in distilling spirits from a sugar-bearing
plant growing in the country, and from that time this drink, or raka,
as they themselves call it, has been found in great abundance in that
country.

2 He afterwards became a monk under the name of Ignatiev, came to
St. Petersburg in 1730, and himself wrote a narrative of his adventures,
discoveries, and services, which was printed first in the St. Petersburg
journals of the 26th March, 1739, and likewise abroad (Miiller, iii. p. 82).

xu1.} THE SEA OF OKOTSK OPENED TO NAVIGATION. 531

off because at that time there were at Okotsk neither seagoing
boats, seamen, nor even men accustomed to the use of the com-
pass. Some years after the governor Prince GAGARIN sent to
that town IvAN SoroKAUMOV with twelve Cossacks to make
arrangements for this voyage. For want of ships and seamen
however, this could not now be undertaken, and after Sorokau-
mov had created great confusion he was imprisoned by the
authorities of the place, and sent back to the Governor.
Peter I. now commanded that men acquainted with navigation
should be sought for among the Swedish prisoners of war
and sent to Okotsk ; that they should build a boat there and,
provided with a compass, go by sea along with some Cossacks
to Kamchatka and return.' Thus navigation began on the
Sea of Okotsk. Among the Swedes who opened it, 1s men-
tioned HENRY Buscu,’ according to Strahlenberg a Swedish
corporal, who had previously been a ship-carpenter. According to
Miiller, who met with him at Yakutsk as late as 1736, he
was born at Hoorn in Holland, had served at several places
as a seaman, and finally among the Swedes as a trooper, until
he was taken prisoner at Viborg in 1706. He gave Miiller
the followimg account of his first voyage across the Sea of
Okotsk.

After arriving at Okotsk they had built a vessel, resembling
the /odjas used at Archangel and Mesen for sailing on the White
Sea and to Novaya Zemlya. The vessel was strong; its length
was eight and a half fathoms, its breadth three fathoms, the
freeboard, when the vessel was loaded, three and a half feet.
The first voyage took place in June 1716. The voyagers
began to sail along the coast towards the north-east, but
an unfavourable wind drove the vessel, almost against the
will of the seafarers, right across the sea to Kamchatka.
The first land sighted was a cape which juts out north
of the river Tigil, Being unacquainted with the coast
the seafarers hesitated to land. During the delay a change
of wind took place, whereby the vessel was driven back
towards the coast of Okotsk. The wind again becoming
favourable, the vessel was put about and anchored successfully
in the Tigil, The men who were sent ashore found the
houses deserted. For the Kamchadales being terrified at the

1 Von Baer, Beitrige zur Kentniss des Russischen Reiches, xvi. p. 33.

* Aibjérn Molin, lieutenant in the Scanian cavalry regiment, who was
taken prisoner at the Dnieper in 1709, also took part in these journeys.
Compare Berdttelse om de i Stora Tartariet boende tartarer, som trdffats
liingst nordost i Asien, pa drkebiskop E. Benzelii begiran upsatt af Ambjiru
Molin ( Account of the Tartars dwelling in Great Tartary who were met with
at the north-east extremity of Asia, written at the request of Archbishop
E. Benzelius by Ambjorn Molin), published in Stockholm in 1880 by Aug.
Strindberg, after a manuscript in the Linképing library.

M M 2

532 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

large ship had made their escape to the woods. The seafarers
sailed on along the coast and landed at several places in order
that they might meet with the mhabitants, but for a long time
without success, until at last they fell im with a Kamchadal
girl, who was collecting edible roots. With her as a guide they
soon found dwellings, and even Cossacks, who had been sent out
to collect tribute. They wintered at the river Kompakova.
During the winter the sea cast up a whale, which had in its
carcase a harpoon of European manufacture and with Latin
letters. The vessel left the winter haven in the middle of
May (new style) 1717, but meeting with ice-fields was beset
in them for five and a half weeks. This occasioned great
scarcity of provisions. In the end of July the seafarers were
again back at Okotsk. From this time there has been regular
communication by sea between this town and Kamchatka.
The master of the vessel during the first voyage across the
Sea of Okotsk was the Cossack SoKo.oy.!

From what I have stated it follows that, thanks to the
fondness of the hunters and Cossacks for adventurous explor-
atory expeditions, the current ideas regarding the distribution
of the land and the courses of the rivers in north-eastern Asia
were in the main correct. But, in consequence of want of
knowledge of, or of doubts regarding, Deschnev’s discoveries,
there prevailed an uncertainty whether Asia at its north-east
extremity was connected with America by a small neck of land,
in the same way as it is with Africa, or as North and South
America are connected with each other, a view which, in
consequence of the unscientific necessity of generalising
inherent in man, and the wish to have an explanation of
how the population extended from the old to the new world,
was long zealously defended? No one, either European or
native, had yet, so far as we know, extended his hunting
journeys to the northernmost promontory of Asia, in conse-
quence of which the position which it was assumed to occupy
only depended on loose suppositions. It was possible for

1 Miller, iii. p. 102, According to an oral communication by Busch,
Strahlenberg’s account (p. 17) of this voyage appears to contain several
mistakes. The year is stated as 1713, the return voyage is said to have
occupied six days.

2 As late as 1819, James Burney, first lieutenant on one of Captain
Cook’s vessels during his voyage north of Behring’s Straits, afterwards
captain and member of the Royal Society, considered it not proved that
Asia and America are separated by a sound. For he doubted the correct-
ness of the accounts of Deschnev’s voyage. Compare James Burney, 4
Chronological History of North-eastern Voyages of Discovery. London, 1819,
p. 298; and a paper by Burney in the Vransactions of the Royal Society,
1817. Burney was violently attacked for the views there expressed by
Captain John Dundas Cochrane. Narrative of q Pedestrian Journey through
fiussia and Siberian Tartary, 2nd ed. London, 1824, Appendix.

x1. ] MAP OF ASIA. 533

instance that Asia stretched with a cape as far as to the
neighbourhood of the Pole, or that a broad isthmus between the
Pjiisina and the Olenek connected the known portion of this
quarter of the world with an Asiatic Polar continent. Nor had
geographers a single actual determination of position or
geographical measurement from the whole of the immense
stretch between the mouth of the Ob and Japan, and there was
complete uncertainty as to the relative position of the eastern-
most possessions of the Russians on the one side and of Japan

Too
\

vO sere \
(eee Gee

HBET”

\TAL as a f ae
Le G7 (eae peas 7) >
(a5 6 \ aia

MAP OF ASIA.
From an Atlas published by the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1737.

on the other It was difficult to get the maps of the Russians
to correspond with those of the Portuguese and the Dutch, at
the point where the discoveries of the different nations touched
each other; which also was exceedingly natural, as at that time
too limited an extent east and west by 1700 kilometres was
commonly assigned to Siberia. In order to investigate this
point, in order to fill up the great blank which still existed in

1 The first astronomical determinations of position in Siberia were, per-

haps, made by Swedish prisoners of war; the first in China by Jesuits
(C£. Strahlenberg, p. 14).

534 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

the knowledge of the quarter of the world first inhabited by
man, and perhaps above all for the purpose of forming new
commercial treaties and of discovering new commercial routes,
Peter the Great during the latest years of his life arranged one
of the greatest geographical expeditions which the history of
the world can show. It was not until after his death, however,
that it was carried out, and then it went on for a series of years
on so large a scale that whole tribes are said to have been
impoverished through the severe exactions of transport that
were on its account imposed on the inhabitants of the Siberian
deserts. Its many different divisions are now comprehended
under the name—the Great Northern Expedition. Through the
writings of Behring, Miiller, Gmelin, Steller, Krascheninnikoy
and others, this expedition has acquired an important place for
all time in the history not only of geography but also of
ethnography, zoology, and botany; and even now the inquirer,
when the natural conditions of North Asia are in question,
must return to these works. I shall therefore, before drawing
this chapter to a close, give a brief account of its principal
features.

The Great Northern Expedition was ushered in by “ the first
expedition to Kamchatka” The commander of this expedition
was the Dane Virus BEHRING, who was accompanied by
Lieutenant Morton SPANGBERG, also a Dane by birth, and
ALEXEI CHIRIKOV. They left St. Petersburg in February 1725,
and took the land route across Siberia, carrying with them the
necessary materials with which in Kamchatka to build and
equip the vessel with which they should make their voyage of
exploration. More than three years were required for this
voyage, or rather for this geographico-scientific campaign ; in
which for the transport of the stores and the shipbuilding material
that had to be taken from Europe the rivers Irtisch, Ob, Ket,
Yenisej, Tunguska, Ilim, Aldan, Maja, Yudoma, and Urak were
taken advantage of. It was not until the 7th April that a be-
ginning could be made at Nischni Kamchatskoj Ostrog of tbe

building of the vessel, which was launched on the as July ;

and on thes 20th ~ of the same month Behring began his voyage.

He sailed in a north-easterly direction along the coast of
Kamchatka, which he surveyed. On the ?th August in 64° 30’
N.L. he fell in with Chukches, who had still a reputation among
the Russians for invincible courage and ferocity. First one of
them came to the vessel, swimming on two inflated seal-skins,
“to mquire what was intended by the vessel’s coming thither,”
after which their skin-boat lay to. Conversation was carried on
with them by means of a Koryik imterpreter. On the 7%
August St. Lawrence Island was discovered, and on the “th of
the same month the explorers sailed past the north-eastern

-

XH1.] BEHRING’S SECOND VOYAGE. ° 535

promontory of Asia in 67° 18’ and observed that the coast trends
to the west from that point, as the Chukches had before informed
them. Behring on this account considered that he had fulfilled
his commission to ascertain whether Asia and America were
separated, and he now determined to turn, “ partly because if the
voyage were continued along the coast ice might be met with,
from which it might not be so easy to get clear, partly on account
of the fogs, which had already begun to prevail, and partly
because it would be impossible, if a longer stay were made
in these regions, to get back the same summer to Kamchatka.
There could be no question of passing the winter off the coast
of the Chukch Peninsula, because that would have been to expose
the expedition to certain destruction, either by beg wrecked on
the jagged rocks of the open unknown coast, or by perishing from
want of fuel, or finally by dying under the hands of the fierce

unconquered Chukches.” On the 2° the vessel returned to

Nischni Kamchatskoj Ostrog.t. It was during this voyage that
the sound, which has since obtained the name of Behring’s
Straits, is considered to have been discovered. But it is
now known that this discovery properly belongs to the gallant
hunter Deschnev, who sailed through these straits eighty years
before. I suppose therefore that the geographical world will
with pleasure embrace the proposal to attach the name of
Deschnev along with that of Behring to this part of our globe ;
which may be done by substituting Cape Deschnev, as the name
of the easternmost promontory of Asia, for that of East Cape, an
appellation which is misleading and unsuitable in many respects.
Several statements by Kamchadales regarding a great country
towards the east on the other side of the sea, induced Behring
the following year to sail away in order to ascertain whether this
was the case. In consequence of unfavourable weather he did not
succeed in reaching the coast of America, but returned with his
object unaccomplished, after which he sailed to Okotsk, where

he arrived on the rend 1729. Hence he betook himself

immediately to St. Petersburg, which he reached after a journey
of six months and nine days.

In maps published during Behring’s absence, partly by Swedish
officers who had returned from imprisonment in Siberia,? Kam-
chatka had been delineated with so long an extension towards

1 A short, but instructive account of Behring’s first voyage, based on an
official communication from the Russian Government to the King of Poland,
is inserted in t. iv. p. 561 of Description géographique de l Empire de la
Chine, par le P. J. B. Du Halde, La Haye, 1736. The same official report
was probably the source of Miiller’s brief sketch of the voyage (Miller,
iii. p. 112). A map of it is inserted in the 1735 Paris edition of Du Halde’s
work, and in Nouvel Atlas de la Chine, par M. D' Anville, La Haye, 1737.

2 Histoire généalogique des Tartares (note, p, 107), and Strahlenberg’s oft-
quoted work (map, text, pp. 31 and 384).

536 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [OHAP.

the south that. this peninsula was connected with Yezo, the
northernmost of the large Japanese islands. The distance
between Kamchatka and Japan, rich in wares, would thus have
been quite inconsiderable. This nearness was believed to be
further confirmed by another Japanese ship, manned by seven-
teen men and laden with silk, rice, and paper, having stranded
in July 1729 on Kamchatka, south of Avatscha Bay. In this
neighbourhood there was, along with a number of natives, a
small party of Cossacks under the command of ANDREAS
SCHTINNIKOV. He at first accepted several presents from the
shipwrecked men, but afterwards withdrew from the place where
the wreck took place. When the Japanese on this account
rowed on in their boats along the coast, Schtinnikov gave orders
to follow them in a baydar and kill them all but two. The cruel
deed was carried into execution, on which the malefactors took
possession of the goods, and broke in pieces the boats in order to
obtam the iron with which the boards were fastened together.
The two Japanese who were saved were carried to Nischni
Kamchatsko) Ostrog. Here Schtinnikov was imprisoned and
hanged for his crime. The Japanese were sent to St. Petersburg,
where they learned the Russian language and were converted to
Christianity, while some Russians in their turn learned Japanese.
The Japanese died between 1736 and 1739. Both were from
Smatsua; the elder, Sosa, had been a merchant, and the younger,
GONSA, was a pilot’s son. Their vessel had been bound for
Osika, but having been carried out of its course by a storm, had
drifted about at sea for six months, stranding at last with so
unfortunate a result for the greater part of the crew.

This sad occurrence further reminds us that much still
remained unaccomplished with respect to the geography of
north-eastern Asia. Behring’s Kamchatka expedition had
besides yielded no information regarding the position of the
northern extremity of Asia, or of the part of America lying
opposite to Kamchatka. A number of grave doubts appear
besides to have been started as to the correctness of the
observations during Behring’s first voyage. All this induced
him to make proposals for a continuation of his explorations,
offering, along with his former companions, Spangberg and
Jhirikov, to take the command of the maritime expedition
which was to start from Kamchatka to solve the questions
proposed, both eastwards to ascertain the position of the east
coast of Asia in relation to the west coast of America, and
southwards to connect the areas which the West-Europeans and
the Russians were exploring.

The Russian senate, the Board of Admiralty, and the Academy
of Sciences were commissioned to develop this plan and to carry
1t nto execution. With respect to the way in which the com-

Sorte] THE GREAT NORTHERN EXPEDITION. 537

mission was executed I may be allowed to refer to Miiller’s oft-
quoted work, and to a paper by Von BAER: Peters des Grossen
Verdienste um die Erweiterung der geographischen Kenntnisse
(Beitrage zur Kenntniss des Russischen Reiches, B. 16, St. Peters-
burg, 1872). Here I can only mention that it was principally
through the untirmg interest which Krrinov, the secretary of
the senate, took in the undertaking, that it attained such a
development that it may be said to have been perhaps the
greatest scientific expedition which has ever been sent out by
any country. It was determined at the same time not only to
ascertain the extent of Siberia to the north and east, but also to
examine its hitherto almost unknown ethnographical and natural
conditions. For this purpose the Great Northern Expedition was
divided into the following divisions :—

1. An expedition to start from Archangel for the Ob.1—¥For this
expedition two kotsches were employed, the Ob and the Hxpedition,
524 feet long, 14 feet broad, and 8 feet deep, each manned with
2) men. The vessels, which were under the command of
Lieutenants PAULov and MuravJry, left Archangel on the 7th
July, 1734. The first simmer they only reached Mutnoi Saliv
in the Kara Sea, whence they returned to the Petchora and
wintered at Pustosersk. The followmg year they broke up in
June, but did not penetrate farther than in 1734. The unfavour-
able issue was ascribed to the vessels’ unserviceableness for
voyages in the Polar Sea, in consequence of which the Board
of Admiralty ordered two other boats, 50 to 60 feet long, to be
built for the expedition, which were placed under the command
of SKURATOV and SucuHoriy, Muravjev being besides replaced
by MaryerIn who sailed with the old vessels on the DA" 1736,
down the Petchora river, at whose mouth the Hxpedition was
wrecked, Without permitting himself to be frightened by this,
Malygin ordered his men to go on board the other vessel, in
which with great dangers and ditticulties they penetrated through
the drift-ice to Dolgoj Island. Here on the “th August they
fell im with the new vessels sent from Archangel. Suchotin was
now sent back to Archangel on board the Ob; Malygin and
Skuratov sailed in the new vessels to the Kara river and
wintered there. During the winter 1736-1737 the men suffered
only slightly from scurvy, which was cured by anti-scorbutic

1 This expedition was under the command of the Admiralty; the others
under that of Behring. In my account I have followed partly Miller and
partly Wrangel, of whom the latter, in his book of travels, gives a_his-
torical review of previous voyages along the coasts of the Asiatic Poiar
Sea. The accounts of the voyages between the White Sea and the Yenise]
properly belong to a foregoing chapter in this work, but I quote them first
here in order that I may treat of the different divisions of the Great
Northern Expedition in the same connection.

538 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. * [CHAP.

plants growing in the region. The ice in the Kara river did not
break up until the = Ju une, but so much ice still drifted about
in the sea that a start could not be made until the =" July.
On the Saga, the vessels anchored in the sound which I have

named Malygin Sound. Here they were detained by head
winds 25 days. Then they sailed on round a cape, which the
Samoyeds call Yalmal, up the Gulf of Ob to the mouth of the
river, which was reached on the ““ September, 1737, and then
up the river to Soswa, where the vessels were laid up in winter
quarters. The crews were taken to Beresov. Malygin returned
to Petersburg, after having given Lieut. Skuratov and the second
mate Golovin a commission to carry the vessels back to the
Dwina the following year. They did not get back until August
1739. The return voyage thus also occupied two years, and was
attended with much difficulty and danger.

Six years in all had thus gone to the voyage from Archangel
to the Ob and back, which now can be accomplished without
difficulty im a single summer. By means of Malygin’s and
Skuratov’s voyages, and of a land journey which the land-
measurer Selifontov undertook during July and August 1736
with reindeer along the west coast of Yalmal and then by boat
to Beli Ostrov, Yalmal and the south coast of this Jarge island
were mapped, it would appear in the main correctly.’

2. An expedition to sail from the Ob to the Yenisej—For
this Behring ordered a double sloop, the Yobol, 70 feet long, 15
feet broad, Fal 8 feet deep, to be built at Tobolsk. The vessel
had two masts, was armed with two small cannon, and was
manned with 53 men, among whom were a land-measurer and a
priest. The commander was Lieut. Owzyn. They sailed in
company with some small craft carrying provisions from Tobolsk
on the 7th May, 1734, and came to the Gulf of Ob through the
easternmost mouth-arm of the river on the ?$th June. There a
storm damaged the tender-vessels. Of the timber of those
which had sustained most damage, a storehouse was erected in
66° 36’ N.L., in which the provisions landed from the unservice-
able craft were placed. When this was done they sailed on, but
slowly in consequence of unfavourable winds and shallow water,
so that it was not until the 17th August that they reached 70° 4’
N.L. Hence they returned to Obdorsk, arriving there on the
th September. Seven days afterwards the Ob was covered
with ice.

The following spring the voyage was resumed. On the %;'th
June they came to the depdt formed the precedmg year. At
first ice formed an obstacle, but on the #** July it broke up, and

the navigable water became clear. The eee had now begun to

1 Wrangel, 1. p. 36.

XL. ] OWZYN’S VOYAGES ON THE OB. 539

suffer so severely from scurvy, that of 53 only 17 were in good
health ; Owzyn therefore turned, that he might bring his sick
men to Tobolsk. He reached this town on the 4th October, and
the river froze over soon after. Owzyn now travelled to St.
Petersburg in order to give in, in person, reports of his unsuc-
cessful voyages and to make suggestions as to the measures
that ought to be taken to ensure better success to next year’s
undertaking. His proposals on this pomt were mainly in the
direction of building at Tobolsk a new vessel, which should
accompany the Zobol during the dangerous voyage, and confer
upon it greater safety. This was approved by the Board of
Admiralty, but the vessel could not be got ready till the summer
of 1736, on which account that year’s voyage was undertaken in
the same way as that of the preceding year, and with the same
success. The new vessel was not ready until 1737. It came
with the shipbuilder KoscHELEV and the mate MININ on the
16th June to Obdorsk, where Owzyn took command of it, handing
over the old one to Koscheley, and beginning his fourth voyage
down the Gulf of Ob. This time he had better success. After
sailing past Gyda Bay, he came, without meeting with any
serious obstacles from ice, on the 7ith August to Cape Mattesol,

and on the “* September to a storehouse erected for the expe-

dition by the care of the authorities on the bank of the Yenise]
in 71° 33’ N.L. The Yenisej froze over on the = October.

Four years had thus gone to the accomplishment of Owzyn’s
purpose, but it can scarcely be doubted that if he had not turned
so early in the season, and if he had had steam, or a sailing
vessel of the present day at his disposal he would have been able
to sail from the Ob to the Yenisej in a few weeks. It 1s at all
events Owzyn’s perseverance to which we are in great measure
indebted for the mapping of the Gulf of Ob, and the Bays of Tas
and Gyda.t

3. Voyages from the Yenisej towards Cape Tauimur.—tin the
winter of 1738 Owzyn and Koschelev were called to St. Peters-
burg to answer for themselves with reference to a complaint
lodged against them by the men under their command” In

1 Wrangel, i. p. 38.

2 According to P. von Haven (Nye og forbedrede Efterretningar om det
Russiske Rige, Kjébenhavn, 1747, ii. p. 20), “it was the custom in Peters-
burg to send away those whose presence was inconvenient to help Behring
to make new discoveries.’’ It also went very ill with many of the gallant
Russian Polar travellers, and any of them were repaid with ingratitude.
Behring was received on his return from his first voyage, so rich in results,
with unjustified mistrust. Steller was exposed to continual trouble, was
long prevented from returning from Siberia, and finally perished during
his journey home, broken down in body and soul. Prontschischev and
Lassinius succumbed to hardships and sufferings during their voyages in
the Polar Sea. Owzyn was degraded, among other things, because he used

540 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAr.

their room Minin got the command of the expedition which was
to endeavour to penetrate farther eastwards along the coast of
the Polar Sea. The two first summers, 1738 and 1739, Minin
could not get further than to the northernmost simovies on the
Yenisej. But in 1740 he succeeded, as it appears in pretty open
water, in reaching on the west coast of the Taimur Peninsula the
latitude of 75° 15’. Here he turned on the S'S"" on account of
“impenetrable ” ice, but maily in consequence of the late season
of the year. The preceding winter Minin had sent his mate
STERLEGOV in sledges to examine the coast. On the 73th April
he reached 75° 26’ N.L., and there erected a stone cairn on a rock
jutting out into thesea. Many open places appear to have been
seen in the offing. Minin and his party returned on account of
snow-blindness, and during the return voyage rested for a time
at a simovie on the river Pjiisma, whose existence there shows
how far the Russian hunters had extended their journeys.

4. Voyage from the Lena Westward.—On the 72"" 1735, two
expeditions started from Yakutsk, each with its double sloop,
accompanied by a number of boats carrying provisions. One of
these double sloops was to go in an easterly direction under the
command of Lieut. Lassrntus. I shall give an account of his
voyage farther on. The other was commanded by Lieut.
PRONTSCHISCHEYV, whose object was to go from the Lena west-
wards, if possible, to the Yenisej. The voyage down the river
was successful and pleasant. The river was from four to nine
fathoms deep, and on its banks, overgrown with birch and pine,
there were numerous tents and dwelling-houses whose in-
habitants were engaged in fishing, which gave the neighbour-
hood of the river a lively and pleasant appearance.? On the
8 August the explorers came to the mouth of the river, which
here divides into five arms, of which the easternmost was chosen
for sailing down to the Polar Sea. Here the two seafarers
were to part. Prontschischev staid at the river-mouth till
the 25th August. He then sailed in 15 to 23 fathoms water
along the shore of the islands which are formed by the mouth-
arms of the Lena. On the “**' he anchored in the mouth

26th Aug:

to be too intimate at Obdorsk with exiles formerly of distinction, A few
years before the voyage of the Vega, Chelyuskin’s trustworthiness was still
doubted. All the accounts of discoveries of islands and land in the Polar
Sea by persons connected with Siberia, have till the most recent times, been
considered more or less fictitious ; yet they are clearly in the main true.

1 Wrangel, i. p. 46.

* According to Wrangel (i., note at p. 38 and 48), probably after a quota-
tion from Prontschischev’s journal. The Lena must bea splendid river, for
it has since made the same powerful impression, as on the seamen of the
Great Northern Expedition, on all others who have traversed its forest-
crowned river channel.

xu. ] PRONTSCHISCHEV’S VOYAGE. 541

of the Olenek. <A little way up the river some dwelling-
houses were met with, which hunters had built for use during
summer. These were put in order for winter, which passed

happily. On the 3“ the ice broke up at the winter quar-

ters, but in the sea it lay still until the ;; August, and it
was only then that Prontschischev could go to sea. The course
was shaped for the north-east. The Chatanga was reached on
the 24th August. On the beach, in 74° 48’ N.L., a hut was
met with in which were found newly baked bread and some
dogs, and which therefore appeared to belong to some Russian
hunters absent at the time. While sailing on along the coast
the explorers, after having passed two bays projecting into
the land, came to an inlet which they erroneously took for
the mouth of the Taimur river. Among the reasons for
this supposition is mentioned the immense number of gulls
which swarmed round the vessel in that region. The bay was
covered with fast ice, “which probably never breaks up,” and
broad ice-fields stretched out to sea from the coast, on which
Polar bears were seen.

On the ** August, in 77° 29’ N.L., the vessel was suddenly

20th

surrounded a so large masses of ice that it could make no
further progress, and was every instant in danger of being
nipped. Prontschischev therefore determined to turn, but this
at first was rendered impossible by a complete calm, a crust of
ice being formed at the same time in open places between the
pieces of drift-ice. If the latitude stated is correct, the turning
point lay quite close to the northernmost promontory of Asia.
With a better vessel, and above all with the help of steam,
Prontschischevy would certainly have rounded it. The unbroken
ice which he mentioned several times in his narrative, ought
probably to be interpreted as belts of pretty closely packed
drift-ice. Many times during my Arctic voyages have I sailed
through belts of ice which, when observed from a boat some
hundred yards from their borders, have been reported as
immense unbroken ice-fields. On the 235°" a high north wind
began to blow which drove the vessel, with the surrounding
ice-fields, towards the south. The voyagers had doubts as to
their being saved, but the gusts of wind broke up the ice so
that the vessel got free and could sail to the mouth of the
Chatanga, which, however, was already frozen over. The ex-
plorers were therefore compelled to continue their voyage

towards the Olenek, whose mouth was reached on the pas

In the neighbourhood of the haven which they intended to
make, they were driven about by contrary winds and drift-ice
about six days more, exposed to cold and wet, and worn out by
exertions and privations of every description. Prontschischev,

who before had been sick, died of his illness on the eee:
Be

542 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHaAP.

to the great sorrow of his men, by whom he was held in great
regard. The mate, CHELYUSKIN, now took .the command. On
the ““" Sept. he succeeded in carrying his vessel into the river
Olenek. On its bank Prontschischev was buried with all the
solemnities which circumstances permitted. To Prontschisnev’s
melancholy fate there attaches an interest which is quite unique
in the history of the Arctic exploratory voyages. He was
newly married when he started. His young wife accompanied
him on his journey, took part in his dangers and sufferings,
survived him only two days, and now rests by his side in the
grave on the desolate shore of the Polar Sea.

On the 2°" the Olenek was frozen over and the winter
became very severe for Chelyuskin and his companions. The
following summer they returned to Yakutsk convinced of the
impossibility of sailing round the north point of Asia, and as
Behring was no longer to be found in that town, Chelyuskin
started for St. Petersburg in order to give an oral account of
Prontschischev’s voyages. The Board of Admiralty, however,
did not favour Chelyuskin’s views, but considered that another
attempt ought to be made by land, but if this, too, was un-
successful, that the coast should be surveyed by land journeys
Lieut. CHARITON LAPTEV was appointed to carry out this last
attempt to reach the Yenisej by sea from the Lena.

Laptev, accompanied by a number of small craft carrying pro-
visions, left Yakutsk on the #?th July, 1759, and on the =* of the

same month reached the mouth-arm of the Lena called Kres-
tovskoj, on which he built, on a point jutting out into the sea, a
high signal tower, one of the few monuments that are to be
found on the north coast of Asia, and which is on that account
mentioned by succeeding travellers in those regions. He sailed
hence along the coast past the mouth of the Olenek and past a
large bay to which, for what reason I know not, he gave the
purely Swedish name of Nordvik. This bay was still covered
with unbroken ice. After having been beset for several days in
Chatanga Bay, the voyagers on the #* August reached Cape
Thaddeus, where the vessel was anchored the following day in
76° 47’ N. L. A signal tower was built on the extremity of the
cape, and the land-measurer CHEKIN was sent to examine the
neighbouring territory, and Chelyuskin to search for the mouth
of the river Taimur. Chekin could carry out no geodetic work
on account of mist. Chelyuskin again reported that the whole
bay and the sea in the offing were, as far as the eye could reach,
covered with unbroken ice. This induced Laptev to turn. After
many difficulties among the ice, he came, on the @*"* to the
confluence of the river Bludnaya with the Chatanga. Here the
winter was passed among a tribe of Tunguses living on the spot,
who owned no reindeer, and were therefore settled. They used

X11. ] LAPTEV’S FIRST VOYAGE. 543

dogs as draught animals, and appear to have carried on a mode
of life resembling that of the coast Chukches.

In spring Chekin was sent to map the coast between the
Taimur and the Pjiisima. With thirty dog-sledges and accompanied
by a nomad Tunguse with eighteen reindeer, he travelled over
land to the Taimur river, followed its course to the sea, and then
the coast towards the west of a distance of 100 versts. Scarcity
of provisions and food for his dogs compelled him to turn.
Laptev himself, convinced as he was of the impossibility of
rounding the north poimt of Asia, now wished to carry back his
vessel and the most of his stores to the Lena. After having with
great danger and difficulty sailed down the river to the Polar Sea,

reaching it on the aurea the vessel on the 4th was beset and
uly, 13

nipped between pieces of ice, according to a statement on a
Russian map published in 1876 by the Hydrographical Depart-
ment in St. Petersburg, on the east coast of the Taimur Peninsula
in 75° 30’ N.L. Six days after there was a strong frost, so that
thin ice was formed between the blocks of drift-ice. Some
foolhardy fellows went over the weakly frozen together pieces of
ice to land. Three days after Laptev himself and the rest of the
men could leave the vessel. Several streams, still unfrozen, lying
between them and their old winter station, however, prevented
them from’ going further. They endeavoured to get protection
from the cold by digging pits in the frozen earth and lying down
in them by turns one after the other. The men were sent daily
to the vessel to fetch as much as possible of the provisions left
behind, but on the 3? *= the ice again broke up, and carried the
abandoned vessel out to sea.

By the 5" 2". the streams at last had frozen so much that the
return journey could be begun to the former year’s winter
station distant more than 500 kilometres. The journey through
the desolate tundra, perhaps never before trodden by the foot
of man, was attended with extreme difficulties, and it was
twenty-five days before Laptev and his men could again rest
in a warmed hut and get hot food. Twelve men perished
of cold and exhaustion. Laptev now determined to remain here
during the winter and to go the following spring over the tundra
to the Yenisej, where he hoped to find depots with provisions and
ammunition. Nor did he now remain inactive. For he did not
wish to return until the surveys were complete. For want of
vessels these were to be made by land. Such of the men as

1 These all perished “for want of fodder.” This, however, is impro-
bable. For, in 1878, we saw numerous traces of these animals as far to
the northward as Cape Chelyuskin, and very fat reindeer were shot both in
1861 and 1873, on the Seven Islands, the northernmost of all the islands of
the Old World, where vegetation is much poorer than in the regions now
in question.

544 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

were not required were therefore sent in spring over the twadra
to the Yenisej and the rest divided into three parties under
Laptev himself, Chekin, and Chelyuskin, who were to survey
cach his portion of the coast between the Chatanga and the
Pjiisima and then meet at the Yenisej. These journeys were
successfully accomplished ; the explorers travelled several times
without, it would appear, excessive difficulty, over the desolate
tundra between the Chatanga and the Taimur rivers, discovered
Lake Taimur, and surveyed considerable stretches of the coast.
But when they were all again assembled at Dudino, it was found
that the north point of Asia had not yet been travelled round and
surveyed. This was done in 1742 by Chelyuskin in the
course of a new sledge journey, of which the particulars
are only incompletely known, evidently because Chelyuskin’s
statement, that he had reached the northernmost point of
Asia, was doubted down to the most recent times. After the
voyage of the Vega, however, there can be no more doubt on
this point.!

5. Voyages from the Lena Eastward.—During these Lieutenant
Lassinius and after his death Lieutenant Dmirri LAPTEV had the
command. <A double sloop was built at Yakutsk for the voyage
of Lassinius. As I have already mentioned, he left this town,
accompanied by several cargo-boats, at the same time as Pron-
tschischev, and both sailed together down the Lena to its mouth.
Lassinius was able to sail to the eastward as early as the 7? th
August. Four days after he came upon so much drift-ice that
he was compelled to he to at the mouth of the river, 120 versts
to the east of the easternmost mouth-arm of the Lena. Here
abundance of driftwood was met with, and the stock of pro-
visions appears also to have been large, but notwithstanding this,
scurvy broke out during the winter. Lassinius himself and most
of his men died, On being informed of this, Behring sent a
relieving party, consisting of Lieutenant CHERBININ and fourteen
men to Lassinius’ winter quarters. On their arrival on the 15th
June they found only the priest, the mate, and seven sailors
alive of the fifty-three men who had started with Lassinius the
foregoing year from Yakutsk. These too were so ill that some
of them died during the return journey to Yakutsk. Dmitri
Laptev and a sufficient number of men, were sent at the same
time to take possession of the ship and renew the attempt to sail

1 Wrangel, i. pp. 48 and 72. Of the journey round the northernmost
point of Asia, Wrangel says :—‘‘ Von der Tajmur-Mundung bis an das Kap
des heiligen Faddej konnte die Kiiste nicht beschifft werden, und die
Aufnahme, die der Steuermann Tschemokssin (Chelyuskin) auf ‘dem Eise
in Narten vornahm, ist so oberflaichlich und unbestimmt, dass die eigent-
liche Lage des nordéstlichen oder Tajmur-Kaps, welches die nirdlichste
Spitse Asiens ausmacht, noch gar nicht ausgemittelt ist.”

XII. ] DMITRI LAPTEV’S SECOND VOYAGE. 545

eastwards. He went to sea on the — ae At first he had to

contend with serious obstacles from ice, and when at last he
reached open water he thought himself compelled to turn on
account of the advanced season of the year. On the 2**". he
came again to the Bychov mouth-arm of the Lena, up which he
found it difficult to make his way on account of the many
unknown shoals. On the 1°th September the river was frozen
over. He wintered a little distance from the mouth; and now
again scurvy made its appearance, but was cured by constant
exercise In the open air and by a decoction of cedar cones. In
a report sent from this place, Dmitri Laptev declared that it was
quite impossible to round the two projecting promontories
between the Lena and the Indigirka, Capes Borchaja and
Svjatomos, because, according to the unanimous statement of
several Yakuts living in the region, the ice there never melts or
even loosens from the beach. With Behring’s permission he
travelled to St. Petersburg to lay the necessary information
before the Board of Admiralty. The Board determined that
another attempt should be made by sea, and, if that was
unsuccessful, that the coast should be surveyed by means of
land journeys.

It is now easy to see what was the cause of the unfortunate
issue of these two attempts to sail to the eastward. The explorers
had vessels which were unsuitable for cruising, they turned too
early in the season, and in consequence of their unwillingness to
go far from land they sailed into the great bays east of the Lena,
from which no large river carries away the masses of ice that
have been formed there during the winter, or that have been
drifted thither from the sea. Dmitri Laptev and his companions
besides appear to have had a certain dislike to the commission
intrusted to them, and, differing from Deschnev, they thus
wanted the first condition of success—the fixed conviction of
the possibility of attaining their object.

By order of the Board of Admiralty Dmitri Laptev at all
events began his second voyage, and now falsified his own
prediction, by rounding the two capes which he believed to be
always surrounded by unbroken ice. After he had passed them
his vessel was frozen in on the 2th September. Laptev had no
idea at what point of the coast he was, or how far he was from
land. He remained in this unpleasant state for eleven days, at
the close of which one of the mates who had been sent out from
the vessel in a boat on the 22S returned on foot over the ice
and reported that they were not far from the mouth of the
Indigirka. Several Yakuts had settled on the neighbouring
coast, where was also a Russian simovic. Laptev and his men
wintered there, and examined the surrounding country. The

surveyor KINDAKOV was sent out to map the coast to the Kolyma.
; NN

546 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

Among other things he observed that the sea here was very
shallow near the shore, and that driftwood was wanting at the
mouth of the Indigirka, but was found in large masses in the
interior, 30 versts from the coast.

The following year, 1740, Laptev repaired as well as he could
his vessel, which had been injured during the voyage of the
preceding year, and then went again to sea on the Te“ On
the ;; August he passed one of the Bear Islands, fixing its
latitude at 71° 0°. On the 23th August, when Great Cape
Baranov was reached, the progress of the vessel was arrested by
masses of ice that extended as far as the eye could reach.
Laptev now turned and sought for winter quarters on the
Kolyma. On the 12th July, 1741, this river became open, and
Laptev went to sea to continue his voyage eastwards, but did
not now succeed in rounding Great Cape Baranov. He was now
fully convinced of the impossibility of reaching the Anadyr by
sea, on which account he determined to penetrate to that river
by land in order to surveyit. This he did in the years 1741
and 1742. Thus ended the voyages of Dmitri Laptev, giving evi-
dence if not of distinguished seamanship, of great perseverance,
undaunted resolution, and fidelity to the trust committed to
lim}

6. Voyage for the purpose of exploring and surveying the coast
of America.—For this purpose Behring fitted out at Okotsk two
vessels, of which he himself took the command of one, St. Paul,
while the other, St. Peter, was placed under Cutrikov. They
left Okotsk in 1740, and being prevented by shoal water from
entering Bolschaja Reka, they both wintered in Avatscha Bay,
whose excellent haven was called, from the names of the ships,
Port Peter-Paul. On the 14?th June they left this haven, the
naturalist GEORG WILHELM STELLER having first gone on board
Behring’s and the astronomer Louts DE L’ISLE DE LA CROYERE
Chirikov’s vessel. The course was shaped at first for the S.S.E.,
but afterwards, when no land could be discovered in this
direction, for the N.E.and EK. During a storm on the J" the

20th June

vessels were separated. On the 78th July Behring reached the
coast of America in 58° to 59° N.L. <A short distance from the
shore Steller discovered here a splendid volcano, which was
named St. Elias. The coast was inhabited, but the inhabitants

1 Wrangel, i. p. 62. I have sketched the voyages between the White Sea
and the Kolyma, principally after Engelhardt’s German translation of Wran-
gel’s Travels. It is, unfortunately, in many respects defective and confused,
especially with respect to the sketch of Chariton Laptev and his followers,
sledge journeys, undertaken in order to survey the coast between the
Cha anga and the Pjasina. Muller mentions these journeys only in passing.
Wrangel gives as sources for his sketch (i. note at p. 38) Memoirs of the
Russian Admiralty, also the original journals of the journeys, Chelyuskin
he calls Chemokssin.

XII. | DEATH OF BEHRING. 547

fled when the vessel approached. From this pomt Behring
wished to sail in a north-westerly direction to that promontory
of Asia which formed the turning-point of his first voyage. It
was however only with difficulty that in the almost constant fog
the peninsula of Alaska could be rounded and the vessel could
sail forward among the Aleutian island groups. Scurvy now
broke out among the crew, and the commander himself suffered
severely from it, on which account the command was mainly in
the hands of Lieut. WAxeL. At an island the explorers came
into contact with the natives, who at first were quite friendly,
until one of them was offered brandy. He tasted the liquor, and
was thereby so terrified that no gifts could calm his uneasiness.
On this account those of the crew who were on land were
ordered to come on board, but the savages wished to detain
their guests. At last the Russians were set free, but a Koryik
whom they had taken with them as an interpreter was kept
behind. In order to get him set at liberty, Waxel ordered two
musket salvos to be fired over the heads of the natives, with the
result that they all fell flat down from fright, and the Koryiik
had an opportunity of making his escape. Now the fire-water
is a liquor in great request among these savages, and they are
not frightened at the firmg of salvos of musketry.

During the following months Behring’s vessel drifted about
without any distinct plan, in the sea between Alaska and Kam-
chatka, im nearly constant fog, and in danger of stranding on
some of the many unknown rocks and islands which were passed.
On the 5th November the vessel was anchored at an island
afterwards called Behring Island. Soon however a great wave
arose which threw the vessel on land and crushed it against the
rocky coast of the island. Of the wintering there, which, through
Steller’s taking part in it, became of so great importance for
natural history, I shall give an account further on in connection
with the narrative of our visit to Behring Island. Here I shall
only remind the reader that Behring died of scurvy on the 4th
December, and that in the course of the voyage great part of his
crew fell a sacrifice to the same disease. In spring the survivors
built a new vessel out of the fragments of the old, and on the
iith of August they sailed away from the island where they had
undergone so many sufferings, and came eleven days after to a
haven on Kamchatka.

After parting from Behring, Chirikov on the 7$th July sighted
the coast of America in 56° N.L. The mate ABRAHAM DEMEN-
TIEV was then sent ashore in the longboat, which was armed with
a cannon and manned by ten well-armed men. When he did not
return, another boat was sent after him. But this boat too did
not come back. Probably the boats’ crews were taken prisoners
and killed by the Indians. After making another attempt to

i

548 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [onar.

find his lost men, Chirikov determined to return to Kamchatka.
He first sailed some distance northwards along the coast of
America without beimg able to land, as both the vessel’s boats
were lost. Great scarcity of drinking-water was thus occasioned,
which was felt the more severely as the return voyage was very
protracted on account of head-winds and fog. During the voyage
twenty-one men perished, among them de l’'Isle de la Croyére,
who died, as is said often to be the case with scurvy patients on
board ship, while he was being carried from his bed up on deck
to be put on land.

The voyages of Behring and Chirikovy, attended as they were by
the sacrifice of so many human lives, gave us a knowledge of the
position of North-western America in relation to that of North-
eastern Asia, and led to the discovery of the long volcanic chain
of islands between the Alaska peninsula and Kamchatka.

7. Voyages to Japan.—For these Captain SPANGBERG ordered
a hucker, the Erkeengeln Michael, and a double sloop, the
Nadeschda, to be built at Okotsk, the old vessel Gabriel beg
.at the same time repaired for the same purpose. Spangberg
himself took command of the Michael, that of the double sloop
was given to Lieutenant WALTON, and of the Gabriel to Midship-
man CHELTINGA. Dprift-ice prevented a start until midsummer,
and on that account nothing more could be done the first year
(1738) than to examime the Kurile Islands to the 46th degree
of latitude. From this point the vessels returned to Kamchatka,
where they wintered at Bolschaja Reka. On the 24" 1739,
Spangberg with his little fleet again left this haven. All the
vessels kept together at first, until in a violent storm attended
with fog Spangberg and Cheltinga were parted from Walton.
Both made a successful voyage to Japan and landed at several
places, being always well received by the natives, who appeared
to be very willing to have dealings with the foreigners. During
the return voyage Spangberg landed in 43° 50’ N.L. on a large
island north of Nippon. Here he saw the Aino race, enigmatical
as to its origin, distmguished by an exceedingly abundant growth
of hair and beard which sometimes extends over the greater part

Sth November.

of the body. Spangberg returned to Okotsk on the “2 Sereube
Walton sailed along the coast in a southerly direction to 33° 48’
N.L. Here was a town with 1,500 houses, where the Russian sea-
farers were received in a very friendly way even in private houses.
Walton subsequently landed at two other places on the coast,

returning afterwards to Okotsk,where he anchored on the "\5"S="= 2

21st August-

The very splendid results of Spangberg’s and Walton’s voyages

In this account of Behring’s and Chirikov’s voyages, I have followed
Miller (iii. pp. 187-268). More complete original accounts of Behring’s
voyage are quoted further on in the sketch of our visit to Behring Island.

2 Miiiler, iii. p. 164.

Spe, el ee

XIIL. | SPANGBERG’S VOYAGE TO JAPAN. 549

by no means corresponded with the maps of Asia constructed
by the men who were at that time leaders of the Petersburg
Academy. Spangberg therefore during his return journey through
Siberia got orders to travel again to the same regions in order
to settle the doubts that had arisen. A new vessel had to
be built, and with this he started in 1741 from Okotsk to
his former winter haven in Kamchatka. Hence he sailed in
1742 in a southerly direction, but he had scarcely passed the
first of the Kurile Islands when the vessel became so leaky
that he was compelled to turn. The second expedition of
Spangberg to Japan was thus completely without result, a
circumstance evidently brought about by the unjustified and
offensive doubts which led to it, and the arbitrary way in
which it was arranged at St. Petersburg.

8. Journeys in the interior of Siberia by Gmelin, Miiller,
Steller, Krascheninnikoy, de lV’Isle de la Croyére, &c.—The
voyages of these savants have indeed formed an epoch in our
knowledge of the ethnography and natural history of North Asia,
but the north coast itself they did not touch. An account of
them therefore lies beyond the limits of the history which I
have undertaken to. relate here.

The Great Northern Expedition by these journeys both by
sea and land had gained a knowledge of the natural conditions
of North Asia based on actual researches, had yielded pretty
complete information regarding the boundary of that quarter
of the globe towards the north, and of the relative position
of the east coast of Asia and the west coast of America, had
discovered the Aleutian Islands, and had connected the Russian
discoveries in the east with those of the West-Europeans in
Japan and China.t’ The results were thus very grand and
epoch-making. But these undertakings had also required very
considerable sacrifices, and long before they were finished they
were looked upon in no favourable light by the Siberian
authorities, on account of the heavy burden which the transport
of provisions and other equipment through desolate regions
imposed upon the country. Nearly twenty years now elapsed
before there was a new exploratory expedition in the Siberian
Polar Sea worthy of being registered in the history of geography
This time it was a private person, a Yakutsk merchant,
SCHALAUROV, who proposed to repeat Deschnev’s famous voyage
and to gain this end sacrificed the whole of his means and

1 Tt deserves to be noted as a literary curiosity that the famous French
savant and geographer, Vivien de Saint Martin, in his work, Histoire de la
Géographie et des Découvertes géographiques, Paris, 1873, does not say asingle
word regarding all those expeditions which form an epoch in our knowledge
of the Old World.

550 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

his life itself. Accompanied by an exiled midshipman, Ivan
Bacuorr, and with a crew of deserters and deported men, he
sailed in 1760 from. the Lena out imto the Polar Sea, ‘but
came the first year only to the Yana, where he wintered,
On the 4+ 1761, he continued his voyage towards the east,

29th July

always keeping near the coast. On the 1th September he
rounded the dreaded Svjatoinos, sighting on the other side of
the sound a high-lyimg land, Ljachoff’s Island. At the Bear
Islands, whither he was carried by a favourable wind over an
open sea, he first met with drift-ice, although, it appears, not
in any considerable quantity. But the season was already far
advanced, and he therefore considered it most advisable to
seek winter quarters at the mouth of the neighbouring Kolyma
river. Here he built a spacious winter dwelling, which was
surrounded by snow ramparts armed with cannon from the
vessel; probably the whole house was not so large as a peasant’s
cabin at home, but it was at all events the grandest palace
on the north coast of Asia, often spoken of by later travellers,
and regarded by the natives with amazed admiration. In the
neighbourhood there was good reindeer hunting and abundant
fishing, on which account the winter passed so happily, that
only one man died of scurvy, an exceedingly favourable state
of things for that period.

The following year Schalaurov started on the tie but
calms and constant head-winds prevented him from passing
Cape Schelagskoj, until he was compelled by the late season
of the year to seek for winter quarters. For this he considered
the neighbouring coast unsuitable on account of the scarcity
of forests and driftwood ; he therefore sailed back to the west-
ward until after a great many mishaps he came again at last
on the 2" September to the house which he had built the
year before on the Kolyma.

He proposed immediately to make a renewed attempt the
following spring to reach his goal. But now his stores were
exhausted, and the wearied crew refused to accompany him.
In order to obtain funds for a new voyage he travelled to
Moscow, and by means of the assistance he succeeded in
procuring there, he commenced in 1766 a voyage from which
neither he nor any of his followers returned. CoX£ mentions
several things which tell in favour of his having actually rounded
Cape Deschnev and reached the Anadyr. But Wrangel believes
that he perished in the neighbourhood of Cape Schelagsko}.
For in 1823 the inhabitants of that cape showed Wrangel’s
companion Matiuschkin a little ruimous house, built east of the
river Werkon on the coast of the Polar Sea. For many years
back the Chukches travelling past had found there human bones

gnawed by beasts of prey, < and various household articles, which

X11] ANDREJEV. 551

indicated that shipwrecked men had wintered there, and Wrangel
accordingly supposes that it was there that Schalaurov perished
a sacrifice to the determination with which he prosecuted his
self-imposed task of sailing round the north-eastern promontory
of Asia.!

In order to ascertain whether any truth lay at the bottom
of the view, generally adopted in Siberia, that the continent of
America extended along the north coast of Asia to the neigh-
bourhood of the islands situated there, CHICHERIN, Governor of
Siberia, in the winter of 1763 sent a sergeant, ANDREJEV with
dog-sledges on an ice journey towards the north. He succeeded
in reaching some islands of considerable extent, which Wrangel,
who always shows himself very sceptical with respect to the
existence of new lands and islands in the Polar Sea, considers to
have been the Bear Islands. Now it appears to be pretty certain
that Andrejev visited a south-westerly continuation of the land
named on recent maps “ Wrangel Land,” which in that case, like
the corresponding part of America, forms a collection of many
Jarge and small islands. Andrejev found everywhere numerous
proofs that the islands which he visited had been formerly
inhabited. Among other things he saw a large hut built of
wood without the help of iron tools. The logs were as it were
gnawed with teeth (hewed with stone axes), and bound together
with thongs.” Its position and construction indicated that the
house had been built for defence ; it had thus been found im-
possible in the desolate regions of the Polar Sea to avoid the
discord and the strife which prevail in more southerly lands.
To the east and north-east Andrejev thought he saw a distant
land ; he is also clearly the true European discoverer of Wrangel
Land, provided we do not consider that even he had a pre-
decessor in the Cossack, FEopDoR TaTARINOV, who according to
the concluding words of Andrejev’s journal appears to have
previously visited the same islands. It is highly desirable that
this journal, if still nm existence, be published in a completely
unaltered form. How important this is appears from the fol-
lowing paragraph in the instructions given to Billings :—“ One
Sergeant Andrejev saw. from the last of the Bear Islands a large
island to which they (Andrejev and his companions) travelled in
dog-sledges. But they turned when they had gone twenty
versts from the coast, because they saw fresh traces of a large

1 An account of Schalaurov is given by Coxe (Russian Discoveries, &c.,
1780, p. 323) and Wrangel (i. p. 73). That the hut seen by Matiuschkin
actually belonged to Schalaurov appears to me highly improbable, for
the traditions of the Siberian savages seldom extend sixty years back.

2 Wrangel, i. p. 79.

552 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

number of men, who had travelled in sledges drawn by rein-
deer.” +

In order to visit the large land in the north-east seen by
Andrejev, there was sent out in the years 1769, 1770, and 1771
another expedition, consisting of the three surveyors, LEONTIEV,
Lussov, and PUSCHKAREV, with dog-sledges over the ice to the
north-east, but they succeeded neither in reaching the land m
question, nor even ascertaining with certainty whether it actually
existed or not. Among the natives, however, the belief in it
was maintained very persistently, and they even knew how to
give names to the tribes inhabiting it.

The New Siberian Islands, which previously had often been
seen by travellers along the coast, were visited the first time in
1770 by LyacHorr, who besides Ljachoff’s island lying nearest
the coast, also discovered the islands Malo} and Kotelnoj. On
this account he obtained an exclusive right to collect mammoth
tusks there, a branch of industry which since that time appears
to have been carried on in these remote regions with no in-
considerable profit. The importance of the discovery led the
government some years after to send thither a land surveyor,
CHVOINOV,? by whom the islands were surveyed, and some
further information obtained regarding the remarkable natural
conditions in that region. According to Chvoinov the ground
there consists at many places of a mixture of ice and sand
with mammoth tusks, bones of a fossil species of ox, of the
rhinoceros, &c. At many places one can literally roll off the
carpet-like bed of moss from the ground, when it is found that
the close, green vegetable covering has clear ice underlying
it, a circumstance which I have also observed at several places
in the Polar regions. The new islands were rich not only in
ivory, but also in foxes with valuable skins, and other spoils of
the chase of various kinds. They therefore formed for a time
the goal of various hunters’ expeditions. Among these hunters
may be named SANNIKOV, who in 1805 discovered the islands
Stolbovo] and Faddejev, SIROVATSKOJ, who in 1806 discovered
Novaya Sibir, and BsELKov, who in 1808 discovered the small
islands named after him. In the meantime disputes arose about
the hunting monopoly, especially after Bjelkov and others
petitioned for permission to establish on Kotelnoj Island a
hunting and trading station. (?)° This induced Romanzov, then
Chancellor of Russia, to order once more these distant territories
to be explored by HeDENsTROM;! a Siberian exile, who had

1 Sauer, An Account, &c., Appendix, p. 48.

2 Sauer, loc. cit. p. 103, according to an oral communication by Ljachoff’s
follower Protodiakonov.

3 Compare Wrangel, i. p. 98.

4 Matthias Hedenstrém, Aulic Councillor, whose name indicates that he
was of Swedish birth, died at the village "Hajdukoy o, seven versts from

XIII.] HEDENSTROM’S EXPEDITIONS. 553

formerly been secretary to some eminent man in St. Petersburg.
He started in dog-sledges on the 2th March, 1809, from Ustjansk

going over the ice to Ljachoff’s Island, and thence to Faddejev
Island, where the expedition was divided into two parts.
Hedenstrém continued his course to Novaya Sibir, the south
coast of which he surveyed. Here he discovered among other
things the remarkable “tree mountain,’ which I have before
mentioned. His companions KOscCHEVIN and SANNIKOV ex-
plored Faddejev, Maloj and Lyachoff’s Islands. On Faddejev,
Sannikov found a Yukagir sledge, stone skin-scrapers, and an
axe made of mammoth ivory, whence he drew the conclusion
that the island was inhabited before the Russians introduced
iron among the savage tribes of Siberia.

The explorations thus commenced were continued in 1810.
The explorers started on the “* March from the mouth of the
Indigirka, and after eleven days’ journey came to Novaya Sibir.
It had been Hedenstrém’s original intention to employ reindeer
and horses in exploring the islands, but he afterwards abandoned
this plan, fearing that he would not find pasture for his draught
animals. Both Hedenstrém and Sannikovy believed that they
saw from the north coast of the island bluish mountains on the
horizon in the north-east. In order to reach this new land the
former undertook a journey over the ice. It was so uneven,
however, that in four days he could only penetrate about seventy

versts. Here on the aw, be met with quite open water,

which appeared to extend to the Bear Islands, 7.c. for a distance
of about 500 versts. He therefore turned southward, and
reached the mainland after forty-three davs’ very difficult
travelling over the ice. During the journey Hedenstrom was
saved from famine by his suecess in killmg eleven Polar bears.
A new attempt, which he made the same spring to reach with
dog-sledges the unknown land in the north-east, was also without
result in consequence of his meeting with broad, impassable
“leads” and openings in the ice, but even on this occasion he
believed that he found many indications of the existence of
an extensive land in the direction named. It was only with
great difficulty that on the 2th May he succeeded in reach-
ing the mainland at Cape Baranov over very weak ice.
"The same year Sannikov explored Kotelnoj Island, where he
fell in with Bjelkov and several hunters, who had settled for the
summer on the west coast of the island to collect mammoth tusks
and hunt foxes there. He found also a Greek cross erected on

Tomsk, on the 2nd October (20th September), 1845, at the age of sixty-five,
Biographical notes regarding Hedenstrom are to be found in the Calendar
for the Irkutsh government for the year 1865, pp. 57-60; I have not,
however, succeeded in procuring this work, or in finding any other notices
vf Hedenstrom’s birthplace and life.

554 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. CHAP.

the beach and the remains of a vessel, which, to judge from its
construction and the hunting implements scattered about in the
neighbourhood, appeared to have belonged to an Archangel
hunter, who had been driven by wind or ice from Spitzbergen
or Novaya Zemlya.

Next summer “the Hedenstrém expeditions ’’ were concluded
with the survey of the north coast of Novaya Sibir by CHENIZYN,
and by a repetition of the attempt to penetrate from Cape
Kamennoj over the ice in a north-easterly direction, this-time

PETER FEODOROVITSCH ANJOU.
Born in 1798 in Russia, died in 1869 in St. Petersburg.

carried out by the Cossack TATARINOV, and finally by a renewed
exploration of Faddejev Island by Sannikov. Tatarinov found
the ice, probably in the end of March, so thin, that he did not
dare to proceed farther, and beyond the thin ice the sea was seen
to be quite open. Sannikov first explored Faddejev Island. He
thought he saw from the hills of the island a high land in the
north-east, but when he attempted to reach it over the ice, he
came upon open water twenty-five versts from land. He there-
fore returned the same spring to Ustjansk in order there to

XIII. SANNIKOV’S EXPLORATIONS. 555

equip a caravan consisting of twenty-three reindeer, which
started on the #* May to go over the ice to Kotelnoj Island,
which could be reached only with great difficulty im consequence
of “leads” in the ice and the large quantity of salt water which
had accumulated upon it. The reimdeer were exceedingly
enfeebled, but recovered rapidly on reaching land, so that
Sannikov was able under specially favourable circumstances to

make a large number of interesting excursions, among others one

FERDINAND VON WRANGEL,
Born in 1796 at Pskov, died in 1870 at Dorpat.

across the island. He stated that on the heights in the interior
of it there were found skulls and bones of horses, oxen,
“buffaloes” (Ovibos?) and sheep in so large numbers, that
it was evident that whole herds of graminivora had lived there
in former times. Mammoth bones were also found everywhere
on the island, whence Sannikov drew the conclusions, that all
these animals had lived at the same time, and that since then the
climate had considerably deteriorated. These suppositions he

505 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

considered to be further confirmed by the fact that large,
partially petrified tree-stems were found scattered about on the
island in still greater numbers than on Novaya Sibir. Besides
he found here everywhere remains of old “ Yukagir dwellings” ;
the island had thus once been inhabited. After Sannikov had
fetched Chenitzyn from Faddejev Island, where he had passed
the summer in great want of provisions, and ordered him, who
was probably a greater adept at the pen, to draw up a report of
his own interesting researches, he commenced his return journey

on the 7 *™ and arrived at Ustjansk on the #th November.

It may be said that through Hedenstrém’s and Sannikov’s
exceedingly remarkable Polar journeys, the titles have been
written of many important chapters in the history of the
former and recent condition of our globe. But the inquirer
has hitherto waited im vain for these chapters being completed
through new researches carried out with improved appliances.
For since then the New Siberian Islands have not been visited
by any scientific expedition. Only in 1823 Anvou, lieutenant
in the Russian Navy, with the surgeon FiGURIN, and the mate
ILGIN, made a new attempt to penetrate over the ice to the
supposed lands in the north and north-east, but without success.
Similar attempts were made at the same time from the Siberian
mainland by another Russian naval officer, FERDINAND VON
W RANGEL, accompanied by Dr. KUBER, midshipman MATIUSCHKIN,
and mate Kosmin. They too were unsuccessful in penetrating
over the ice far from the coast. Wrangel returned fully convinced
that all the accounts which were current in Siberia of the land
he wished to visit, and which now bears the name of Wrangel
Land, were based on legends, mistake, and intentional untruths.
But Anjou and Wrangel did an important service to Polar
research by showing that the sea, even in the neighbourhood of
the Pole of cold, is not covered with any strong and continuous
sheet of ice, even at that season of the year when cold reaches
its maximum. By the attempts made nearly at the same time
by Wrangel and Parry to penetrate farther northwards, the one
from the north coasts of Siberia, and the other from those of
Spitzbergen, Polar travellers for the first time got a correct idea

5
how uneven and impassable ice is on a frozen sea, how little the

1 A very remarkable geological fact is the number of tree-stems in all
stages of decay and petrifaction, which are embedded in the rocks and
earthy strata of Siberia, having their origin all along from the Jurassic
age tillnow. It appears as if Siberia, during the whole of this immense
period of time, has not been subjected to any great changes in a purely
eeographical respect, whereas in Europe there have been innumerable
alternations of sea and land, and alps have been formed and disappeared.
The Siberians call the tree- ‘stems found on the tundra far from the sea
and rivers Adam’s wood, to distinguish them from more recent sub-fossil
trees, which they call Noah’s wood.

x11. ] COOK’S EXPEDITION. 557

way over such a sea resembles the even polished surface of a
frozen lake, over which we dwellers in the north are accustomed
to speed along almost with the velocity of the wind. Wrangel’s
narrative at the same time forms an important source of know-
ledge both of preceding journeys and of the recent natural
conditions on the north coast of Asia, as is only too evident from
the frequent occasions on which I have quoted his work in my
sketch of the voyage of the Vega.

Tt remains for me now to enumerate some voyages from
Behring’s Straits westward into the Siberian Polar Sea.

1778 and 1779.—During the third of his famous circum-
navigations of the globe JAMES CooK penetrated through
Behring’s Straits ito the Polar Sea, and then along the north-
east coast of Asia westwards to Irkaipij, called by him Cape
North. Thus the honour of having carried the first seagoing
vessel to this sea also belongs to the great navigator. He
besides confirmed Behring’s determination of the position of
the East Cape of Asia, and himself determined the position
of the opposite coast of America! The same voyage was
approximately repeated the year after Cook’s death by his
successor CHARLES CLARKE, but without any new discoveries
being made in the region in question.

1785—-94.—The success which attended Cook in his exploratory
voyages and the information, unlooked for even by the Russian
government, which Coxe’s work gave concerning the voyages of
the Russian hunters in the North Pacific, led to the equipment
of a grand new expedition, having for its object the further

! The first European who visited the part of America lying right opposite
to Asia was Schestakov’s companion, the surveyor Gvosdev. He crossed
Behring’s Straits to the American side as early as 1730 (J/iiller, iii. p. 131),
and therefore ought properly to be considered as the discoverer of this
sound. The north-westernmost part of America, Behring’s Straits and the
islands situated in it, are besides shown in Strahlenberg’s map, which was
made at least a decade before Gvosdev’s voyage. There north-western
America is delineated as a large island, inhabited by a tribe, the Pucho-
chotski, who lived in a constant state of warfare with the Giuchieghi, who
inhabited the islands in the sound. Wrangel Land is also shown in this
remarkable map. In 1767, eleven years before Cook’s voyage in the Polar
Sea, the American side of Behring’s Straits was also visited by Lieut. Synp
with a Russian expedition, that started from Okotsk in 1764. In the short
account of the voyage which is to be found in William Coxe’s Account of
the Russian Discoveries, &c., London, 1780, p. 300, it is said expressly that
Synd considered the coast on which he landed to belong to America. On
Synd’s map, published by Coxe, the north part of the Behring Sea is
enriched with a number of fictitious islands (St. Agaphonis, St. Myronis,
St. Titi, St. Samuelis, and St. Andree). As Synd, according to Sarytchev
in the work quoted below, p. 11, made the voyage in a boat, it is probable
that by these names islands were indicated which lay quite close to the
coast and were not so far from land as shown in the map; besides, the
mountain-summits on St. Lawrence Island, which are separated by extensive
low lands, may perhaps have been taken for separate islands.

A58 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

exploration of the sea which bounds the great Russian Empire
on the north and east. The plan was drawn up by Pallas and
Coxe, and the carrying out of it was entrusted to an English
naval officer in the Russian service, J. BILLINGS, who had taken
part in Cook’s last voyage. Among the many others who were
members of the expedition, may be mentioned Dr. MERK,
Dr. Ropeck, the secretary MARTIN SAUER, and the Captains
Haut, SARYTCHEV, and BEHRING the younger, in all more
than a hundred persons. The expedition was fitted out on a
very large scale, but in consequence of Billings’ unfitness for
having the command of such an expedition the result by no
means corresponded to what might reasonably have been expected.
The expedition made an inconsiderable excursion into the Polar

Sea from the “th June to the > 1787, and im 1791 Billings

29th July

sailed up to St. Lawrence Bay, from which he went over land
with eleven men to Yakutsk. The rest of this lengthened
expedition does not concern the regions now in question.?

Among voyages during the century it remains to give account
of those which have been made by Otro von KoOTZEBUE, who
during his famous circumnavigation of the globe in 1815-18,
among other things also passed through Behring’s Straits and

discovered the strata, remarkable in a geological point of view
at Eschscholz Bay ; LUrkr, who during his circumnavigation of
the globe m 1826—29, visited the islands and sound in the
neighbourhood of Chukotskoj- nos; Moore, who wintered at
Chukotskoj -nos in 1848—49, and gave us much interesting
information as to the mode of life of the Namollos and
Chukches; KELLET, who in 1849 discovered Kellet Land and
Herald Island on the coast of Wrangel Land; JoHN RODGERS,
who in 1855 carried out for the American government much
important hydrographical work m the seas on both sides of
Behring’s Straits; DALLMANN, who during a trading voyage in
the Behring Sea landed at various points on Wrangel Land; LONG,
who in 1867, as captain of the whaling barque Wile, discovered the
sound between Wrangel Land and the mainland (Long Sound)
and penetrated from Behring’s Straits westwards farther than

1 Billings’ voyage is described in Martin Sauer’s Account of a Geogra-
phical and Astronomical Expedition to the Northern Parts of Asia, &c., by
Commodore Joseph Billings, London, 1802, and Gavrila Sarychev’s
Achtjdhrige Reise im nordlichen Siherien, auf dem Eismeere und dem nord-
dstlichen Ocean. Aus dem Russischen iibersetzt von J. H. Busse, Leipzig,
1805-1806. As interesting to our Swedish readers it may be mentioned
that the Russian hunter Prybilov informed Sauer that a Swedish brigantine,
Merkur, coppered, carrying sixteen cannon, commanded by J. H. Coxe, in
1788, cruised in the Behring Sea in order to destroy the Russian settlements
there. They however, according to Prybilov’s statement to Sauer, “did
no damage, because they saw that we had nothing worth taking away.
They instead gave us gifts, because they were ashamed to offer violence
to such poor fellows as we”’ (Sauer, p. 213).

xmi.] VOYAGES FROM BEHRING’S STRAITS WESTWARD. — 559

any of his predecessors; DALL, who, at the same time that we
are indebted to him for many important contributions to the
knowledge of the natural conditions of the Behring Sea, also
anew examined the ice-strata at -Eschscholz Bay, and many
others—but as the historical part of the sketch of the voyage of
the Vega has already occupied more space than was calculated
upon, I consider myself compelled with respect to the voyages
_of these explorers to refer to the numerous and for the most
part accessible writings which have already been published
regarding them!

Was the Vega actually the first, and is she at the moment
when this is being written, the only vessel that has sailed from
the Atlantic by the north to the Pacific? As follows from the
above narrative, this question may perhaps be answered with
considerable certainty in the affirmative, as it may also with
truth be maintained that no vessel has gone the opposite way
from the Pacific to the Atlantic.2 But the fictitious literature
of geography at all events comprehends accounts of various
voyages between those seas by the north passage, and I consider
myself obliged briefly to enumerate them.

The first is said to have been made as early as 1555 by a
Portuguese, MARTIN CHACKE, who affirmed that he had been
parted from his companions by a west wind, and had been driven

1 Otto von Kotzebue, Hntdeckungs-Retse in die Siid-See und nach der
Behrings Strasse, Weimar, 1821 (Part IIL, Contributions in Natural
History, by Adelbert von Chamisso).—Louis Choris, Voyage pittoresque
autour du monde, Paris, 1822.

Frédérik Lutké, Voyage autour du monde, Paris, 1835-36.—F. H. von
Kittlitz, Denkwiirdigketten einer Reise nach dem russischen Amerika, nach
Mikronesien und durch Kamtschatka, Gotha, 1858.

Kellet, Voyage of H.M.S. ‘* Herald,’ 1845-51, London, 1853 (Discovery
of Herald Island and the east coast of Wrangel Land).

W.H. Hooper, Ten Months among tre Tents of the Tuski, London, 1853
(Moore’s wintering at Chukotskoj-nos),

John Rodgers, Behring’s Sea and Arctic Ocean, from Surveys of the
North Pacific Surveying Expedition, 1855 (only charts).—W. Heine, Die
Expedition in die Seen von China, Japan und Ochotsk, unter Commando von
Commodore Colin Ringgold und Commodore John Rodgers, Leipzig, 1858
(the expedition arrived at the result that Wrangel Land did not exist).

(Lindemann) Wrangels Land im Jahre 1866, durch Kapiten Dallmann
besucht (Deutsche Geograph. Blitter, B. iv. p. 54, 1881).

Petermann, Entdeckung eines neuen Polar-Landes durch den amerikan,
Capt. Long, 1867 (Mittheil. 1868, p. 1).—Das neu-entdeckte Polar-Land,
&c, (Mittheil. 1869, p. 26).

2 It ought to be remembered that the voyage of the distinguished Arctic
explorer, McClure, carried out with so much gallantry and admirable per-
severance, from the Pacific to the Atlantic along the north coast of
America, took place to no inconsiderable extent by sledge journeys over the
ice, and that no English vessel has ever sailed by this route from the one
sea tothe other. ‘The North-west Passage has thus never been accomplished
by a vessel.

560 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

forward between various islands to the entrance of*a sound
which ran north of America in 59° N.L.; finally that he had
come S.W. of Iceland, and thence sailed to Lisbon, ae
there before his companions, who took the “common way,”
south of Africa. In 1579 an English pilot certified that he iA
read in Lisbon in 1567 a printed account of this voyage, which
however he could not procure afterwards because all the copies
had been destroyed by order of the king, who considered that
such a discovery would have an injurious effect on the Indian
trade of Portugal (Purchas, iii. p. 849). We now know that
there is land where Chacke’s channel was said to be situated
and it is also certain that the sound between the continent 0!
America and the Franklin archipelago lying much farther to the
north was already in the sixteenth century too much filled with
ice for its being possible that an account of meeting with ice
could be omitted from a true sketch of a voyage along the north
coast of America.

In 1588 a still more remarkable voyage was said to have been
made by the Portuguese, LORENZO FERRER MALDONADO. He is
believed to have been a ‘cosmographer who among other things
concerned himself with the still unsolved problem of making a
compass free from variation, and with the question, very difficult
in his time, of finding a method of determining the longitude
at sea (see the work of AMORETTI quoted below, p. 38). Of his
imaginary voyage he has written a long narrative, of which a
Spanish copy with some drawi ings and maps was found in a
library at Milan. The narrative was published in Italian and
French translations by the superintendent of the library, Chevalier
Carto AmoRErtI,! who besides added to the work a number of
his own learned notes, which however do not give evidence of
experience in Arctic waters. The same narrative has since been
published in English by J. BArrow (A Chronological Histor y of
Voyages into the “Arctic Re gions, &e., London, 1818. App. p. 24).
The greater part of Maldonado’s report consists of a detailed
plan as to the way in which the new sea route would be used and
fortified by the Spanish-Portuguese government.2 The voyage
itself is referred to merely in passing. Maldonado says that in
the beginning of March he sailed from Newfoundland along the
north coast of America in a westward direction. Cold, storm,
and darkness, were at first very inconvenient for navigation, but
at all events he reached without difficulty “ Anian Sound,” which
separates Asia from America. This is described in detail. Here
various ships were met with prepared to sail through the sound,

1 Amoretti, Viaggio del mare Atlantico al Pasijico per la via del Nord-
Ovest, &e. Fatto del capitano Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado, Panno MDLXXXVIN.
Milano, 1811.

> At the date of Maldonado’s voyage Spain and Portugal were united.

xl.] MADELENE’S ACCOUNT. 561

laden with Chinese goods. The crews appeared to be Russian
or Hanseatic. Conversation was carried on with them in Latin.
They stated that they came from a very large town, situated a
little more than a hundred leagues from the sound. In the
middle of June Maldonado returned by the way he came to the
Atlantic, and on this occasion too the voyage was performed
without the least difficulty. The heat at sea during the return
journey was as great as when it is greatest in Spain, and
meeting with ice is not mentioned. The banks of the river
which falls mto the haven at Anian Sound (according to
Amoretti, identical with Behring’s Straits) were overgrown with
very large trees, bearing fruit all the year round: among the
animals met with in the regions seals are mentioned, but also
two kinds of swine, buffaloes, &c. All these absurdities show
that the whole narrative of the voyage was fictitious, having
been probably written with the view of thereby giving more
weight to the proposal to send out a north-west expedition from
Portugal, and in the full belief that the supposed sound actually
existed, and that the voyage along the north coast of America
would be as easy of accomplishment as one across the North
Sea The way in which the icing down of a vessel is described
indicates that the narrator himself or his informant had been
exposed to a winter storm in some northern sea, probably at
Newfoundland, and the spirited sketch of the sound appears to
have been borrowed from some East Indian traveller, who had
been driven by storm to northern Japan, and who in a channel
between the islands in that region believed that he had dis-
covered the fabulous Anian Sound.

Of a third voyage in 1660 a naval officer named DE LA
MADELENE gave in 1701 the following short account, probably
picked up in Holland or Portugal, to Count DE PONTCHARTRIN :
“The Portuguese, DAviD MELGcuER, started from Japan on the
14th March, 1660, with the vessel le Pere dernel, and following
the coast of Tartary, 7c. the east coast of Asia, he first sailed
north to 84° N.L. Thence he shaped his course between
Spitzbergen and Greenland, and passing west of Scotland and
Ireland came again to Oporto in Portugal.” M. de la Madeléne’s
narrative is to be found reproduced in M. Buacue’s excellent
geographical paper “Sur les différentes idées qu’on a eues de la

1 The narratives of the Russian voyagers in the Polar Seas bear a quite
different stamp. Details are seldom wanting in these, and they correspond
with known facts, and the discoveries made are of reasonably modest
dimensions. I therefore consider, as I have said already, that the doubts
of the trustworthiness of Deschneyv, Chelyuskin, Andrejev, Hedenstrém,
Sannikov, &c., are completely unfounded, and it is highly desirable that
all journals of Russian explorers in the Polar Sea yet in existence be
published as soon as possible, and not in a mutilated shape, but in a
complete and unaltered form,

00

562 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

traversée de la Mére Glaciale arctique et sur les communications
ou jonctions qu’on a supposées entre diverses riviéres ” (Histoire
de l Académie, Année 1754, Paris, 1759, Memoires, p. 12). The
paper is accompanied by a Polar map constructed by Buache
himself, which, though the voyage which led to its construc-
tion was clearly fictitious, and though it also contains many
other errors—for instance, the statement that the Dutch
penetrated in 1670 to the north part of Taimur Land—is yet
very valuable and interesting as a specimen of what a learned
and critical geographer knew in 1754 about the Polar regions.
That Melguer’s voyage is fictitious is shown partly by the ease
with which he is said to have gone: from the one sea to the
other, partly by the fact that the only detail which is to be
found in his narrative, viz. the statement that the coast of
Tartary extends to 84° N.L., is incorrect.

All these and various other similar accounts of north-east,
north-west, or Polar passages achieved by vessels in former times
have this in common, that navigation from: the one ocean to the
other across the Polar Sea is said to have gone on as easily as
drawing a line on the map, that meeting with ice and northern
animals of the chase is never spoken of, and finally that every
particular which is noted is in conflict with the known geo-
graphical, climatal, and natural conditions of the Arctic seas. All
these narratives therefore can be proved to be: fictitious, and to
have been invented by persons who never made any voyages in
the true Polar Seas.

The Vega is thus the first vessel that’ has penetrated by the
uorth from one of the great world-oceans to the other.

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 con-
ditions there—The ice breaks up in the interior of Konyam Bay—St.
Lawrence Jsland—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 incon-
siderable 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

XIv. | -SCARCE SPECIES OF SEAL, 563

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 be-
tween the Old and the New Worlds, But such a delay would
have been attended with too great difficulty and loss of time im
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.

ny il ic ue

—_ re Mi
ores fay ss = ees oe ow a ee

SEAL FROM THE BEHRING SEA.
Histriophoca fasciata, Zim.

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 fortu-
nately so broken up that the Vega could steam forward at full
speed to the neighbourhood of St. Lawrence Bay, where. the

002

564 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

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 en-
deavoured 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.) This statement also corresponds, as
perhaps follows from what I have pomted 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 differg somewhat from the Chukches’,

1 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 inhab-
itants of the villages lying farthest eastward being known to be of a
quarrelsome disposition and having the same reputation for love of fight-
ing 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 Chukot-
skoj-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
Mai “They spoke another language.” Possibly they were pure

skimo.

XIV. ] THE POPULATION OF NORTH-EASTERN ASIA, 565

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
livmg 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 distin-
guishes 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 slam 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 beea
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, “ Noonah-
mone,” 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 remark-
able for the care with which in summer it collects great stores
for the winter. The village consisted of ten tents built without

566 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

order on the first high strand bank. The tents differed some-
what 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 whale-
bone 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 vertebrae 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; slices 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 bemg .bound together with whale-bone
fibres, &c.4

Masses of black seal-flesh, and long, white, flutterig 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 disagreeable
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

1 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, Historva Indica, XXTX. and XXX.

XIU.] RICH VEGETATION. 567

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

= aw

Ne 4:
rey a
oe
S i Q D)
i >
SY \ 5 Fy Wy a ae :
; Cys 40) = {VD
y * BS ler
CS A@
ay i
ts

DRABA ALPINA L., FROM ST. LAWRENCE BAY.
Natural size.

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

568 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

a hundred species of flowering plants, among which were a con-
siderable 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
260, 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
Bebring’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 ina 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 after-
noon of the 2ist July we were able to anchor in Port Clarence,

XIV, | VISIT TO PORT CLARENCE. 569

an excellent haven south of the westernmost promontory of Asia,
Cape Prince of Wales. Jt 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 1,000 metres ; but it
is quite possible that their height is twice as creat, 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 durmg
a not very remote geological period glaciers covered consider-
able 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 appoached 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

570 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP, XIV.

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. Escu-
SCHOLZ, medical officer during Kotzebue’s famous voyage.!

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 in-
tended 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 af 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 bottem 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

1 These strata were discovered during .Kotzebue’s circumnavigation of
he 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-strdtum 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),

HUNTING IMPLEMENTS AT PORT CLARENCE.

1. Bird-dart with wooden handle for throwing, one-ninth of the natural size. 2. Whale-harpoon with
flint point, one-twelfth. 3. Harpoon-point of bone and nephrite, one-half. 4. Bone leister, one-third.
5. Awl, one-half. 6. Harpoon, one-twelfth. 7. Flint dart-point, one-half. 8, Arrows or harpoon-
ends with points of iron, stone or glass, one-eighth. 9. Quiver, one-eighth.

572 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA, [CHAP.

with violence, until at last, im 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.t 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

— ow a

ESKIMO FAMILY AT PORT CLARENCE.
(After a photograph by L. Palander.)

the region only a smali 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

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

XIV. ] THE ESKIMO AT PORT CLARENCE. 573

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

i |

|

gait 2c

ESKIMO AT PORT CLARENCE.
(After a photograph by L, Palander.)

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 578). But
these ornaments were often removed, and then the edges of the
large holes closed so’much that the face was not much dis-
figured. Many had in addition a similar hole forward in the

574 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. ~ [CHAP. XIv.

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, resem-
bling those of the Ghukches.. 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

ESKIMO AT PORT CLARENCE,

(After photographs by L. Palander.)

in good condition, and were marked neither by striking thinness
nor r 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,
&e., were of American origin, but they still used or preserved i in
the lumber repositories of "ene 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

ESKIMO FISHING IMPLEMENTS, ETC.

1—6. Salmon hcoks of stone of different colours, and bone in the form of beetles, one-half of the
natural size. 7, Fishing-rod, one-sixth. 8. End of rod. 9. Bone sinker with tufts and
fish-hook, one-half. 10. Fish-hook with bone points, one-half. 11. Fish-hook with iron-
wire points, cne-half, 12. Snow-spectacles, one-third,

576 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

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?
and red ochre than those of the Chukches; the people were
better off and owned a larger number of skin-boats, both
kayaks and wmiaks. 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 represent-
ing 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

1 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 encamp-
ments. 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 came 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 réle in the recent
history of the exploration of the country.

x1v,] THE ESKIMO AT PORT CLARENCE. 577

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, 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.

1 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 nephrite is said often to have determined their politics,
to have caused wars, and impressed its stamp on treaties of peace con-
cluded 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 Kascho-
long (i.e. a species of stone from the river Kasch). It has heen bronght
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 quartz.

; E.2

.

ESKIMO BONE-CARVINGS, ETC.

1

5. Buttons to carrying-straps, representing heads of the Polar bear, seals, &c., carved in
walrus ivory, one-half of the natural size. 6. Carrying-strap with a similar button, carved
in the form ofa seal, one-third. 7 Stone chisel, one-half. 8. Comb. one-third. 9. Buttons
ee Dane ElRss, or stone, to be placed in holes in the lips, natural size. 10. Ivory diadeim ,
wo-thirds.

CHAP. XLV. ] THE ESKIMO AT PORT CLARENCE. 579

On the north side of the harbour we found an old Euro-
pean 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. Along-
side 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 581), and strangely-shaped animal figures. Such
were seen also in the tents. Bags of sealskin, mtended to be
inflated and fastened to harpoons as floats, were sometimes
ornamented with small faces carved in wood (figure 3, page
581). In one of the two amulets of the same kind, which

ESKIMO GRAVE.

(After a drawing by O. Nordquist.)

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* 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

1 The Eskimo however, like the Chukches, do not appear to have any
proper religion or idea of a life after this.
PP2

580 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. XIV.

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

ANIMAL FIGURE FROM AN ESKIMO GRAVE.
a. From above. b. Krom the side.
(One-third of the natural size.)

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 Linnea.
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 vege-
tation 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,

ETHNOGRAPHICAL OBJECTS FROM PORT CLARENCE.

1, 2. Wooden masks, found at a grave, one-sixth of the natural size. 3. Amulet, a face witk one eye
of enamel, the other of pyrites, from a harpoon-float of sealskin, one-third. 4. Oars, one-nineteenth.
5. Boathook, one-twelfth, 6. The hook of carved ivory, one tourth. 7. Carved knife handle (?) of
ivory, one-half.

582 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

mainly Harpalids and Staphylinids, and of land and fresh-water
mol]usca 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 algee,

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

SHELL FROM BEHRING’S STRAITS.

Fusus deformis, Reeve.

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, Kroyer)
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

co)
page 583, which is based on the soundings and other obser-

XIV, ] SURVEY OF BEHRING’S STRAITS. 583

vations 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 Chtkch
Peninsula, and that that channel contains a mass of cold water,

DIAGRAM,

Showing the Temperature and Depth of the water at Behring’s Straits between Port Clarence
aud Senjavin Sound.

By G. Bove.

MN 8e.m. 4e.m. MD S&f.m. 4f m. MN 8e.m.
28 July, 1879 97 July, 1879 27 July, 1879
_— a—_— ——_— eS _~_— ——_— _——
Lat. 65°00’ 65°05’ 65°10’ —s«65°04"—s«65° 0S" 65°12! 65°17’
Long. 170°58' 170°17' 16947’ 168°52’ 168°24’ 168°01’ 166°47'
———_ ———_—— _ Temperature at the surface. 0 50 100 150 200
——— -———- PA at a depth of 30 metres. SS SS SS
ee oe _— 33 at the bottom. Depth in metres.

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

584 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

the coasts, which consist of stratified granitic rocks, and in the
offing two large and several small rocky islands form an archi-
pelago, 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 in-
tended, in Glasenapp Harbour, because it was still occupied by
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. Liitke, and by an English Franklin Expedition on
board the Plover, commanded by Captain Moore. Liitke 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.

' We have already found some land mollusea at Port Clarence, but none
at St. Lawrence Bay. The northernmost jind of such animals now known

XIV. ] KONYAM BAY. 585

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 un-
certain 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 Scandi-
navian 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 thoroughgoimg 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

was made by Von Middendorff, who found a species of Physa on the
Taimur Peninsula.

~

x

<=

\|
NH HHHI HI

=X

Hl it a |

SAGER SS

KONYAM BAY.

VASE
Sai i

(After a photograph by L. Palander.)

“ca i
ill) oe i \
Ky i fi iH

CHAP, XIV. ] ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND, 87
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!

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 Veya 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 tle
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

ct

1 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
Hessal Gerritz, Detectio Freti, Amsterdam, 1612, The rumour about the
voleanos of Kamchatka thus appears to have reached Europe at that early
date.

588 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

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 inha-
bited by a few Eskimo families, who have commercial relations
with their Chukch neighbours on the Russian side, and therefore
have adopted some words from their language. Their dress also

Ange

<_<

TATTOOING PATTERNS, FROM ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND,

1, 2. Face-tattooing. 3. Arm-tattooing.
(After drawings by A. Stuxberg.) r

resembles that of the Chukches, with the exception that, want-
ing 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

XLV, | ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND. 589

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.

TATTOOED WOMAN, FROM ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND.

(After a drawing by A, Stuxberg.)

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

590 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

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 Pedicu-
laris in their fullest bloom (P. sudetica, P. Langsdorfir, P. Ocdert
aud 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 Claytonie, 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 ereen tendrils of the favourite plant of our
homeland, the Linnea borealis, Dr. Kjellman thus reaped a rich
harvest of higher plants ; and a fine collection of land and marine
animals, lichens and alge 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 iz si¢éw, having along with
the sand probably arisen through the disintegration of the rocks.

In the sea we found not a few alge 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 accom-

— >

XLV.] ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND. 591

panied me, though the seals were within range, to test their skill
as shots upon them. Perhaps they were females of Histriophoca
Jasciata, 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! (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 [ 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 some-
what 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.” *

1 Kotzebue says that he was the first seafarer who visited the island.
This however is incorrect. Billings landed there on the Ist 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 impor-
tant 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.

2 Otto von Kotzebue. Entdeckungs-Reise an die Sud-See und nach der
ae 1815-18. Weimar, 1821, i. p. 135; ii. p. 104; iii. pp. 171
anc (oO.

592 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

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.

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 oppor-
tunity 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.

CHAPTER XV.

The position of Behring Island—Its inhabitants—The discovery of the
island by Behring—Behring’s death—Steller—The former and present
Fauna on the island: foxes, sea-otters, sea-cows, sea-lions, and sea-
bears—Collection of bones of the Rhytina—-Visit to a ‘‘rookery ”—-
Toporkoff Island — Alexander Dubovski— Voyage to Yokohama—
Lightning-stroke.

BEHRING ISLAND is situated between 54° 40’ and 55° 25’ N.L. and
165° 40’ and 166° 40’ E.L. from Greenwich. It is the westernmost
and nearest Kamchatka of the islands in the long chain formed

1 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.

ta i i

Xv.] THE INHABITANTS OF BEHRING ISLAND, 593

by volcanic action, which bounds the Behring Sea on the south
between 51° and 56° N.L. Together with the neighbouring
Copper Island and some small islands and rocks lying round
about, it forms a peculiar group of islands separated from the
Aleutian Islands proper, named, after the rank of the great sea-
farer who perished here, Commander’s or Commandirski Islands.
They belong not to America but to Asia, and are Russian
territory. Notwithstanding this the American Alaska Company
has acquired the right of hunting there,t and maintains on the
main islands two not inconsiderable commercial stations, which
supply the inhabitants, several hundreds in number, with pro-
visions and manufactured goods, the company buying from them
instead furs, principally the skin of an eared seal (the sea-cat or
sea-bear), of which from 20,000 to 50,0002 are killed yearly in
the region. Some Russian authorities are also settled on the
island to guard the rights of the Russian state and maintain
order. Half a dozen serviceable wooden houses have been built
here as dwellings for the officials of the Russian Government and
the American Company, for storehouses, shops, &c. The natives
live partly in very roomy and in the inside not uncomfortable
turf houses, partly in small wooden houses which the company
endeavours gradually to substitute for the former, by yearly
ordering some wooden buildings and presenting them to the most
deserving of the population. Every family has its own house.
There is also a Greek-Catholic church and a spacious schoolhouse.
The latter is intended for Aleutian children. The school was
unfortunately closed at the time of our visit,-but, to judge by the
writing books which lay about in the schoolroom, the education
here is not to be despised. The specimens of writing at least
were distinguished by their cleanness, and by an even and
beautiful style. At “the colony” the houses were collected at
one place into a village, situated near the sea-shore at a suitable
distance from the fishing ground in a valley overgrown in summer
by a rich vegetation, but treeless and surrounded by treeless
rounded heights. From the sea this village has the look of a

1 In February 1871 the right of hunting on these islands was granted
by the Russian government to Hutchinson, Kohl, Philippeus & Co., who
have made over their rights to the Alaska Commercial Company of San
Francisco.

2 According to a communication made to me by Mr. Henry W. Elliot,
who, in order to study the fur-bearing seals in the North Behring Sea, lived
a considerable time at the Seal Islands (Pribylov’s Islands, &c.) on the
American side, and has given an exceedingly interesting account of the
animal life there in his work: A Report upon the Condition of Affairs in the
Territory of Alaska, Washington, 1875: the statement in my report to
Dr. Dickson, founded on oral communications of Europeans whom I met
with at Behring Island, that from 50,000 to 100,000 animals are killed
yearly at Behring and Copper Island, is thus probably somewhat ex-
aggerated,

QQ

Hh I]
Hi | PATI

\ ANN
NAH

7) i} I | Hip! Hy

THE ‘‘COLONY’’ ON BEHRING ISLAND.

(After a photograph.)

i

ee

CHAP. XV. ] BEHRING ISLAND. 595

northern fishing station. There are besides some scattered
houses here and there on other parts of the island, for instance
on its north-eastern side, where the potato is said to be cultivated
on a small scale, and at the fishing place on the north side where
there are two large sheds for skins and a number of very smail
earth-holes used only during the slaughter season.

Behring Island, with regard both to geography and natural
history, is one of the most remarkable islands in the north part
of the Pacific. It was here that Behring after his last unfortunate
voyage in the sea which now bears his name, finished his long
course as an explorer. He was however survived by many of

39

THE *‘COLONY’’ ON COPPER ISLAND.
(After a photograph.)

his followers, among them by the physician and naturalist Steller,
to whom we owe a masterpiece seldom surpassed—-a sketch of
the natural conditions and animal life on the island, never before
visited by man, where he involuntarily passed the time from the
middle of November 1741, to the end of August 1742.’

1 Original accounts of the wintering on Behring Island are to be found
in Millers Sammlung Russischer Geschichte, St. Petersburg, 1758, iii.
pp. 228-238 and 242-268; (Steller’s) Topographische und physikalische
Beschreibung der Beringsinsel (Pallas’ Neue Nordische Beytriige, St. Peters-
burg and Leipzig, 1781-83, ii. p. 225); G. W. Steller’s Tagebuch seiner
Seereise aus dem Petripauls Hafen . . . und seiner Begebenheiten auf der
Riickreise (Pallas’ Neueste Nordische Beytrdge, St. Petersburg and Leipzig,
1793-96, i. p. 130; ii. p. 1).

QQ2

596 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. XV

It was the desire to procure for our museums the skins or
skeletons of the many remarkable mammalia occurring here, also
to compare the present state of the island which for nearly a
century and a half has been exposed to the unsparing thirst of
man for sport and plunder, with Steller’s spirited and picturesque
description, which led me to include a visit to the island in the
plan of the expedition. The accounts I got at Behring Island
from the American newspapers of the anxiety which our
wintering had caused in Kurope led me indeed to make our
stay there shorter than I at first intended. Our harvest of
collections and observations was at all events extraordinarily
abundant. But before I proceed to give an account of our own
stay on the island, I must devote a few words to its discovery
and the first wintering there, which has a quite special interest
irom the island having never before been trodden by the foot of
man. The abundant animal life, then found there, gives us
therefore one of the exceedingly few representations we possess
of the animal world as it was before man, the lord of the creation,
appeared.

After Behring’s vessel had drifted about a considerable time
at random in the Behring Sea, in consequence of the severe
scurvy-epidemic, which had spread to nearly all the men on
board, without any dead reckoning being kept, and finally with-
out sail or helmsman, literally at ‘the mercy of wind and waves,
those on board on the 1th November, 1741, sighted land, off whose
coast the vessel was anchored the following day at 5 o’clock P.M.
An hour after the cable gave way, and an enormous sea threw
the vessel towards the shore-cliffs. All appeared to be already
lost. But the vessel, instead of beg driven ashore by new
waves, came unexpectedly into a basin 4} fathoms deep sur-
rounded by rocks and with quite still water, being connected
with the sea only by a single narrow opening. If the unmanage-
able vessel had not drifted just to that place 1t would certainly
have gone to pieces, and all on board would have perished.

It was only with great difficulty that the sick crew could put
out a boat in which Lieut. Waxel and Steller landed. They
found the land uninhabited, devoid of wood, and uninviting. But
a rivulet with fresh clear water purled yet unfrozen down the
mountain sides, and in the sand hills along the coast were found
some deep pits, which when enlarged and covered with sails
could be used as dwellings. The men who could still stand on
their legs all jommed in this work. On the th November the
sick could be removed to land, but, as often happens, many died
when they were brought out of the cabin into the fresh air, others
while they were being carried from the vessel or immediately
after they came to land, All in whom the scurvy had taken the
upper hand to that extent that they were already lying in bed

NATIVES Ob BLHRING ISLAND,

(After a photograph.)

538 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CILAP.

on board the vessel, died. The survivors had scarcely time or
strength to bury the dead, and found it difficult to protect the
corpses from the hungry foxes that swarmed on the island and
had not yet learned to be afraid of man. On the 7°th Behring
was carried on land; he was already much reduced and dejected,
and could not be induced to take exercise. He died on the 19th
December.

Virus BEsRING was a Dane by birth, and when a young
man had already made voyages to the Hast and West Indies.
In 1707 he was received into the Russian navy as officer,
and as such took part in all the warlike enterprises of that
fleet against Sweden. He was in a way buried alive on the
island that now bears his name, for at last he did not
permit his men to remove the sand that rolled down upon
him from the walls of the sand pit in which he rested. For
he thought that the sand warmed his chilled body. Before
the corpse could be properly buried it had therefore to be
dug out of its bed, a circumstance which appears to have
produced a disagreeable impression on the survivors. The two
lieutenants, Waxel and Chitrov, had kept themselves in pretty
good health at sea, but now fell seriously ill, though they
recovered. Only the physician of the expedition, Georg
Wilhelm Steller, was all the time in good health, and that a
single man of the whole crew escaped with his life was clearly
due to the skill of this gifted man, to his mvincible energy
and his cheerful and sanguine disposition. These qualities
were also abundantly tested during the wintering. On the
night before the jytvc= the vessel, on which no watch was
kept, because all the men were required on land to care for
the sick, was cast ashore by a violent E.S.E. storm. So great
a quantity of provisions was thus lost, that the remaining
stock was not sufficient by itself to yield enough food for all
the men during a whole winter. Men were therefore sent out
in all directions to inquire into the state of the land. They
returned with the information that the vessel had stranded
not, as was hoped at first, on the mainland but on an un-
inhabited, woodless island. It was thus clear to the ship-
wrecked men that in order to be saved they could rely only
on their judgment and strength. At the beginning they
found that if any provisions were to be reserved for the
voyage home, it was necessary that they should support them-
selves during winter to a considerable extent by hunting.
They did not like to use the flesh of the fox for food, and
at first kept to that of the sea-otter. This animal at present
is very scarce on Behring Island, but at that time the shore
was covered with whole herds of it. They had no fear of
man, came from curiosity straight to the fires, and did not

my. | THE SEA-OTTER AND THE SEA-COW. 599

run away when any one approached. <A dear-bought experience,
however, soon taught them caution; at all events, from 800
to 900 head were taken, a splendid catch when we consider
that the skin of this animal at the Chinese frontier fetched
from 80 to 100 roubles each. Besides, in the beginning of
winter two whales stranded on the island. The shipwrecked
men considered these their provision depdts, and appear to
have preferred whale blubber to the flesh of the sea-otter,
which had an unpleasant taste and was tough as leather.

In spring the sea-otters disappeared, but now there came to
the island in their stead other animals in large herds, viz.
sea-bears, seals, and sea-lions. The flesh of the young sea-
hon was considered a great delicacy.2 When the sea-otters
became scarcer and more shy and difficult to catch, the ship-
wrecked men found means also to kill sea-cows, whose flesh
Steller considered equal to beef. Several barrels of their flesh
were even salted to serve as provisions -during the return
journey. As the land became clear of snow in the middle of
April, Waxel called together the forty-five men who survived
to a consultation regarding the steps that ought to be taken
in order to reach the mainland. Among many different proposals,
that was adopted of building a new vessel with the materials
supplied by the stranded one. The three ship-carpenters who
had been on board were dead. But fortunately there was
among the survivors a Cossack, SAVA STARODUBZOV, who had
taken part as a workman in shipbuilding at Okotsk, and
now undertook to manage the building of the new vessel.
With necessity for a teacher he also succeeded in executing
his commission, so that a new St. Peter was launched on the
“i August, 1742. The vessel was forty feet long, thirteen

Tuth

feet beam, and six and a half feet deep, and sailed as well
as if built by an experienced master of his craft, but on the
other hand leaked seriously in a high sea. The return voyage

at all events passed successfully. On the “<= Kamchatka
2 gust

was sighted, and two days after the St. Peter anchored at
Petropaulovsk, where the shipwrecked men found a store-
house with an abundant stock of provisions according to their

1 According to Miiller, whose statements (based on communications by
Waxel ?) often differ from those of Steller. The latter says that the flesh
of the sea-otter is better than that of the seal, and a good antidote to
scurvy. The flesh of the young sea-otter might even compete with lamb
as a delicacy.

2 To judge by what is stated in Steller’s description of Behring Island
(Neue nord. Beytr., ii. p. 290) no one would have dared to attack “ diese
grimmigen Thiere,” and the only sea-lion eaten during the winter was an
animal wounded at Kamchatka and thrown up dead on the coast of
Behring Island, The fin-like feet were the most delicate part of the sea-

hon.

600 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

ideas, which probably were not pitched very high. Next year
they sailed on with their Behring-Island-built vessel to Okotsk.
On their arrival there, of the seventy-six persons who originally
took part in the expedition, thirty-two were dead. At Kam-
chatka they had all been considered dead, and the effects they
left behind them had been scattered and divided. Steller
voluntarily remained some time longer in Kamchatka in order
to carry on his researches in natural history. Unfortunately
he drew upon himself the ill-will of the authorities, m consequence
of the free way in which he criticised their abuses. This led
to a trial at the court at Irkutsk. He was, indeed, found
innocent, and obtained permission to travel home, but at Zoli-
kamsk he was overtaken by an express with orders to bring
him back to Irkutsk. On the way thither he met another
express with renewed permission to travel to Europe. But the
powers of the strong and formerly healthy man were exhausted
by this hunting backwards and forwards across the immeasur-
able deserts of Siberia. He died soon after, on the = November,
1746, at Tjumen, only thirty-seven years of age, of a fever
by which he was attacked during the journey.’

The immense quantity of valuable furs brought home by
the survivors of Behring’s so unfortunate third voyage affected
the fur-dealers, Cossacks, and hunters of Siberia much in the
same way as the rumour about Eldorado or about the riches of the
Casic Dobaybe did the Spanish discoverers of middle and southern
America. Numerous expeditions were fitted out to the new
land rich im furs, where extensive territories previously unknown
were made tributary to the Czar of Russia. Most of these
expeditions landed on Behring Island during the voyage out
and home, and in a short time wrought a complete change in the
fauna of the island. Thanks to Steller’s spirited sketch of the
animal life he observed there, we have also an opportunity of
forming an idea of the alteration in the fauna which man brings
about in a land in which he settles.

Arctic foxes were found in incredible numbers on the island
during the wintering of the Behring expedition. They not only

According to Miiller’s official report, probably written for the purpose
of refuting the rumours regarding Steller’s fate current in the scientific
circles of Kurope. According to the biography prefixed to Georg Wilhelm
Steller’s Beschreibung von dem Lande Kamtschatka, herausgegeben von J.
B. S. (Scheerer), Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1774, Steller had in 1745 begun
his return to St. Petersburg, and was already beyond Novgorod, when he
received orders to appear before the court at Irkutsk. After a year he
obtained permission to travel to St. Petersburg, but when he came to the
neighbourhood of Moscow, he received a new order to return, and for
further security he was placed under a guard. They had travelled a good
way into Siberia, when he froze to death while the guard went into a
public-house to warm themselves and quench their thirst.

4

9

xv.] THE FAUNA OF BEHRING ISLAND: FOXES. 601

ate up everything that was at all eatable that was left m the open
air, but forced their way as well by day as by night into the
houses and carried off all that they could, even such things
as were of no use whatever to them, as knives, sticks, sacks,
shoes and stockings. Even if anything had been never so well
buried and loaded with stones, they not only found the place
but even pushed away the stones with their shoulders like men.
Though they could not eat what they found, they carried it
off and concealed it under stones. In such a case some foxes
stood on guard, and if a man approached all assisted in speedily
concealing the stolen article in the sand so that no trace of it
was left. When any of the men slept out of doors at night
the foxes carried off their caps and gloves, and made their way
under the covering. They nosed the noses of the sleepers to
find out whether they were dead or living, and attempted to
nibble at any who held their breath. As the female sea-lions
and sea-bears often suffocate their young during sleep, the foxes
every morning made an inspection of the place where these
animals le down in immense herds, and if they found a dead
young one they immediately helped each other, like good
scavengers, to carry away the carcase. When men were employed
out of doors they had to drive the foxes away with sticks,
and they became, in consequence of the slyness and cunning
with which they knew how to carry out their thefts and the
skill which they showed in combining to gain an end which
they could not compass as single animals, actually dangerous
to the shipwrecked men, by whom they were therefore heartily
hated, pursued, tormented, and killed. Since then thousands
and thousands of foxes have been killed on Behring Island
by the fur-hunters. Now they are so scarce that durmg our
stay there we did not see one. Those that still survive, besides,
as the Europeans settled on the island informed me, do not wear
the precious dark blue dress formerly common but the white,
which is of little value. On the neighbouring Copper Island,
however, there are still dark blue foxes in pretty large numbers.’

1 As early as Schelechov’s wintering at 1783-84 the foxes on Behring
Island were principally white. During Steller’s wintering, over a third of
the foxes on the island had a bluish fur (Neue nord. Beytr., ii. p. 277). In
the year 1747-48 a fur hunter, Cholodilov, caught on Behring Island 1,481
blue foxes and 350 sea-otters, and the following year another hunter
returned with over a thousand sea-otters and two thousand blue foxes,
which probably were also caught on Behring and Copper Islands (Neue
Nachrichten von denen neuentdeckten Insuln, Hamburg u. Leipzig, 1766, p.
20). In the year 1751-53 Jugov caught on the same island 790 sea-otters,
6,844 black and 200 white foxes, and 2,212 sea-bears (doc. cit. p. 22). In
1752-53 the crew of a vessel belonging to the Irkutsk merchant, Nikifor
Trapeznikoff, caught on Behring Island 5 sea-otters, 1,222 foxes (colour
not stated), and 2,500 sea-bears (doc, cit. p. 32). It thus appears as if the

602. THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. CHAP.

Nine hundred sea-otters were killed here by Steller and his
companions in 1741-42. The following quotation is taken from
Steller’s description of this animal which is now so shy at the
sight of man :—

“With respect to playfulness it surpasses every other animal
that lives either in the sea or on the land. When it comes up
out of the sea it shakes the water from its fur, and dresses it as
a cat its head with its fore-paws, stretches its body, arranges its
hair, throws its head this way and that, contemplating itself and
its beautiful fur with evident satisfaction. The animal is so
much taken up with this dressing of itself, that while thus
employed it may easily be approached and killed. If one strikes
a sea-otter twenty times across the back, it bears it patiently, but
if its large beautiful tail be struck once it turns its head to its
pursuer, as if to offer it as a mark for his club in place of the
tail. Ifit eludes an attack it makes the most laughable gestures
to the hunter. It looks at him, placing one foot above the head
as if to protect it from the sunlight, throws itself on its back, and
turning to its enemy as if in scorn scratches itself on the belly
and thighs. The male and female are much attached to each
other, embrace and kiss each other like men. The female is also
very fond of its young. When attacked she never leaves it
in the lurch, and when danger is not near she plays with it in a
thousand ways, almost like a child-loving mother with her young
ones, throws it sometimes up in the air and catches it with her
fore-feet like a ball, swims about with it in her bosom, throws it
away now and then to let it exercise itself in the art of
swimming, but takes it to herself with kisses and caresses when
it is tired.”

According to recent researches the sea-otter, sea-beaver or
Kamchatka-beaver (Lnhydris lutris, Lin.) is a species neither of
the otter nor the beaver, but belongs to a peculiar genus, allied
to a certain extent to the walrus. Even this animal, un-
surpassed in the beauty of its skin, has been long since driven
away not only from Behring Island but also from most of the
hunting-grounds where it was commonly killed by thousands, and
if an effective law be not soon put in force to keep the hunting
in bounds, and check the war of extermination which greed now
carries on against it, no longer with clubs and darts but with
powder and breechloaders, the sea-otter will meet the same fate
which has already befallen Steller’s sea-cow. Of the sea-lion
(Humetopias Stellert, Lesson), which in Steller’s time were found

eager hunting had an influence not only on the number of the animals but
also on their colour, the variety in greatest demand becoming also relatively
fess common than before.

xv.] THE SEA-COW. 603

in abundance on the shore cliffs of Behring Island, there are now
only single animals there along with the sea-bears (Ofaria
ursina, Lin.); and finally, the most remarkable of all the old
mammalia of Behring Island, the great sea-cow, is completely
extinct.

Steller’s sea-cow (Rhytina Stelleri, Cuvier) in a way took the
place of the cloven-footed animals among the marine mammalia.
The sea-cow was of a dark-brown colour, sometimes varied with
white spots or streaks. The thick leathery skin was covered with
hair which grew together so as to form an exterior skin, which was
full of vermin and resembled the bark of an old oak. The full
grown animal was from twenty-eight to thirty-five English feet
in length and weighed about sixty-seven cwt. The head was
small in proportion to the large thick body, the neck short, the
body diminishing rapidly behind. The short fore-leg terminated
abruptly without fingers or nails, but was overgrown with a
number of short thickly placed brush-hairs; the hind-leg was
replaced by a tail-fin resembling a whale’s. The animal wanted
teeth, but was instead provided with two masticating plates, one in
the gum the other in the under jaw. The udders of the female,
which abounded in milk, were placed between the fore-limbs.
The flesh and milk resembled those of horned cattle, mdeed in
Steller’s opinion surpassed them. The sea-cows were almost
constantly employed in pasturing on the sea-weed which grew
luxuriantly on the coast, moving the head and neck while so
doing -much in the same way as an ox. While they pastured
they showed great voracity, and did not allow themselves to be
disturbed in the least by the presence of man. One might even
touch them without their being frightened or disturbed. They
entertained great attachment to each other, and when one was
harpooned the others made incredible attempts to rescue it.

When Steller came to Behring Island, the sea-cows pastured
along the shore, collected like cattle imto herds. The ship-
wrecked men, for want of suitable implements, did not hunt
them at first. It was only after a thoughtless love of slaughter
had driven all other animals suitable for food far from their
winter quarters, that they began to devise means to catch the
sea-cow also. They endeavoured to harpoon the animal with a
strong iron hook made for the purpose, and then drag it to land.
The first attempt was made on the 30°" 1742, but it was un-
successful. It was not until after many renewed attempts that
they at last succeeded in killing and catching a number of
animals, and dragging them at high water so near land that they
were dry at ebb. They were so heavy that forty men were
required to do this; we may conclude from these particulars that
the number of sea-cows killed during the first wintering on
Behring Island was not very large. For the first one was killed

604 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

only six weeks before the shipwrecked men left the island, and
the hunting thus fell at a time when they could leave the build-
ing of the vessel to occupy themselves in that way only in case
of necessity. Besides, only two animals were required to yield
flesh-food to all the men for the period in question.

It is remarkable that the sea-cow is so mentioned by later
travellers only in passing, that this large animal, still hunted by
Europeans in the time of Linnzus, would scarcely have been
registered in the system of the naturalist if Steller had not
wintered on Bebring Island. What Krascheninnikov says of the
sea-cow is wholly borrowed from Steller, and in the same way
nearly all the statements of later naturalists as to its occurrence
and mode of life. That this is actually the case is shown by the
following abstract, complete as far as I know, of what is said of
the sea-cow in the only original account of the first hunting
voyages of the Russians to the Aleutian Islands, which was
published at Hamburg and Leipzig in 1776 with the title, Neue
Nachrichten von denen neuentdeckten Insuln in der See zwischen
Asien und Amerika, aus mitgetheilten Urkunden und Ausziigen
verfasset von J. L. S * * (Scherer). In this book the sea-cow is
mentioned at the following places :—

“Tvan Krassilnikoff’s vessel started first in 1754 and arrived
on the 8th October at Behring Island, where all the vessels fitted
out for hunting the sea-otter on the remote islands are wont to
pass the winter, in order to provide themselves with a sufficient
stock of the flesh of the sea-cow ” (loc. cit. p. 38).

“The autumn storms, or rather the wish to take on board a
stock of provisions, compelled them (a number of hunters sent
out by the merchant Tolstyk under command of the Cossack
Obeuchov) to touch at Commander’s Island (Behring Island)
where, during the winter up to the =th June, 1757, they obtained
nothing else than sea-cows, sea-lions, and large seals, They found
no sea-otters this year” (ibid. p. 40).

1 From this little work, compiled from the original journals (Cf. Coxe,
Russian Discoveries, 1780, p. vi.) we see that the undaunted courage and
the resolution which, matched with other qualities not so praiseworthy,
distinguished the Promyschlenni during their expeditions of exploration,
tribute-collecting, and plunder from the Ob to Kamchatka, did not fail
them in the attempt to force their way across the sea to America. It
happens yearly that a ship’s crew save themselves from destruction in
the most extraordinary craft, for necessity has no law. But it is perhaps
not so common that an exploring expedition, wrecked on an uninhabited
treeless island, builds for itself of fragments from its own vessel, indeed
even of driftwood, a new one in order to sail out on the ocean to discover
new fishing-grounds or new wild tribes, willing to pay “jassak” to the
adventurers, This however happened very frequently during the Russian
voyages of discovery and hunting to the Aleutian Islands from 1745 to
1770, and it was remarkable that the craft built in this way were used
for years, even after the return from the first voyage.

al ACCOUNTS OF THE SEA-COW. 605

“They (a Russian hunting vessel under Studenzov in 1758)
landed on Behring Island to kill sea-cows, as all vessels are
accustomed to do” (ibid. p. 45).

“ After Korovin in 1762 (on Behring Island) had provided
himself with a sufficient stock of the flesh and hides of the sea-
cow for his boats .... he sailed on” (aid. p. 82).

In 1772 Dorrrt BRAGIN wintered on Behring Island during
a hunting voyage. Ina journal kept at the request of Pallas, the
large marine animals occurring on the island are enumerated, but
not a word is said about the sea-cow (PALLAS, Veue nordische
Leytrdge, u. p. 310).

SCHELECHOV passed the winter 1783-84 on Behring Island,
but during the whole time he only succeeded in killing some
white foxes, and in the narrative of the voyage there is not a
word about the sea-cow (GRIGORI SCHELECHOV russischen
Kaufmanns erste und zweite Reise, &e., St. Petersburg, 1793).

Some further accounts of the sea-cow have been obtained
through the mining engineer PET. JAKOVLEV, who visited
Commander's Islands in 1755 in order to imvestigate the
occurrence of copper on Copper Island. In the account of this
voyage which he gave to Pallas there is not indeed one word
about the sea-cow, but in 1867 PEKARSKI published in the
Memoirs of the Petersburg Academy some extracts from
Jakovlev’s journal, from which it appears that the sea-cow
already in his time was driven away from Copper Island.
Jakovlev on this account on the 27th November, 1755, laid a
petition before the authorities on Kamchatka, for having the
hunting of the sea-cow placed under restraimt of law and the
extermination of the animal thus prevented, a thoughtful act
honourable to its author, which certainly ought to serve as a
pattern in our times (J. Fr. BRANDT, Symbole Sirenologice, Mém.
del Acad. de St. Pétersbourg, t. xii. No. 1, 1861-68, p. 295).

In his account of Behring’s voyage (1785-94) published in
1802, Sauer says, p. 181: “Sea-cows were very common on
Kamchatka and the Aleutian Islands," when they were first

1 The sea-cow does not appear to have ever occurred on the Aleutian
Islands; on the other hand, according to Steller, dead sea-cows have
sometimes been cast ashore on Kamchatka, where they even obtained from
the Russians a peculiar name kapustnik, derived from the large quantity
of sea-weed found in their stomach. It appears to me that this name,
specially distinctive of a graminivorous animal, appears to indicate that on
the first arrival of the Russians at Kamchatka the sea-cow actually visited
occasionally the coasts of that peninsula. It is probable that in former
times the sea-cow was to be met with as far south as the north part of
Japan. Some scientific men have even conjectured that the animal may
have occurred north of Behring’s Straits. This however is improbable.
Among the mass of subfossil bones of marine animals which we examined
at Pitlekaj the bones of the sea-cow did not appear to be present.

606 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. (CHAP, x.y

discovered, but the last was killed on Behring Island in 1768,
and none has been seen since then.”

On the ground of the writings of which I have given an
account above, and of various pieces of information collected
during this century from the Russian authorities in the region,
by the skilful conservator WOSNESSENSKI, the academicians von
Baer and Brandt! came to the conclusion that the sea-cow
had scarcely been seen by Europeans before the 12th November,
1741, whey Steller, the day after his landing on Behring Island,
for the first time saw some strange animals pasturing with
their heads under water on the shores of the island; and that
the animal twenty-seven years afterwards, or in 1768, was com-
pletely exterminated. The latter statement however is un-
doubtedly incorrect; for, in the course of the many inquiries I
made of the natives, I obtained distinct information that living
sea-cows had been seen much later. <A creole (that is, the
offspring of a Russian and an Aleutian), who was sixty-seven
years of age, of intelligent appearance and in the full ge
of his mental faculties, stated “that his father died in 1847 a
the age of eighty-eight. He had come from Volhynia, hi
native place, to Behring Island at the age of eighteen, accordingly
in 1777. The two or three first years of his stay there, ie. till
1779 or 1780, sea-cows were still being killed as they pastured
on sea-weed. The heart only was eaten, and the hide used for
baydars.2 In consequence of its thickness the hide was split
in two, and the two pieces thus obtained had gone to make a
baydar twenty feet long, seven and a half feet broad, and three
feet deep. After that time no sea-cows had been killed.”

There is evidence, however, that a sea-cow had been seen
at the island still later. Two creoles, Feodor Mertchenin and
Stepnoff, stated, that about twenty-five years ago at Tolstoj-mys,
on the east side of the island, they had seen an Yanimal unknown
to them which was very thick befor e, but grew smaller behind,
had small fore-feet, and appeared with a length of about fifteen
feet above water, now raising itself up, now lowering itself.
The animal “blew,” not through blowholes, but through the
mouth, which was somewhat drawn out. It was brown in
colour with some lighter spots. A back fin was wanting, but
when the animal raised itself 1t was possible, on account of its
ereat leanness, to see its backbone projecting. I instituted a
through examination of both my informants. Their accounts

1 Von Baer’s and Brandt’s numerous writings on the sea-cow are to be
found in the publications of the St. Petersburg Academy.

2 That the hide of the sea-cow was used for baydars is evident from the
short extract given from Korovin’s voyage. On hearing this “ creole’s”
account I inquired whether there were not to be found remaining on the

island any very old sea-cow skins that had been used for baydars, but the
answer unfortunately was in the negative,

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608 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

agreed completely, and appeared to have claims to be regarded as
trustworthy. That the animal which they saw was actually a
sea-cow, is clearly proved both by the description of the animal’s
form and way of pasturing in the water, and by the account
of the way in which it breathed, its colour, and leanness. In
Aiisfurliche Beschreibung von sonderbaren Meerthieren, Steller
says, p. 97, “ While they pasture, they raise every fourth or fifth
minute their nose from the water in order to blow out air and
a little water ;” p. 98, “During winter they are so lean that
it is possible to count their vertebrae and ribs;” and p. 54,
“Some sea-cows have pretty large white spots and streaks,
so that they have a spotted appearance.” As these natives
had no knowledge of Steller’s description of the animal, it
is impossible that their statement can be false. The death-
year of the Rhytina race,must therefore be altered at least
to 1854. With reference to this point it may be remarked
that many circumstances indicate that the Rhytina herds were
rather driven away from the rich pastures on Behring Island
than exterminated there, and that the species became extinct
because in their new haunt they were unable to maintain the
struggle for existence. The form of the sea-cow, varying from
that of most recent animals, besides indicates that, like the long-
tailed duck on Iceland, the dront on Mauritius, and the large
ostrich-like birds on New Zealand, it was the last representative
of an animal group destined to extinction.

Mr. OscuHeE, one of the Alaska Company’s skin inspectors, a
native of Liffland and at present settled on Copper Island, m-
formed me that the bones of the sea-cow also occurred on the
western side of that island. On the other hand, such bones
are said not to be found on the small island described farther on
lying off the colony on Behring Island, although Rhytina bones
are common on the neighbouring shores of the main island.

This is the scanty information I have been able to collect
from the natives and others resident in the quarter regarding
the animal in question. On the other hand, my endeavours to
procure Rhytina bones were crowned with greater success, and
I succeeded in actually bringing together a very large and fine

collection of skeleton fragments.

When I first made the acquaintance of Europeans on “the
island, they told me that there was little probability of finding
anything of value in this respect ; for the company had offered
150 roubles for a skeleton without success. But before I had
been many hours on land, I came to know that large or small
collections of bones were to be found here and there in the huts
of the natives. These I purchased, intentionally paying for them
such a price that the seller was more than satished and his neigh-
bours were a little envious. A great part of the male population

mY] IN SEARCH OF RHYTINA BONES, 609

now began to search for bones very eagerly, and in this way I
collected such a quantity that twenty-one casks, large boxes, or
barrels were filled with Rhytina bones; among which were three
very fine, complete skulls, and others more or less damaged, several
considerable collections of bones from the same skeleton, &c.
The Rhytina bones do not lie at the level of the sea, but upon
a strand-bank thickly overgrown with luxuriant grass, at a height
of two or three metres above it. They are commonly covered
with a layer of earth and gravel from thirty to fifty centimetres
in thickness. In order to find them, as it would be too trouble-
some to dig the whole of the grassy bank, one must examine
the ground with a pointed iron rod, a bayonet, or some such
tool. One soon learns to distinguish, by the resistance and
nature of the sound, whether the rod stuck into the ground
has come into contact with a stone, a piece of wood, or a
fragment of bone. The ribs are used by the natives, on account
of their hard ivory-like structure, for shoemg the runners of
the sledges or for carvings. They have accordingly been

RECONSTRUCTED FORM OF THE SEA-COW.
After J. Fr. Brandt (Symbole Sirenologice, Fasc. iii. p. 282).

already used up ona large scale, and are more uncommon than
other bones. The finger-bone, which perhaps originally was
cartilaginous, appears in most cases to be quite destroyed, as
well as the outermost vertebree of the tail. I could not obtain
any such bones, though I specially urged the natives to get
me the smaller bones too and promised to pay a high price
for them.

The only large animal which is still found on Behring Island
in perhaps as large numbers as in Steller’s time is the sea-bear.

1 The number of these animals killed on Behring Island is shown by the
following statement given me by Mr. Henry W. Elliot:

In the Year In the Year In the Year

186% yz 27,500 TS, nag AS ails ISM stats eek pas
1868 ... 12,000 1873... 30,396 1878 ... 31,340
1869 ... 24,000 LSC ws.) soleade 1879... 42,752
1870 ... 24,000 1875”... 36,274 1880 ... 48,504
1871.@.. 3,614 en6) ... 26,960

During the eighteen years from 1862 to 1880 there have thus been shipped
from Behring Island 389,462 skins, The catch on the Pribylov Islands
RR

610 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

Even it had already diminished so that the year’s catch was —
inconsiderable, when in 1871 a single company obtained for
a payment to the Russian crown, if I recollect mght, of two
roubles for every animal killed, and exclusive right to the
hunting, which was accordingly arranged in a more purposelike
way. At certain times of the year the killing of the sea-bear
is wholly prohibited. The number of the animals to be killed
is settled beforehand, quite in the same way as the farmer at
the time of killing in autumn is wont to do with his herd of
eattle. Females and young are only killed exceptionally. Even
the married males, or more correctly the males that can get
themselves a harem and can defend it, commonly escape being
killed, if not for any other reason, because the skin is too often
torn and tattered and the hair pulled out. It is thus the
bachelors that have to yield up their skins.

That a wild animal may be slaughtered in so orderly a
way, depends on its peculiar mode of ‘life. For the sea-bears
are found year after year during summer at certain points
projecting into the sea (rookeries), where, collected in hundreds
of thousands, they pass several months without the least food.
The males (oxen) come first to the place, most of them in the
month of May or at the beginning of June. Combats of
excessive violence, often with a deadly issue for one of the
parties, now arise regarding the space of about a hundred square
feet, which each seal-ox considers necessary for its home. The
strongest and most successful in fight retain the best places
near the shore; the weaker have to crawl farther up on land,
where the expectation of getting a sufficient number of spouses
is not particularly great. The fightmg goes on with many
feigned attacks and parades. At first the contest concerns the
proprietorship of the soil. The attacked therefore never follows
its opponent beyond the area it has once taken up, but haughtily
lays itself down, when the enemy has retired, in order in the
arms of sleep to collect forces for a new combat. The animal

n such a case grunts with satisfaction, throws itself on its back,
scratches itself with its fore-feet, looks after its toilet, or cools
itself by slowly fanning with one of its hind-feet, but it is always
on the alert and ready for a new fight until it is tired out and
meets its match, and is driven by it farther up from the beach.

has been still larger. These islands were discovered in 1786, but the
number of amines killed there is not known for the first ten years; it is
only known that it was enormously large. In the years 1797- 1880—that is
in eighty- -four years—over three-and-a-half millions of skins have been
exported from these islands. In recent years the catch has increased so
that in each of the years from 1872 to 1880, 99,000 animals might have
been killed without inconvenience.

1 The traits here given of the sea-bear’s mode of life are mainly taken
from Henry W. Elliot’s work quoted above,

xV.] SEA-BEARS. G11

One of the most peculiar traits of these animals is that
during their stay on lan they unceasingly use their hind-»aws
as fans, and sometimes also as parasols. Such fans may on a

SEA-BEARS.
Male, Female, and Young.
(From a water-colour painting by H. W. Elliott.)

warm day be in motion at the same time by the hundred
thousand at a “rookery.”
In the middle of June the females come up from the sea, At

the water's edge they are received in a very accommodating way by
RR 2

612 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. XV.

some strong oxen that have succeeded in securing for themselves
places next the shore, and now are Went by fair means or foul
on annexing the fair for their harem. But scarcely is the
female that has come up out of the water established with
seal-ox No. 1, when this ox’ rushes towards a new beauty
on the surface of the water. Seal-ox No. 2 now stretches
out his neck and without ceremony lays hold of No. 1’s spouse,
to be afterwards exposed to a repetition of the trick by
No. 3. In such cases the females are quite passive, never
fall out with each other, and bear with patience the severe
wounds they often get when they are pulled about by the
combatants, now in one direction, now in another. All the
females are finally distributed in this way after furious combats
among the males, those of the latter who are nearest the beach
getting from twelve to fifteen consorts to their share. Those
that have been compelled to settle farther from the shore
must be content with four or five. Soon after the landing of the
females they bring forth their young, which are treated with
ereat indifference and are protected by the adopted father only
within the boundaries of the harem. Next comes the pairing
season, and when it has passed there is an end to the arrange-
ment and distribution into families at first so strictly main-
tained. The seal-oxen, rendered lean by three months absolute
fasting, by degrees leave the “rookery,” which is taken possession
of by the sea-cows, the young, and a number of young males,
that have not ventured to the place before. In the middle of
September, when the young have learned to swim, the place is
quite abandoned, with the exception of single animals that
have remained behind for one reason or other. In long con-
tinued heavy rain many of the animals besides seek protection
in the sea, but return when the rain ceases. Continuous heat
and sunshine besides exert the same influence; cold, moist air,
with mist-concealed sun, on the other hand draw them up on
land by thousands.

Males under six years of age cannot, like the older males,
possess themselves, by fighting, of spouses and a home of their
own. They therefore collect, along with young females, in herds
of several thousand to several hundred thousand, on the shores
between the rookeries proper, some of them close packed next
the water’s edge, others scattered in small flocks a little farther
from the shore on the grass, where they by turns play with each
other with a frolicsomeness like that of young dogs, by turns
he down to sleep at a common signal in all conceivable
positions.

It is these unfortunate useless bachelors which at the properly
managed hunting stations yield the contingent for slaughter.
For this purpose they are driven by the natives from the shore

THE PRIBYLOY ISLANDS.

g by H. W. Elliott.)

OF

ONE

“ SEAL-ROOKERY’”’ ON ST. PAUL’S ISLAND,

(After a draw

614 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

slowly, about a kilometre an hour, and with frequent rests, to
the place of slaughter, situated a kilometre or two from the
shore. Then the females and the young ones are driven away,
as well as the males whose skins are unserviceable. The rest
are first stunned with a blow on the head, and afterwards
stabbed with a knife.

While the Veya steamed down towards Behring Island we
met, already far from land, herds of sea-bears, which followed
the vessel from curiosity for long stretches. Being unacquainted
with the sea-bear’s mode of life, I believed from this cireum-
stance that they had already left their summer haunts, but on
our arrival at the colony I was informed that this was not the

case, but that a very great number of animals still remained at
the rooker y on the north-eastern point of the island. Naturally
one of our first excursions was to this place, situated about
twenty kilometres from the village. Such a journey cannot now
be undertaken alone and unattended, because even an involuntary
want of caution might easily cause much economic loss to the
natives, and to the company that owns the right of hunting.
During the journey we were accordingly accompanied by the
chief of the village, a black-haired stammering Aleutian, and
“the Cossack,’ a young, pleasant, and agreeable fellow, who on
solemn occasions wore a sabre nearly as long as himself, but
besides did not in the least correspond to the Cossack type of
the writers of novels and plays.

The journey was performed in large sledges drawn by ten
dogs over snow-free rounded hills and hill-plateaus covered
with a rather scanty vegetation, and through valleys treeless
as the mountains, but adorned with luxuriant vegetation, rich in
splendid hls, syngenesia, umbellifera,&c. The journey was some-
times tedious enough, but we now and then went at a whistling
rate, especially when the dog-team descended the steep moun-
tain slopes, or went through “the morasses and the clay puddles
formed in the constantly used way. The driver was bespattered
from top to toe with a thick layer of mud, an imconvenience
attending the unusual team, which was foreseen before our
departure from the colony, in consequence of which our friends
there urged that, notwithstanding the fine weather, we should
all take overcoats. The dog-team was kept pretty far from
the shore in order not to frighten the seals, and then we
went on foot to the place where the sea-bears were, choosing
our way so that we had the wind in our faces. We could in
this way, without disturbing them, come very near the animals,
which, according to the undoubtedly somewhat exaggerated
statement made to us on the spot, were collected at the time
to the number of 200,000, on the promontory and the neigh-
bouring shores. We obtained permission to creep, accom-

xv.] VISIT TO A “ROOKERY.” | 615

panied by our guide, close to a herd lying a little apart. The
older animals became at first somewhat uneasy when they
observed our approach, but they soon settled down completely,
and we had now the pleasure of beholding a peculiar spectacle.
We were the only spectators. The scene “consisted of a beach
covered with stones and washed by foaming breakers, the back-
ground of the immeasurable ocean, and the actors of thousands
of wonderfully-formed animals. A number of old males lay
still and motionless, heedless of what was gomg on around
them. Others crept clumsily on their small short legs between

Ca,

Mee Ce NTN 2

SLAUGHTER OF SEA-BEARS.
(After a drawing by H. W. Elliott.)

the stones of the beach, or swam with incredible agility among
the breakers, played, caressed each other, and quarrelled. At
one place two old animals fought, uttering a peculiar hissing
sound, and in such a way as if the attack and defence had
been carried out in studied attitudes. At another place a
feigned combat was going on between an old and a young
animal. It looked as if the latter was being instructed in the
art of fighting. Everywhere the small black young ones crept
constantly backwards and forwards among the old sea-bears, now
and then bleating lke lambs calling on their mothers. The

616 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cuar.

young ones are often smothered by the old, when the latter,
frightened in some way, rush out into the sea. After such an
alarm hundreds of dead young are found on the shore.

“Only” thirteen thousand animals had been killed that year.
Their flayed carcases lay heaped on the grass by the shore,
spreading far and wide a disagreeable smell, which, however,
had not frightened away their comrades lying on the neighbour-
ing promontory, because, even among them, a similar smell
prevailed in consequence of the many animals suffocated or
killed in fight with their comrades, and left lying on the shore.!
Among this great flock of sea-bears sat enthroned on the top of
a high stone a single sea-lion, the only one of these animals
we saw during our voyage.

SEA-BEARS ON THEIR WAY TO THE ‘‘ ROOKERIES.”’
(After a drawing by H. W. Elliott.)

For a payment of forty roubles I induced the chief of the
village to skeletonise four of the half putrefied carcases of the
sea-bear left lymg on the grass; and I afterwards obtained, by
the good-will of the Russian authorities, and. without any
payment, six animals, among them two living young, for
stuffing. Even the latter we were compelled to kill, after

1 Elliott (doc. cit. p. 150) remarks that not a single self-dead seal is to be
found in the ‘‘ rookery,” where there are so many animals that they pro-
bably die of old age in thousands. This may he explained by the seals,
when they become sick, withdrawing to the sea, and forms another con-
tribution to the question of the finding of self-dead animals to which I
have already referred (p. 246),

Xv. ] TOPORKOFF ISLAND. . 617

in vain attempting to induce them to take some food. One of
them was brought home in spirits for anatomical examination.

The part of Behring Island which we saw forms a high plain
resting on volcanic rocks! which, however, is interrupted at
many “places by deep kettle valleys, the bottoms of which are
generally occupied by lakes which communicate with the sea
by large or small rivers. The banks of the lakes and the
slopes of the hills are covered with a luxuriant vegetation, rich
in long grass and beautiful flowers; among them an iris culti-
vated in our gardens, the useful dark reddish-brown Sarana
lily, several orchids, two species of rhododendron with large
flowers, umbellifera as high as a man, sunflower-like synanthea,
&e. Quite another nature prevailed: on the island lying off
the haven, regarding which Dr. Kjellman and Dr. Stuxberg
make the following statements :—

“Toporkoff Island is formed of an eruptive rock, which
everywhere rises along the shore some scores of feet from
high-water mark, in the form of steep cracked walls from five
to fifteen metres in height, which is different at different places.
Above these steep rock-walls the surface of the island forms
an even plain; what lies below them forms a gently sloping
beach.

“This gently sloping beach consists of two well-marked belts ;
an outer devoid of all vegetation, an inner overgrown with
Ammadenia peploides, Elynvus mollis, and two species of umbel-
lifera, Heracleum sibiricum, and Angelica arehangelica, the two
last forming an almost impenetrable thicket fifty metres broad
and as high as a man, along the slope. The steep rock-walls
are coloured yellow at some ‘places by lichens, mostly Caloplaca
murorum and Cal. crenulata ; at other places they are covered
pretty closely with Cochlearia fenestrata. The uppermost level
plain is covered with a close and luxuriant turf, over which
single stalks of the two species of umbellifera named above
raise themselves here and there. The vegetation on this little
island unites a very uncommon poverty in species with a high
degree of luxuriance.

“Of the higher animals we saw only four kinds of birds, viz.
Fratercula cirrhata, a black guillemot (Uria grylle var. columba)
a species of cormorant (Phalocrocorax) and a sort of oul
(Larus). ratercula cirrhata lived here by millions. They
haunted the upper plain, where they had everywhere excavated
short, deep, and uncommonly broad passages to sleep in, provided

1 According to a statement by Mr. Grebnitski, tertiary fossils and coal
seams are also to be found on Behring Island, the former north of the
colony in the interior, the latter at the beach south of Behring’s grave,
Also in the neighbourhood of the colony the volcanic rock-masses are
under-stratified by thick sandy beds.

618 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

with two openings. From these on our arrival they flew in
large flocks to the neighbouring sea and back. Their number
was nearly equal to that of looms in the Arctic loomeries. The
black guillemots and cormorants kept to the cliffs near the
shore.

“The number of the evertebrate land animals amounted to
about thirty species. The most numerous were Machilis,
Vitrina, Lithobius, Talitrus, some Diptera and beetles. They
all lived on the inner belt of the shore, where the ground
was uncommonly damp.”

Behring Island might without difficulty feed large herds of
cattle, perhaps as numerous as the herds of sea-cows that
formerly pastured on its shores. The sea-cow besides had chosen
its pasture with discrimination, the sea there being, according to
Dr. Kjellman, one of the richest in algze in the world. ‘The
sea-bottom is covered at favourably situated places by forests of
seaweed from twenty to thirty metres high, which are so dense
that the dredge could with difficulty force its way down into
them, a circumstance which was much against the dredging.
Certain of the algze are used by the natives as food.

In the course of our journey to the hunting place we had an
opportunity, during a rest about halfway between it and the
village, of taking part in a very peculiar sort of fishing. The
place where we rested was in an even grassy plain, resembling a
natural meadow at home, crossed by a large number of small
rivulets. They abounded in several different kinds of fish,
among them a Coregonus, a small trout, a middle-sized long
salmon with almost white flesh, though the colour of its skin
was a purplish-red, another salmon of about the same length,
but thick and hump-backed. These fish were easily caught.
They were taken with the hand, were harpooned with common
unshod sticks, were stabbed with knives, caught with the insect
net, &c. Other kinds of salmon with deep red flesh are to be
found in the large rivers of the island. We obtained here for
a trifle a welcome change from the preserved provisions of which
we had long ago become quite tired. The Expedition was also
presented by the Alaska Company with a fine fat ox, milk, and
various other provisions, and I cannot sufficiently value the
goodwill shown to us not only by the Russian official, N. GREB-
NITSKI, a zealous and skilful naturalist, but also by the officials
of the Alaska Company and all others living on the island with
whom we came into contact.

It was my original intention to sail from Behring Island to
Petropaulovsk, in order from thence to put a stop to the under-
takings which were possibly in contemplation for our relief.
This however became unnecessary, because a steamer, which

0] ALGA FROM BEHRING ISLAND. 619

was to start for Petropaulovsk as soon as its cargo was on board,
had anchored by the side of the Vega two days after our arrival.
The steamer belonged to the Alaska Company, was named
the Alexander, was commanded by Captain SANDMAN, and was
manned almost exclusively by Swedes, Danes, Fins, and

ALGA FRUM THE SHURE OF BEHRING ISLAND,
Thalassiophylium Clathrus, Post. and Rupr.
One-fomrth of the natural size.

Norwegians.1 We found on the Alexander two naturalists, Dr.

1 The first European who welcomed us after the completion of the
North-east passage was a Fin now settled in California, from Bjérkboda
works in Kimito parish, in which I had lived a great deal when a youth,
He was sent by the Alaska Company to do some work on Behring Island.
As we steamed towards the colony he rowed to meet us, and saluted us with
the cry “ar det Nordenskidld?” (“Is it Nordenskiéld ?”) His name was
Isak Andersson,

620 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. - [CHAP. XV.

BENEDIKT DyBovskI and Dr. JULIAN WiEMuUT. The former is
a Pole exiled to Siberia but now pardoned, whose masterly
zoological works are among the best contributions which have
been made during recent decades to our knowledge of the
natural conditions of Siberia.. His researches. have hitherto
mainly concerned the Baikal region. Now he wishes to extend
them to Kamchatka, and has therefore voluntarily taken a
physician’s post at Petropaulovsk. .Science has reason to expect
very rich results from his work and that of his companions in
one of the most interesting, most mis-known, aid least known
lands of the north.

The Vega left Behring Island on the afternoon of the 19th
August, and anchored at Yokohama on the evening of the 2nd
September. The first part of the passage, while we were still
in the cold northerly Polar Sea current, was favoured by fair
winds and moderate heat. The surface temperature of the sea
was from +9° to +10°. On the 25th August in 45° 15’ N.L.
and 156° E.L. from Greenwich the temperature of the sea-water
began to rise so rapidly that the thermometer in 40° Lat.
and 147° 41’ Long. already showed +23°4 at the surface.
This indicated that we had come from the cold current favour-
able to us into Kuro-sivo, the Gulf Stream of the Pacific. The
wind was now at times unfavourable and the heat oppressive,
notwithstanding the frequent rain showers accompanied by
lightning and heavy squalls. In such unfavourable weather on
the 3lst August the mainmast of the Vega was struck by
lightning, the flash and the report being of excessive violence.
The vane was broken loose and thrown into the sea along with
some inches of the pole. The pole itself was split pretty far
down, and all on board felt a more or less violent shaking, the
man who felt it most standing at the time near the hawse-hole.
The incident was not attended by any further noteworthy
unpleasant consequences.

On our arrival at Yokohama we were all in good health and
the Vega im excellent condition, though, after the long voyage,
in want of some minor repairs, of docking, and possibly of
coppering. Naturally among thirty men some mild attacks of
illness could not be avoided in the course of a year, but no
disease had been generally prevalent, and our state of health had
constantly been excellent. Of scurvy we had not seen a trace.

CHAP, XVI. ] ARRIVAL. AT YOKOHAMA. 621

CHAPTER XVI.

Arrival at Yokohama—A Telegram sent to Europe—The stranding of the
steamer A. EF Nordenskiéld—Fétes in Japan—The Minister of Marine,
Kawamura—Prince Kito-Shira-Kava—Audience of the Mikado —Graves
of the Shoguns—Imperial Garden at Tokio—The Exhibition there—
Visit to Enoshima—Japanese manners and customs—Thunberg and
Kampfer.

YOKOHAMA, the first harbour, telegraph station, and commercial
town at which the Vega anchored after circumnavigating the
north coast of Asia, is one of the Japanese coast cities which
were opened to the commerce of the world after the treaty
between the United States of America and Japan negotiated by
Commodore Perry.’ At this place there was formerly only
alittle fishing village, whose inhabitants had never seen Europeans
and were forbidden under severe punishments from entering into
communication or trading with the crews of the foreign vessels
that might possibly visit the coast. The former village is
now, twenty years later, changed into a town of nearly 70,000
inhabitants, and consists not only of Japanese, but also of very
fine European houses, shops, hotels, &c. It is also the residence
of the governor of Kanagava Ken. It is in communication
by rail with the neighbouring capital Tokio, by regular weekly
steamship sailings with San Francisco on the one hand, and
Hong Kong, India, &c., on the other, and finally by telegraph
not only with the principal cities of Japan but also with all the
lands that have got entangled in the threads of the world’s
telegraph net.

The situation of the town on the western shore of the Yedo
or Tokio Bay, which is perhaps rather large for a haven, is not
particularly fine. But on sailing in we see in the west, if the
weather be fine, Fusiyama’s snow-clad, incomparably beautiful
voleanic cone raise itself from a cultivated forest-clad region.
When one has seen it, he is no longer astonished that the Japanese
reproduce with such affection on their varnished wares, porcelain,
cloth, paper, sword-ornaments, &c., the form of their highest,
stateliest, and also grimmest mountain. For the number of the
men who have perished by its eruptions is reckoned by hundreds
of thousands, and if tradition speaks truth the whole mountain

1 The Dutch had permission in former times to send some vessels
annually to Nagasaki. By Perry’s treaty, signed on the 31st March, 1854,
Shimoda and Hakodate were opened to the Americans. Finally, by new
treaties with the United States and various European powers, the harbours
Kanagava (Yokohama), Nagasaki, Hakodate, Niigata, Hiogo, and Osaka,
were assigned for commerce with foreigners.

629 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. xvI.

in a far distant antiquity was formed ina single night. Before
we enter Yedo Bay we pass a voleano, active during last year,
situated on the volcanic island Oshima, known in Japanese
history as the place of exile of several of the heroes in the many
internal struggles of the country.

While we sailed, or more correctly, steamed—for we had still
sufficient coal remaining to permit the engine to be used—up
the Bay of Yedo, the coasts were for the most part concealed
with mist, so that the summit of Fusiyama and the contours of
the shore only now and then gleamed forth from the fog and
cloud. The wind besides was against us,on which account it was
9.30 in the evening of the 2nd September before we could
anchor in the haven that had been longed-for for such a length
of time. I immediately hastened on Tand, along with Captain
Palander, in order to send home a telegram. across Siberia
about the fortunate issue of the voyage of the Vega. At
the telegraph station I was informed that the Siberian line was
interrupted by inundations for a space of 600 versts, and that
the telegram must therefore be sent by India, whereby the cost
was nearly doubled. The telegraph officials also made difficulties
about taking the foreign gold coin of various kinds which I had
about me. Fortunately the latter difficulty was immediately
removed by the accidental presence of the Russian consul, Mr.
PELIKAN, while I was treating with the telegraph officials. When
he heard that it concerned the sending home of a telegram from
the much-talked-of Vega expedition, he immediately ‘offered to
arrange the affair until I had time to operate on the letter
of credit I carried with me from Messrs. James Dickson & Co.
of Gothenburg. Soon after I met with the Swedish consul,
Mr. vAN OorDT, who gave us a large parcel of letters from
home. It was very gladly received by most of us, as, so far
as I know, it did not bring the thirty members of the expedition
a single unexpected sorrowful message. I got, however, soon
after landing, an unpleasant piece of news, viz. that the steamer
A, E, Nordenskiéld, which Mr. Sibiriakoff had sent to Behring’s
Straits and the Lena to our relief, had stranded on the east. coast
of Yesso. The shipwreck fortunately had not been attended
with any loss of human life, and the vessel lay stranded on
a sandbank in circumstances which made it probable that it
would be got off without too great cost.

As the report of our arrival spread, I was immediately waited
upon by various deputations with addresses of welcome, invitations
to fétes, clubs, &e. A series of entertainments and. festivities
now began, which occupied a great part of the time we remained
in this “splendid and remarkable country. Perhaps a sketch
of these festivities may yield a picture of Japan during the state
of transition which still prevails there, and which in a decade

FUSIYAMA.

624 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

or two will undoubtedly belong to a past and to a great extent
forgotten period, a picture which to future writers may possibly
form a not unwelcome contribution to tle knowledge of the
Japan that now (1879) is. Such a sketch would however
carry me too far beyond the subject of this narrative of
travel, and require too much space, on which account I must
confine myself to an enumeration of the festivities at the head
of which were public authorities, learned societies, or clubs.

On the 10th September a grand dinner was given at the Grand
Hotel, the principal European hotel—and very well kept—of

THE STEAMER “fA. E, NORDENSKIOLD,’® STRANDED ON THE EAST COAST OF YEZO,
(After a Japanese photograph.)

Yokohama, by the Dutch minister, Chevalier VAN STOETWEGEN,
who at the same time represents Sweden and Norway in Japan.
The members of the Expedition were here introduced to several
members of the Japanese Government.

We were invited to a d&ediner a la fouwrchette, at one o'clock ©

P.M. on the 11th September, at the Imperial summer palace
Hamagoten, by Admiral Kawamura, minister of marine. At
this entertainment there were present, besides the scientific men
and officers of the Vega, and our minister, Herr van Stoetwegen,
several of the ministers and highest officials of Japan. Some

XV1.] ADMIRAL KAWAMURA’S ENTERTAINMENT. 625

of them spoke one or other of the European languages, others
only Japanese, in which case officials of lower rank acted as
interpreters, these however taking no part in the entertainment
along with the other guests. It was arranged after the European
pattern, with abundance of dishes and wines. The palace
consisted of a one-storied wooden house in the Japanese style
of construction. The rooms, to which we were admitted, were
provided with European furniture, much the same as we would
expect to find in the summer residence of a well-to-do family
in Sweden. It was remarkable that the Japanese did not take

KAWAMURA SUMIYOSHI.

Japanese Minister of Marine.

the trouble to ornament the room or the table to any consider-
able extent with the beautiful native bronzes or porcelain, of
which there is such abundance in the country. The summer
palace was surrounded by a garden which the Japanese consider
something very extraordinary, and also on a very large scale.
We should call it a small, well and originally kept miniature
park, with carefully dressed turf, wonderful dwarf trees, miniature
stone bridges, small ponds and waterfalls. The entertainment was
very pleasant, and all, from our intelligent host to the Premier,

Sts

626 . THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [crar,

Daiyo-daiyin, and the Imperial Prince, Sanyo Saniromt,
showed us much friendliness. The latter looked a sickly young
man, some years past twenty. He was, however, much older,
and had taken a leading part in the most important political
transactions since the opening of the ports. Our host, Admiral
Kawamura, had more the appearance of a man of science than
of a warrior. The modest exterior, however, concealed a great
and noble man. For Kawamura, as commander of the Mikado’s
troops, had with special distinction brought about the suppression
of the revolt under the brave Saigo Kichinosuke, who had at the
restoration of the power of the Mikado been its heart and sword,
but soon after fell before the government he himself contributed
to create, and is now, a couple of years after, admired and sung
by former friends and by former enemies as a national hero. All
the Japanese present at the déjediner were clad in European
dress—in black dress coat-and white tie. Even the interpreters
and attendants wore the European dress. The people, the lower
officials, and the servants in private houses are still clothed in
the Japanese dress, but do not wear a sword, which is now
prohibited. Many of the people have even exchanged the old
troublesome Japanese dressing of the hair for the convenient
European style.

In the course of conversation after the déjeiiner the ministers
offered to do all they could to make our stay in the country
agreeable and instructive. Distinguished foreigners are always
well received in Japan, and we are informed that a special
committee is appointed to make arrangements for their re-
ception. This has given offence in certain quarters, and
shortly before our arrival a proclamation was issued by a secret
society, which threatened, if no change were made, to kill one of
the ministers and one of the foreigners who were entertained
in this, in the opinion of the secret society, extravagant way.
One of my Japanese friends promised me a copy of the pro-
clamation, but did not keep his promise, probably because it
was impossible for the uninitiated to get hold of the dangerous
‘writing.

On the 13th September a grand dinner was arranged for us
by the German Club, the photographer ANDERSEN being chair-
man. The hall was adorned in a festive manner with flags,
and with representations of the Vega in various more or less
dangerous positions among the ice, which had been got up
for the occasion; the bill of fare had reference to the cir-
cumstances of our wintering, &c. A number of speeches were
made ; the feeling was cheerful and merry.

On the 15th September there was a grand entertainment in
Tokio, given by the Tokio Geographical Society, the Asiatic
Society of Japan, and the German Asiatic Society. It was

XV1.] PRINCE YOHI HISHA. — 627

held in the great hall in Koku-Dai-Gaku, a large stone
building surrounded with beautiful trees, which were lighted up
for the occasion by a number of variegated paper lanterns.
Several Japanese ladies dressed in European style took part
in the entertamment. I sat by the side of the chairman,
Prince Kira-Sarra-Kava, a young member of the imperial
house, who had served some time in the German army and
speaks German very well. During the disturbances which were
caused by the removal of the residence from Kioto to Yedo
(Tokio), a group of insurgents had seized the prince, then a
minor, who under the name of RiInNoJINO-MIyaA was chief
priest in a temple, and endeavoured to set him up in opposition
to the Emperor. The plan failed, and in consequence of the
reconciliation at the end of the conflict, which distinguished in
so honourable a way the many involved and bloody political
struggles in Japan during recent years, this adventure was
attended with no other result for him than that the former
chief priest was sent to a German military school. He was
recalled sooner than was tended because he wished to marry
a European, which was considered below the dignity of the
family of the Mikado. After his return he was declared nearest
heir to the throne, in case the Mikado should die without male
heirs, and his name, KiTa-SHrra-KAvA-No-MiIyA, was changed
a second time to Yount HisHa. The former name was at the
bottom of the speech he made for us at the dinner, and which
he gave me, and the latter, with the addition, “ Prince of Japan,”
was on his calling card. The dinner was quite European,
with a large number of speeches, principally in European
languages, but also in Japanese. Before every guest lay a map,
of the form of a fan, with the course of the Vega marked upon
it. Asa memorial of the feast I received some days after a
large medal in silver inlaid in gold, of which a drawing is given
on pages 628, 629. We were conveyed back to the Tokio
railway station in European equipages, in the same way as we
had been brought to the dinner. During dinner musicians
from the band of the imperial navy played European pieces of
music with great skill, to the evident satisfaction of the
Japanese.

On the forenoon of the 17th September we were presented
at the court of the Mikado in Tokio by the Swedish-Dutch
minister. We were fetched from the railway station by imperial
equipages, consisting of simple but ornamental and conve-
nient siflett carriages, each drawn by a pair of beautiful black
horses of no great size. As is common in Japan, a running
groom, clad in black, accompanied each carriage. The recep-
tion took place in the imperial palace, a very modest wooden
building. The rooms we saw were furnished, almost poorly, in

$s 2

628 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

European fashion. We first assembled in an antechamber, the
only remarkable ornament of which was a large piece of
nephrite, which was a little carved and had a Chinese inscription
on it. Here we were met by some of the ministers and the
interpreter. After a short conversation, in the course of which
the interpreter got a sight of the written speech, or more
correctly the words of salutation,-I was to speak, we were
conducted into an inner apartment where the Emperor, clad

THE FIR3T MEDAL WHICH WAS S(?RUCK AS A MEMORIAL OF THE VOYAGE OF THE “* VEGA.”’

Size of the original.

in a uniform of European style and standing in front of a

throne, received us. The only thing unusual at our reception
was that we were requested at our “departure not to turn our
backs to the Emperor, and on entering and departing to
make three bows, one at the door, another when we had
come forward a little on the floor, and one at the place
where we were to stand. After we had been presented
the Emperor read a speech in Japanese, which was translated

XVI] AUDIENCE OF THE MIKADO. 629

into French by the interpreter, and of which, before we left
the place, a beautiful copy was given me. I then read my salu-
tation, on which our minister, van Stoetwegen, said a few
words, and got some words in reply. After leaving the
imperial chamber, we were entertained in the anteroom with
Japanese tea and cigars. The two princes who had taken
part in the entertainment of the 15th came and talked a
little with us, as did the minister of foreign affairs. The

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THE FIRST MEDAL WHICH WAS STRUCK AS A MEMORIAL OF THE VOYAGE OF THE “* VEGA.”
Size of the original,

Emperor Mutsuniro, in whose name reforms have been
carried out in Japan to an extent to which history can
scarcely show anything equal, was born the 3rd November,
1850. He is considered the 121st Mikado of the race of
Jimmu Tenno, the members of which have reigned uninter-
ruptedly in Japan for nearly two thousand years, with varying
fates and with varying power—nowas wise lawgivers and mighty
warriors, now for long periods as weak and effeminate rulers,

630 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHaP.

emperors only in seeming, to whom almost divine homage was
paid, but who were carefully freed from the burden of govern-
ment and from all actual power. In comparison with this race,
whose first ancestor lived durmg the first century after the
foundation of Rome, all the royal houses now reigning in
Europe are children of yesterday. Its present representative
does not look to be very strong. During the whole audience
he stood so motionless that he might have been taken for a
wax figure, if he had not himself read his speech. Prince
Kita-Shira-Kava has the appearance of a young lieutenant of
hussars. Most of the ministers have sharply marked features,'
which remind one of the many furious storms they have sur-
vived, and the many personal dangers to which they have been
exposed, partly in honourable conflict, partly through murderers’
plots. For, unfortunately, a political murder is not yet con-
sidered in Japan an infamous crime, but the murderer openly
acknowledges his deed and takes the consequences. Repeated
murderous attempts have been made against the men of the
new time. In order to protect themselves from these, ministers,
when they go out, generally have their carriages surrounded by
an armed guard on horseback.

On the 18th September several of the members of the Vega
expedition were invited to a déjetiner a la fourchette by Admiral
Kawamura, minister of marine. This entertainment had an in-
terest for us because we were here for the first time received into
a Japanese home. Isatat table by the side of Lady Kawamura.
Even the children were present at the entertainment. Lady
Kawamura was dressed in the Japanese fashion, tastefully but
very plainly, if we except a heavy gold chain encircling the
waist. In other respects the entertamment was arranged accord-
ing to the European mode, with a succession of dishes and
wines, both in abundance, according to the laws of gastronomy.
When it was over our host offered us an airing in a carriage,
during which I rode with the lady and one of the children, a
little girl about ten years of age, who would have been very
beautiful if she had not been disfigured, in the eyes of Euro-
peans, by the thick white paint that was evenly spread over her
whole face, and gave it a sickly appearance. Lady Kawamura
herself was not painted, nor was she disfigured with blackened
teeth. Most of the married women of Japan are accustomed
after marriage to blacken their formerly dazzlingly white teeth ;
but it is to be hoped that this unpleasant custom will soon
disappear, as the women of distinction have begun to abandon

1 At first it strikes a European as if all the Japanese had about the
Sime appearance, but when one has got accustomed to the colour of the
skin and the traits of the race, the features of the Japanese appear as
various in form and expression as tLose of Europeans,

me.) JAPANESE GARDENS. 631°

it. During this excursion we visited, among other places, the
graves of the Tycoons, the imperial garden, and a very
remarkable exhibition in the capital.

A number of the Tycoons, or, as they are more correctly
called, Shoguns, are buried in Tokio. Their place of sepulture
is one of the most remarkable memorials of Old Japan. The
graves are in a temple which is divided into several courts,
surrounded by walls and connected with each other by beautiful
gates. The first of these courts is ornamented with more than
two hundred stone lanterns, presented to the temple by-the
feudal princes of the country, the name of the giver and the
date at which it was given being inscribed on each. Some of
these peculiar memorials are only half-finished, perhaps an
evidence of the sudden close of the power of the Shoguns
and the feudal princes in Japan. In another of the temple
courts are to be seen lanterns of bronze, partly gilt, presented
by other feudal princes. A third court is occupied by a temple,
a splendid memorial of the old Japanese architecture, and of
the antique method of adorning their sanctuaries with wooden
carvings, gilding, and varnishing. The temple abounds in old
book-rolls, bells, drums, beautiful old lacquered articles, &c.
The graves themselves he within a separate inclosure.

The common Japanese gardens are not beautiful according
to European taste. They are often so small that they might
without mconvenience, with trees, grottos, and waterfalls, be
accommodated in a small State’s department in one of the crystal
palaces of the mternational exhibitions. All, passages, rocks,
trees, ponds, yea, even the fishes in the dams, are artificial or
artificially changed. The trees are, by a special art which has
been very highly developed in Japan, forced to assume the
nature of dwarfs, and are besides so pruned that the whole plant
has the appearance of a dry stem on which some green clumps
have been hung up here and there. The form of the gold fish
swimming in the ponds has also been changed, so that they have
often two or four tail-fins each, and a number of growths not
known in their natural state. On the walks thick layers of
pebbles are placed to keep the feet from being dirtied, and at the
doors of dwelling-houses there is nearly always a block of granite
with a cauldron-like depression excavated in it, which is kept
filled with clean water. Upon this stone cauldron is placed
a sunple but clean wooden scoop, with which one can take water
out of the vessel to wash himself with.

The imperial garden in Tokio is distinguished from these
miniature gardens by its greater extent, and by the trees, at least
at most places, bearing fruit. There is here a veritable park,
with uncommonly large, splendid, and luxuriantly-growing trees.
The public is generally excluded from the garden. At our visit

632 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

we were entertained in one of the imperial summer-houses with
Japanese tea, sweetmeats, and cigars.

Last of all we visited the Exhibition. It had been closed for
some time back on account of cholera. We saw here a number
of beautiful specimens of Japanese art, from the flint tools and
pottery of the Stone Age to the silks, porcelain, and bronzes
of the present. In no country is there at this day such a

STONE LANTERN AND STONE MONUMENT.

In a Japanese Temple Court.

love for exhibitions as in Japan. There are small exhibitions
in most of the large towns. Many were exceedingly instructive ;
in all there were to be seen beautiful lacquered wares, porcelain,
swords, silk, cloths, &e. In one I saw a collection of the birds and
fishes of Japan, in another I discovered some vegetable im-
pressions, by means of which I became acquainted with the

xvi] AN EXCURSION BY WATER. 6353

remarkable locality for fossil plants at Mogi, of which I shall
give an account farther on.

On the evening of the 18th September I was invited by the
Danish consul, Herr BAvtER, to a boat excursion up the river
which debouches at Tokio. At its mouth it is very broad and
deep, and it branches somewhat farther up into several streams
which are navigable by the shallow boats of the Japanese. With
the present limited development of roads and railways in Japan,
this river and its tributaries form the most important channels
of communication between the capital and the interior of the
country. Durimg our row we constantly met with boats laden

oo ol
Hii At A Hh (ie
Wi i | i Ai Ma aa Ke

JAPANESE HOUSE IN TOKIO.

with provisions on their way to, or with goods on their way from,
the town. The pleasant impression of these and of the remark-
able environs of the river is sometimes disturbed by a bad odour
coming from a passing boat, and reminding us of the care with
which the Japanese remove human excreta, the most important
manure of their well-cultivated land. Along the banks of the
river there are numerous restaurants and tea-houses. At long
intervals we see a garden on the banks, which has belonged to
some of the former Daimio palaces. The restaurants and tea-houses
are generally intended only for the Japanese ; and Europeans,

634 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. .

although they pay many times more than the natives, are not
admitted. The reason of this is to be found in our manners, which
are coarse and uncultivated in the eyes of the natives. “The
European walks with his dirty boots on the carpets, spits on the
floor, is uncivil to the girls, &c.” Thanks to the letters of imtro-
duction from natives acquainted with the restaurant-keepers,
I have been admitted to their exclusive places, and it must
be admitted that everything there was so clean, neat, and orderly,
that even the best European restaurants cannot compare with
them. When a visitor enters a Japanese restaurant which is
intended exclusively for the Japanese, he must always take
off his boots at the stair else he gets immediately into disfavour.
He is received with bended knee by the host and all the
attendants, male, but principally female; and then he is almost
always surrounded by a number of young girls constantly laugh-
ing and chattering. These girls have commonly sold themselves
to the restaurant-keeper for a certain time, during which they
carry on a life which, according to Kuropean standards of morality,
is not very commendable. When the time fixed in the agree-
ment has passed, they return to their homes and marry, without
having sunk in any way in the estimation of their relatives.
But those are unfortunate who, in any of the towns that are not
yet opened to foreigners, carry on a love intrigue with a Kuropean.
They are then openly pointed out, even in the newspapers, as
immoral, and their respectability is helplessly gone. Formerly
they were even in such cases severely punished.

All women of the lower classes, and even most of the higher,
wear the Japanese dress. The more distinguished ladies are
often exceedingly beautiful, they have in particular beautiful
necks. Unfortunately they are often disfigured by paint, for
which the ladies here appear to have a strong liking. The dress
of the younger women, even among the poor, is carefully
attended to; it is not showy but tasteful, and nearly the same
tor all classes. Their manners are very attractive and agreeable.
The women of the upper classes already begin to take part in
the social life of the Europeans, and all Kuropean gentlemen and
ladies with whom I have conversed on this point agree in
stating that there is no difficulty in the way of a Japanese
woman leaving the narrow circle to which she was formerly
confined, and entering with pleasure and womanly dignity into
European society. She appears to be born “a lady.”

On the 20th and 21st September the Governor of Yokohama
had arranged an excursion for me, Dr. Stuxberg, and Lieut.
Nordquist, to the sacred island or peninsula Hnoshima, situated
at a short distance from the town. We first travelled some
English miles along the excellent road Tokaido, one of the few
highways in Japan passable in carriages. Then we travelled

XV1L] JAPANESE WOMEN. 635

in jinrikishas to the famous image of Buddha (Daibutsu) at
Kamakura,’ and visited the Shinto chief priest living in the
neighbourhood and his temple.

The priest was fond of antiquities, and had a collection, not
very large indeed, but composed almost entirely of rarities.
Among other things he showed us sabres of great value, a
head ornament consisting of a single piece of nephrite which
he valued at 500 yen,? a number of old bronzes, mirrors, &c.

JAPANESE LADY AT HER TOILETTF.

We were received as usual with Japanese tea and sweetmeats.
The priest himself took us round his temple. No images were
to be seen here, but the walls were richly carved and ornamented
with a number of drawings and gildings. The innermost wall
of the temple was fenced by heavy doors provided with secure
locks and bolts, within which “the divine spirit dwelt,’ or

? At the close of the twelfth century this now inconsiderable town was
the residence of Joritomo, the founder of the Shogun power, and the
arranger of the Japanese feudal system.

* Five yen are about equal to £1 sterling.

A JINRIKISHA.

a eee

+

CHAP, XV1. | JAPANESE BEDROOM. 637

within which “there was nothing else,” as the priest phrased it
on another occasion.

Enoshima is a little rocky peninsula, which is connected with
the mainland by a low, sandy neck of land. Occasionally this
neck of land has been broken through or overflowed, and the
peninsula has then been converted into an island. It is con-
sidered sacred, and is studded with Shinto temples. On the side
of the peninsula next the mainland there is a little village,
consisting of inns, tea-houses, and shops for pilgrims’ and
tourists’ articles, among which are beautiful shells, and the
fine siliceous skeleton of a sponge, Hyalonema mirabilis, Gray.
Here I lived for the first time in a Japanese inn of the sort
to which Europeans in ordinary circumstances are not admitted.
T was accompanied by two officials from the governor's court at
Yokohama, and it was on their assurance that I did not belong
to the common sort of uncultivated and arrogant foreigners that
the host made no difficulty in receiving us.

After we had at our entrance saluted the people of the inn
and passed some time in the exchange of civilities, there came a
girl, and, in a kneeling posture, offered the foreigners Japanese
tea, which is always handed round in very small cups only halt
full. Then we took off our shoes and went into the guest-
chamber. Such chambers in the Japanese inns are commonly
large and dazzlingiy clean. Furniture is completely wanting,
but the floor is covered with mats of plaited straw. The walls
are ornamented with songs suitable for the place, or mottoes, and
with Japanese paintings. The rooms are separated from each
other by thin movable panels, which slide in grooves, which can
be removed or replaced at will. One may, therefore, as once
happened to me, lay himself down to sleep im a very large room,
and, if he sleeps sound, awake in the morning in a very small one.
The room generally looks out on a Japanese garden-inclosure, or
if it is in the upper story, on a small balcony. Immediately
outside there is always a vessel filled with water and a scoop.
Generally on one side of the room there is a wall-press, in which
the bed-clothes are kept. These, the only household articles in
the room, consist of a thick mat, which is spread on the floor,
a round cushion for the head, or instead of it a wooden support,
stuffed on the upper side, for the neck during sleep, and a thick
stuffed night-shirt which serves as covering.

As soon as one comes in the female attendants distribute four-
cornered cushions for sitting on, which are placed on the floor
round a wooden box, on one corner of which stands a little
brazier, on the other a high clay vessel of uniform breadth, with
water in the bottom, which serves as a spittoon and tobacco-ash
cup. Atthe same time tea is brought in anew, in the small cups
previously described, with saucers, not of porcelain, but of metal.

638 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cnar.

Pipes are lighted, and a lively conversation. commences. Along
with the tea sweetmeats are brought in, of which, however, some
cannot be relished by Europeans. The brazier forms the most
important household article of the Japanese. Braziers are very
variable in size and shape, but are often made in an exceedingly
beautiful and tasteful way, of cast-iron or bronze, with gilding
and raised figures. Often enough, however, they consist only of
a clay crock. The Japanese are very skilful in keeping up fire
in them without the least trace of fumes being perceptible in the
room. The fuel consists of some well-burned pieces of charcoal,
which lie imbedded in white straw-ashes, with which the fire-
pan is nearly filled to the brim. When some glowing coals are

Hu

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cx

JAPANESE BEDROOM

laid in such ashes they retain their heat for hours, until they are
completely consumed. In every well-furnished house there are
a number of braziers of different sizes, and there are often four-
cornered hatches in the floor, which conceal a stone foundation
intended as a base for the large brazier, over which the food
is cooked.

At meal-times all the dishes are brought in at the same time
on small lacquered tables, about half a foot high, and with a
surface of four square feet. The dishes are placed in lacquered
cups, less frequently in porcelain cups, and carried to the mouth
with chop-sticks, without the help of knife, fork, or spoon.
For fear of the fish-oils, which are used instead of butter, |

RV.) TOBACCO-SMOKING IN. JAPAN. 639

never dared to test completely the productions of the Japanese art
of cookery; but Dr. Almquist and Lieut. Nordquist, who were
more unprejudiced, said they could put up with them very
well. The following menw gives an idea of what a Japanese
inn of the better class has to offer :—

Vegetable soup.

Boiled rice, sometimes with minced fowl.

Boiled fish or raw fish with horse-radish.

Vegetables with fish-sauce.

Tea.
Soy is used to the fish. The rice is brought in hot in a
wooden vessel with a lid, and is distributed in abundance, but
the other dishes in extremely small portions. After meals,
especially in the evening, the Japanese often drink warm saki,
or rice-brandy, out of peculiar porcelain bottles and small cups
set apart for that purpose alone.

During the meal one is commonly surrounded by a numerous
personnel of female attendants, squatted down on the floor, who
keep up with the guest, if he understands their language, a
lively conversation, mterrupted by salvoes of hearty laughter.
The girls remain while the man undresses in the evening, and
permit themselves to make remarks on the difference of the
physique of the Europeans and Japanese, which are not only,
in our way of thinking, unsuitable for young girls, but even
impertinent towards the guest. The male attendants are seldom
seen, at least in the inner apartments. In the morning one
washes himself in the yard or on the balcony, and if he wishes
to avoid getting into disfavour, the guest will be careful not to
spill anything or spit on the mat.

The Japanese tobacco-pipe now in use resembles that of the
Chukches, is very small, and is smoked out in a couple of whiffs.
A Japanese smokes without stopping a score of pipes in succes-
sion. Tobacco-smoking is now very general among high and
low of both sexes. It was introduced at the close of the sixteenth
century, it is uncertain whether from Corea or from the Portu-
guese possessions in Asia, and spread with great rapidity. As
among us, it here too at first gave occasion to stringent pro-
hibitions, and a lively exchange of writings for and against. In
a work by the learned Japanologist, Mr. E. M. Sarow (“The
Introduction of Tobacco into Japan,” Transactions of the Asiatic
Society of Japan, vol. vi. part 1. p. 68), the following statements
among others are made on this subject :—

“Jn 1609 there were in the capital two clubs whose main
delight was to contrive quarrels with peaceful citizens. Upwards
of fifty of the members of these clubs were suddenly arrested
and thrown into prison; but justice was satisfied when four or

640 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

five of the leaders were executed, the rest were pardoned. As
these societies were originally smoking clubs, the tobacco-plant
came by the bad behaviour of their members into disrepute, and
its use was prohibited. At that time tobacco was smoked in long
pipes, which were stuck in the belt like a sword, or carried after
the smoker by an attendant. In 1612 a proclamation was
published in which tobacco-smoking and all trade in tobacco
were prohibited, under penalty of forfeiture of estate. The

TOBACCO SMOKERS.

Japanese drawing.

prohibition was repeated several times, with as little success
as In Europe.”

Mr. Satow further gives the following peculiar extracts
from a Japanese work, which enumerates the advantages and
disadvantages that are connected with tobacco-smoking :—

« A—ADVANTAGES.

“1. It dispels the vapours and increases the energies.
“2. It is good to produce at the beginning of a feast.

xv1.] ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF SMOKING. 641

“3. It is a companion in solitude.

“4, It affords an excuse for resting now and then from
work, as if in order to take breath.

“5, It is a storehouse of reflection, and gives time for the
fumes of wrath to disperse.

« B.— DISADVANTAGES.

“1. There is a natural tendency to hit people over the head
with one’s pipe in a fit of anger.!

“2. The pipe comes sometimes to be used for arranging the
burning charcoal in the brazier.

“3. An inveterate smoker has been known to walk about
among the dishes with his pipe in his mouth.

“4 People knock the ashes out of their pipes while still
alight and forget to extinguish the fire.

“5. Hence clothing and mats are frequently scorched by
burning tobacco ash.

“6. Smokers spit indiscriminately in braziers, foot-warmers
and kitchen fires.

“7, Also in the crevices between the floor-mats.

“8. They rap the pipe violently on the edge of the brazier.

“9. They forget to have the ash-pot emptied till it is full
to overflowing.

“10. They use the ash-pot as nose-paper (i.e. they blow their
nose into the ash-pot).”

As during our stay at Enoshima as the governor's guests we were
constantly attended by two officials from his court, I considered
it my duty to show myself worthy of the honour by a liberal
distribution of drink-money. This is not given to the attendants,
but is handed, wrapped up in paper, and accompanied by some
choice courteous expressions, to the host himself. He on his
part makes a polite speech with apologies that all had not
been so well arranged as his honoured guest had a right to
expect. He accompanies the traveller on his departure a shorter
or longer distance in proportion to the amount of drink-money
and the way in which his guest has behaved.

It is a specially praiseworthy custom among the Japanese to
allow the trees in the neighbourhood of the temples to stand
untouched. Nearly every temple, even the most inconsiderable,
is therefore surrounded by a little grove, formed of the most
splendid pines, particularly Cryptomeria and Ginko, which often

1 The Japanese pipes are now so small that no serious results from this
disadvantage are to he dreaded. In former times the pipes used were long
and probably heavy. The Dyaks of Borneo still use pipes so heavy that
they may be used as weapons.

TD

642 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cmaP.

wholly conceal the small, decayed, and ill-kept wooden hut which
is dedicated to some of the deities of Buddha or Shinto.

On the 23rd September the Europeans and Japanese of
Yokohama gave a dinner and ball for us in the hall of the
English club. It was beautifully hghted and decorated. Among
other things there were to be seen on a wall portraits of Berzelius
and Thunberg, surrounded by garlands of greenery. The latter
has a high reputation in Japan. His work on the flora of the

ITO-KESKE,

A Japanese Editor of Thunberg’s writings.

country has lately been published in a Japanese edition with
a wood-cut portrait, by no means bad, of the famous Swedish
naturalist,) engraved in Japan; and a monument to his and
Kimpfer’s memory is to be found at Nagasaki, erected there at
the instance of von Siebold.2. The chairman of the feast was

1 The work bears the title : Tai-sei-hon-zo-mei-so (short list of European
plant-names), by Ito-Keske, 1829, 3 vols.

2 Carl Peter Thunberg, born at Jénképing in 1743, famed for his travels
in South Africa, Japan, &e., and for a number of important scientific

fi

ie MONUMENT TO KAEMPFER AND THUNBERG, 643

r. GEERTZ, a Dutchman, who had lived a long time in the
ee and published several valuable works on its natural
productions.

On the 26th September I started for Tokio, in order thence
to undertake a journey proposed and arranged by the Danish
consul, Herr Bavier, to Asamayama, a yet active voleano in the
interior of the country. In consequence of an unexpected
death among the European consuls at Yokohama, Herr Bavier,
however, could not jom us until the day after that which had
been fixed for our departure. The 27th accordingly was passed
in Tokio among other things, in seeing the beautiful collections

“CR: HUNB ERE

Lees SVARENN issn HIG FURNTRR FLORENTQUE QS
Cour onde: MEMORES, SERTA FEAUNTQUE Pik
PEE

MONUMENT TO THUNBERG AND KAEMPFER AT NAGASAKI.

of antiquities made by the attaché of the Austrian legation,

Herr H. von SIEBOLD, son of the famous naturalist of the
same name. Japan has also, like most other lands, had its
Stone Age, from which remains are found at several places in

works, finally Professor at Upsala, died in 1828, Engelbert Kaimpfer, born
in Westphalia in 1651, was secretary of the embassy that started from
Sweden to Persia in 1683. Kéampfer, however, did not return with the
embassy, but continued his travels in the southern and eastern parts of
Asia, among them, even to Japan, which he visited in 1690-92 ; he died in
1716. Kéampfer’s and Thunberg’s works, together with the great work of
von Siebold, who erected the monument to them, form the most important
sources of the knowledge of the Japan that once was.

Ai Gee

644 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

the country, both on Yezo and on the more southerly islands.
Implements from this period are now collected assiduously both
by natives and Europeans, and have been described by H. von
Siebold in a work accompanied by photographic illustrations.
In general the implements of the Japanese stone folk have a
resemblance to the stone tools still in use among the Eskimo,
and even in this fruitful land the primitive race, as the bone
remains in the kitchen-middens show, lived at first mainly by
hunting and fishing.

CHAPTER XVII.

Excursion to Asamayama—The Nakasendo road—Takasaki—Difficulty of
obtaining quarters for the night—The Baths at Ikaho—Massage in
Japan—Swedish matches—Travelling in Kago—Savavatari—Criminals
—Kusatsu—The Hot Springs and their healing power—Rest at Roku-
riga-hara—The summit of Asamayama—The descent—Journey over
Usui-toge—Japanese actors—Pictures of Japanese folk-life—Return
to Yokohama.

On the 28th September, early in the morning, accompanied
by Lieut. Hovgaard, Herr Bavier, an interpreter, and a Japanese
cook skilled in European cookery, I started on a journey to
Asamayama. At first we travelled in two very rattling and
inconvenient carriages, drawn each by a pair of horses, to the
town Takasaki, situated on the great road “ Nakasendo,” which
passes through the interior of the country and connects Tokio
and Kioto. This road is considered something grand by the
Japanese. In Sweden it would be called an indifferently kept
district road. On this road jinrikishas are met in thousands,
and a great many horses, oxen, and men, bearing heavy burdens,
but with the exception of the posting carriages, by which, for
some years back, a regular communication between Tokio and
Takasaki has been kept up, not a single wheeled vehicle drawn
by horses or oxen; and though the road passes through an
unbroken series of populous villages, surrounded by well culti-
vated rice fields and small gardens, there is not a single work-
horse or work-ox to be seen. For all the ground in Japan is
cultivated by the hand, and there are few cattle.

Most of the roads in the country consist of foot-paths, so
narrow that two laden horses can pass each other only with
difficulty. Goods are therefore carried, where there is no canal
or river, for the most part by men. The plains are extraordin-
arily well cultivated, and we must specially admire the industry
with which water-courses have been cut and the uneven slopes
changed into level terraces.

XVII. ] ABUNDANCE OF CHILDREN IN JAPAN, 645

The post-horses on Nakasendo were so poor and wretched
that in Sweden one would have been liable to punishment for
cruelty to animals for usmg them. They went, however, at a
pretty good speed. There were places for changing horses
at regular distances of fifteen to twenty kilometres. The
driver besides halted often on the way at some dwelling-house
to take a couple of scoopfuls of water out of the water-vessel
standing before it and throw them into the horses’ mouths and
between their hind-legs. The opportunity was always taken
advantage of by the girls of the house to come out and offer
the travellers a small cup of Japanese tea, an act of courtesy
that was repaid with some friendly words and a copper coin.

When we visited any of the peasants’ gardens by the way-
side we were always received with extreme friendliness, either on
a special dais in the common room looking to the road, or in an
inner room whose floor was covered with a mat of dazzling white-
ness, and on whose walls hung pictures, with songs and mottoes.
The brazier was brought forward, tea and sweetmeats were
handed round, all with lively conversation and frequent bows.
The difference between the palace of the rich Gf we may dis-
tinguish with the name any building in Japan) and the dwelling
of the less well-to-do is much smaller here than in Europe.
We did not see any beggars in our journey into the interior of
the country! Nor did the distinction of class appear to be
so sharp as might be expected in a land where the evils of rank
had been so great as in Old Japan. We several times saw in
the inns by the roadside, people of condition who were travelling
in jinrikishas eat their rice and drink their saki together with
the coolies who were drawing their vehicles. |

To judge by the crowds of children who swarmed everywhere
along the roads the people must be very prolific. A girl of
eight or ten years of age was seldom to be seen without
another young one bound on her back. This burden did not
appear to trouble the sister or attendant very much. Without
giving herself any concern about the child or thinking of its
existence, she took part actively in games, ran errands, «&c.

Even in the interior of the country foreigners are received
with great friendliness. The lower classes in Japan have also
reason for this, for whatever influence the latest political
changes may have had on the old huge, daimio, and samurai
families of Japan, the position of the cultivator of the soil is now
much more secure than before, when he was harried by hundreds
of small tyrants. His dress is the same as before, with the ex-
ception, however, that a great proportion of the male population,
even far into the interior, have laid aside the old troublesome way

1 On the contrary, we saw a number of beggars on the country roads in
the neighbourhood of Yokohama.

646 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

of collecting the hair in a knot over a close shaven spot on the
crown of the head. Instead, they wear their thick raven-black
hair cut short in the European style. How distinctive of the
new period this change is may be seen from the eagerness with
which the Japanese authorities questioned GOLOVIN about the
religious and political revolutions which they assumed to have
been connected with the change in the European mode of
wearing the hair during the commencement of the nineteenth
century; for the Russian ambassador LAXMAN, who was highly
esteemed by the Japanese, had worn a pig-tail and powdered
hair, while Golovin and his companions had their hair un-
powdered and cut short.1. When it is warm the workmen
wear only a small, generally light-blue, girdle round the waist
and between the legs. Otherwise they are naked. They are
thus seen to be in many cases strongly tattooed over the greater
part of the body. I have not seen the women working naked.
They perhaps do so at the warmest season of the year. At
least they do not refrain from undressing completely while
bathing right in the midst of a crowd of men known and un-
known, a state of things which at first, in consequence of the
power of prejudice, shocks the European, but to which even the
former prude gets accustomed sooner than one would suppose.
We even frequently see European ladies drawn in a jinrikisha by
a youth completely naked with the exception of the blue girdle.
Many, especially of the younger men, have besides so » well-
formed a body, that the sculptor who could accur ately reproduce
it in marble would at once attain a reputation co-extensive with
the globe.

Takasaki is the residence of a governor, with a population
of about 20,000; but, like most of thé towns of Japan, it differs
little from many of the villages we passed through. We arrived
late in the evening, and there had our first and last experience
of an inconvenience of which Europeans often complain in travel-
ling in Japan, and to which they have themselves given occasion
by “the offensive way in which they not unfrequently behave.
We knocked at the door of one inn after another without being
received. At one place “the house was full,” at another “the
rooms were under repair,” at a third “ the inn people were out,”
&e. At last we had to apply to the police. When we had
shown them our passport, we succeeded with their help in
getting a night’s lodging with an elderly host, who received us

1 Voyage de M. Golovin, Paris, 1818, 1. p. 176. Golovin, who was cap-
tain in the Russian navy, passed the years 1811-13 in imprisonment in
Japan. He and his comrades in misfortune were received with great
friendliness: by the people, and very well treated by the authorities, if we
except the exceedingly tedious examinations to which they were subjected

to extract from them the most minute particulars regarding Europe, ard
particularly Russia.

xvit.] FIRES, 647

with a countenance which c’early indicated that he would rather
have hewn us in pieces with one of the two swords he had
formerly as swmurai been entitled to wear, than received us
under his roof. After our entrance he still turned to the police
official with the ery of lamentation: “Must I then actually
receive these barbarians?” But we had our revenge in a noble
way. We took off our boots before we entered the room, were so
profuse with talk, civilities, and bows, and on the whole behaved
in such a courteous fashion, that our previously distracted host
not only bade us welcome back, but also gave us a letter of
introduction to the innkeepers at an inn where we were to stay
next, declaring that if we showed this letter we need not fear
any such disagreeable adventure as that just described.

Most of the houses in the J apanese towns are built of pretty
thin, carefully jomed timbers. But besides these there are to be
seen here and there small houses with very thick walls, windows
provided with heavy iron gratings, and doors that could be
fastened with large locks and bolts. These houses are fire-
resisting, and are used as storehouses for valuables and household
articles when there is danger of fire. Fires are so common in
Japan that it is supposed that a tenth part of every town is
burned down yearly. The fireman corps is numerous, well
ordered from old times, its members bold and daring. During
our stay overnight at Takasaki we were lodged in such a fire-
proof house, in very large clean apartments with the floor partly
covered with carpets after the European pattern. The walls
were very thick and of brick ; the interior fittings and stairs on
the other hand of wood.

I have just mentioned that we were compelled to resort to the
police in order to obtain quarters for the night. Policemen are
numerous in Japan, both in town and country. For the most
part they are taken from the former samurai class. .They are
clothed in the European style; and walk, with a long stick in a
certain position under the arm, quietly and calmly on the streets
and roads, without, except in cases of necessity, making any
show of their authority. Commonly they are, or appear to be,
young, and all have a gentlemanlike appearance. Ina word, they
appear to be equal to the best European police of the present
day, and stand immeasurably above the guardian of the peace, or
rather the raiser of dispeace, as he appeared some decades ago on
the European continent. During the latest revolt the police
were employed by the Government as infantry, and elicited
general admiration by the fire, the gallantry,'and the contempt of
death with which they went into action with their old favourite
weapon, the Japanese sword.

A passport is still required for travelling in the interior of the
country, but this is easily obtained at the request of the consul

648 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

if health or the wish to prosecute researches be given as the
reason, 1t being possible perhaps to include common love of
travelling under the latter head. Commercial travelling is not
yet permitted | in the interior, nor is the right of settling for ‘the pur-
pose of carrying on business granted to "Europeans. The foreign
ambassadors have often entered into negotiations in order to bring
about a change on this point, but hitherto without success, be-
cause the Government, as a condition for the complete opening
of the country, require the abrogation of the unreasonable “ extra-
territorial” arrangement which is in force, and by which the
foreigner is not subject to the common laws and courts of Japan,
but to the laws of his own country, administered by consular
courts. An alteration in this point may however be brought
about in a short time, as Japan will soon be sufficiently powerful
to be able to abrogate all the injurious paragraphs in her treaties
with the civilised countries of Europe. Now, besides, the
ambassadors of the foreign powers, who in former times all acted
together, have divided into two parties, of which one—Russia
and America—wishes, or at least feigns to wish, gradually to free
Japan from all tutelage and to place it on an equality with other
civilised countries ; the other again—England, Germany, Holland,
and France—wishes still to retain the guardianship, which
was established by violence, and confirmed by treaty several
years ago.

Shortly before our arrival a quarrel took place between Japan
and the Kuropean powers about, as the Japanese themselves said,
a breach of international law, which caused much irritation in
the country. A German vessel coming from Nagasaki, where
the cholera was raging, on the advice ‘of the German minister
broke the quarantine prescribed by the Government, and without
further precautions discharged her cargo in the harbour of
Yokohama. That the cholera in this town was thereby made worse
is indeed not only unproved but also undoubtedly incorrect,
though many Japanese in their irritation positively affirmed that
this was the case; but the words that were uttered by Japan’s
jéted guest, ex-President General GRANT, that the Japanese
Government had the right without more ado to sink the vessel,
have left a memory in the minds both of the Government and of
the people, which may in the future lead them to a perhaps
unwise but fully justified exertion of their strength were such
a deed to be repeated.

The first impression of the Japanese, both men and women,
is exceedingly pleasant, but many Europeans who have lived
a considerable time in the country say that this impression is not
maintained, a circumstance which in my belief depends more on

1 General Grant, as is well known, visited Japan in the autumn of 1879,
He left Yokohama the day after the Vega anchored in its harbour,

XVII ] JAPAN AND THE FOREIGN POWERS. 649

the Europeans themselves than on the Japanese. For the
European merchants are said not to find it so easy to cut gold
here with a case-knife as before, and the ambassadors of the
Great Powers find it day by day more difficult to maintain their
old commanding standpoint towards a government which knows
that a great future is before the country, if inconsiderate ambi-
tion or unlooked-for misfortune do not unexpectedly hinder its
development. Another reproach, that the Japanese can imitate
what another has done, but is unable himself to invent-anything
new, appears on the other hand to be justified in the meantime.
But it is unreasonable to demand that a nation should not only
in a few decades pass through a development for which centuries
have been required in Europe, but also immediately reach the
summit of the knowledge of our time so as to be at the same
time creative. But it would be wonderful, if the natural science,
literature, and art of the nineteenth century, transplanted among
a gifted people, with a culture so peculiar and so pervasive, and
with an art-sense so developed as those of Japan, did not in
time produce new, splendid, and unexpected fruit. The same
irresistible necessity which now drives the Japanese to learn all
that the European and the American know, will, when he has
reached that goal, spur him on to go further up the Nile river
of research.

A short distance beyond Takasaki the road to the volcano to
which we were on our way, was no longer along Nakasendo, and
we could therefore no longer continue our journey in carriages
drawn by horses, but were compelled to content ourselves with
jinrikishas. In these, on the 29th of September, we traversed
in five and a half hours the very hilly road to Ikaho, noted for
its baths, situated at a height of 700 metres above the sea.
The landscape here assumes a quite different stamp. The road
which before ran over an unbroken plain, thickly peopled, and
cultivated like a garden, now begins to pass between steep un-
cultivated hills, overgrown with tall, uncut, withered grass,
separated by valleys in which run purling rivulets, nearly con-
cealed by exceedingly luxuriant bushy thickets. {Ikaho is
celebrated for the warm, or more correctly hot, springs which
well up from the volcanic hills which surround the little town,
which is beautifully situated on a slope. As at the baths of
Europe, invalids seek here a remedy for their ailments, and the
town therefore consists almost exclusively of hotels, baths, and
shops for the visitors. The baths are situated, partly in large
open wooden sheds, where men and women bathe together
without distinction, partly in private houses. In every bath
there is a basin one metre in depth, to which a constant stream
of water is conducted from some of the hot springs. The spring
water has of course cooled very much before it is used, but is

650 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

still so hot notwithstanding that I could only with difficulty
remain in 1t a couple of seconds.

In the streets of the town we often met blind persons who
walked about very safely without any attendant, only feeling
their way with a long bamboo. They blew a short pipe now
and then to warn passers-by of their presence. I thought
at first that these unfortunates were trying to regain the sight
of the eye at the hot springs, but on inquiring whether the
water was beneficial in that respect, | was informed that they
were not there as seekers after health, but as “ massageurs ”
(shampooers). Massage has been in use in Japan for several
centuries back, and therefore persons are often to be met with
in the streets offermg their services as massageurs, crymg in
the streets in about the same way as the fruit-sellers in Russia.

The inn where we lodged for the night, consisted as usual of
a number of very clean rooms covered with mats, without
furniture, but ornamented with songs and mottoes on the walls.
One would live here exceedingly well, if like the Japanese he
could manage to live wholly on the floor and conform carefully
to the indispensable rules, an observance which besides is
necessary, because otherwise the mmate is exposed to a very
unfriendly reception not only from his host but also from the
attendants. An inconvenience in travellmg in Japan is the
difficulty a European has in accustoming himself to the dietar y
of the Japanese. Bread they do not use, nor meat, but their
food consists mainly of rice and fish, with fowls, fruit, mush-
rooms, sweetmeats, Japanese tea, &c., im addition. Fish is
generally eaten raw, and in that case is said to differ little in
taste from our pickled salmon. The food is not unfrequently
cooked with fish oils of anything but an agreeable taste. If a
traveller wishes to avoid this dietary, he must have his own
cook with him on the journey. In this capacity there attended
us a Japanese, whose name was Senkiti-San, but who was
commonly called by his companions Kok-San (Mr. Cook). He
had learned European (French) cooking at Yokohama, and
during the journey devoted himself with so great zeal to his
calling, that even in the deserts at the foot of Asamayama he
gave himself no rest until he could offer us a dinner of five
dishes, consisting of chicken soup, fowl omelette, fowl-beefsteak,
fowl fricassé,and omelette aux confitwres, all thus consisting only
of fowls and hens’ eggs, cooked in different ways.

For some years back lucifer matches have been an article of
necessity in Japan, and it was pleasing to us Swedes to observe
that the Swedish matches have here a distinct preference over
those of other countries. In nearly every little shop, even in the
interior of the country, are to be seen the well-known boxes with
the inscription “Siikerhets tindstickor utan svafvel och fosfor.”

xviL.] . JOURNEY IN KAGO. 651

But if we examine the boxes more carefully, we find upon many
of them, along with the magic sentence unintelligible to
the Japanese, an inscription indicating that they have been
made by some Japanese manufacturer. On other boxes this is
completely wanting, but the falsification is shown by an un-
fortunate error in the inscription. It thus appears that the
Swedish matches are not only introduced into Japan on a large
scale, but are also counterfeited, being made with the Swedish
inscription on the box and with a cover resembling that used at
home. The imitation, however, is not nearly so good as the
original, and my Japanese servant bade me therefore, when I
purchased a box of matches, observe carefully that I got one
of the right (Swedish) sort.

Photography also has spread so rapidly in the country that at
many places in small towns and villages in the interior Japanese
photographers are to be met with who put out of their hands by
no means bad work. The Japanese appear to have a great
liking for having their by no means remarkable dwellings photo-
graphed. On several occasions, when we left a place we received
from our host as a parting gift a photograph of his house or inn.
Perhaps this was done with the same view as that which induces
his European brother-in-trade to advertise at great expense.

Between Ikaho and Savavatari, our next resting-place, the
road was so bad that the jinrikisha could no longer be used, we
accordingly had to use the kago, a Japanese sedan-chair made of
bamboo, of the appearance of which the accompanying wood-
cut gives an idea. It is exceedingly inconvenient for Europeans,
because they cannot like the Japanese sit with their legs cross-
wise under them, and in course of time it becomes tiresome
to let them dangle without other support by the side of the
kago. Fiven for the bearers this sedan chair strikes me as being
of inconvenient construction, which is shown among other things
by their halting an instant every two hundred, or in gomg up a
hill, every hundred paces, in order to shift the shoulder under the
bamboo pole. We went up-hill and down-hill with considerable
speed however, so that we traversed the road between Ikaho
and Savavatari, 6 77. or 23°6 kilometres in length, in ten hours.
The road, which was exceedingly beautiful, ran along flowery
banks of rivulets, overgrown with luxuriant bamboo thickets,
and many different kinds of broad-leaved trees. Only round
the old temples, mostly small and inconsiderable, were to be
seen ancient tall Cryptomeria and Ginko trees. The burying
places were commonly situated, not as at home, in the neigh-
bourhood of the larger temples, but near the villages. They
were not inclosed, but marked out by stone monuments from a
third of a metre to half a metre in height, on one side of which
an image of Buddha was sometimes sculptured. The recent

652 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP,

graves were often adorned with flowers, and at some of them
small foot-high Shinto shrines had been made of wooden pins.

Savavatari, like Ikaho, is built on the slope of a hill. The
streets between the houses are almost all stairs or steep ascents.
Here too there well up from the volcanic rocks acidulous
springs, at which invalids seek to regain health. The watering-
place, however, is of less repute than Ikaho or Kusatsu.

While we walked about the village in the evening we saw
at one place a crowd of people. This was occasioned by a
competition going on there. Two young men, who wore no
other clothes than a narrow girdle going round the waist and
between the legs, wrestled within a circle two or three metres
across drawn on-a sandy area. He was considered the victor
who threw the other to the ground or forced him beyond the

JAPANESE KAGO,

circle. A special judge decided in doubtful cases. The be-
ginning of the contest was most peculiar, the combatants
kneeling in the middle of the circle and sharply eying each
other in order to make the attack at a signal given by the judge,
when a single push might at once make an end of the contest.
In this competition there took part about a dozen young men,
all well grown, who in their turn stepped with some encouraging
cries or gestures into the circle m order to test their powers.
The spectators consisted of old men and women, and boys and
girls of all ages. Most of them were clean and well-dressed, and
had a very attractive appearance.

Here it was the: youth of the village themselves that took
part in the contest. But there are also in Japan persons who

Xvit. | JAPANESE WRESTLERS. 653

carry on these games as their occupation, and exhibit themselves
for money. They are in general very fat, as appears from the
accompanying drawing, which represents the beginning of the
contest, when both the combatants are still watching to get
a good hold.

Next day, the 1st October, we continued our journey to
Kusatsu. The road was uphill for a distance of 550 metres,

JAPANESE WRESTLERS.

downhill for nearly as far, then up again, and ran often without
any protecting fence past deep abysses, or over high bridges of
the most dangerous construction. It was, therefore, impossible
for any wheeled vehicle to traverse it, so that we had to use im
some cases kagos,in others riding-horses. Unfortunately the
Japanese high saddle does not suit the European, and if the
traveller prefers a riding-horse to a kago, he must, if he does not

654 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP, XVIT.

carry a saddle with him, determine to ride on an unsaddled
horse, which, with the wretched steeds that are only available
here, soon becomes so unpleasant that he at last prefers to let
his legs hang benumed from the kago. A peculharity in Japan
is that the rider seldom himself guides his horse. It is com-
monly led by a halter by a groom running alongside the rider.
These grooms are very light-footed and enduring, so that even at
a rapid pace they are not left behind. Running footmen also
attend the carriages of people of distinction in the towns and the -

a er NN A EE SE

JAPANESE BRIDGE,
After a Japanese drawing.

mail-coaches on Nakasendo. When there is a crowd before the
carriage they jump down and drive away the people by a
dreadful shouting. From the mail-coach they also blow the
post-horn, not just to the advantage of the ear-drums of the
travellers.

The scenery by the roadside was exceedingly beautiful. Now
it consisted of wild valleys, filled with luxuriant vegetation
which completely concealed the crystal-clear streams purling in
the bottoms ; now of level grassy plains or hill-slopes, thickly

JAPANESE MOUNTAIN LANDSCAPE.

656 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

studded with solitary trees, chiefly chestnuts and oaks. The
inhabitants were fully occupied with the chestnut harvest.
Before every hut mats were spread out, on which chestnuts
lay drying in thick layers. Grain and cotton were being dried
in the same small way, as it appeared to us Europeans. On the
plains there stood besides in the neighbourhood of the cabins
large mortars, by which the grain was reduced to groats. On
the hills these tramp-stamps are partly replaced by small mills
of an exceedingly simple construction, introduced by the Dutch.

We passed the 2nd October at Kusatsu, the Aix-la-Chapelle
of Japan, famed like that place for its hot sulphurous springs.
Innumerable invalids here seek an alleviation of their pains.

INN AT KUSATSU.

The town lives upon them, and accordingly consists mainly of
baths, mns, and shops for the visitors.

The inns are, of the sort common in Japan, spacious, airy
clean, without furniture, but with good braziers, miniature
tea-services, clean matting, screens ornamented with poetical
mottoes, which even when translated were almost unintelligible to
us, friendly hosts, and numerous female attendants. If the
traveller brings his own cook with him, as we did, he can live
very comfortably, as I have before stated, at such an inn.

The hot springs which have conferred on Kusatsu its im-
portance rise at the foot of a pretty high hill of volcanic origin.
The rocks in the surrounding country consist exclusively of lava

EE ——————

xvi] THE HOT SPRINGS AND THEIR HEALING POWERS. 657

and voleanic tuffs, and a short distance from the town there is an
extinct volcano in whose crater there are layers of sulphur. In
the immediate neighbourhood of the place where the main
spring rises there is a thick solidified lava stream, surrounded
by tuffs, which near the surface is cleft into a number of large
vesicular blocks. From this point the hot water is conducted
in long open wooden channels to the bath-house of the town,
and to several evaporating pools, some by the wayside, others in
the town, intended for collecting the solid constituents of the
water, which are then sold in the country as medicine. The
great evaporation from these pools, from the open channels and the
hot baths, wraps the town almost constantly in a cloud of watery
vapour, while a very strong odour of sulpburetted hydrogen
reminds us that this is one of the constituents of the healing
waters.

The road between the wells and the town appears to form
the principal promenade of the place. Along this are to be
seen innumerable small monuments, from a half to a whole
metre in height, consisting of pieces of lava heaped upon each
other. These miniature memorials form by their littleness a.
peculiar contrast to the bata stones and jettekast of our Swedish
forefathers, and are one of the many instances of the people’s
fondness for the little and the neat, which are often to be met
‘im Japan. They are said to be erected by visitors as thank-
offerings to some of the deities of Buddha or Shinto.

I received from a Japanese physician the following information
regarding the wells at Kusatsu and their healing power. In
and near the town there are twenty-two wells, with water of
about the same quality, but of different uses in the healing
of various diseases. In the hottest well the water where it
rises has a temperature of 162° F. (= 72:2° C.). The largest
number of the sick who seek health at the baths, suffer from
syphilis. This disease is now cured according to the European
method, with mercury, iodide of potassium, and baths. The
cure requires a hundred days ; from seventy to eighty per cent. of
the patients are cured completely, though purple spots remain
on the skin. The disease does not break out anew. A large
number of leprous patients also visit the baths. The leprosy is of
various kinds; that with sores is alleviated by the baths, and is
cured possibly in two years ; that without sores but with the skin
insensible is incurable, but is also checked by frequent bathing.
All true lepers come from the coast provinces. A similar disease
is produced also among the hills by the eating of tainted fish
and fowl. This disease consists in the skin becoming insensible,
the nerves inactive, and the patient, who otherwise feels well,

1 According to the statement of the inhabitants; I had not time to visit
the place.

1B (0p

658 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAr.

finding it impossible to walk. It is also cured completely in
very severe cases, by baths, ammonia applied inwardly, castor-oil,
Peruvian bark, &e. A third type of this ailment is the bone-
disease, kak’ke’, which is exceedingly common in Japan, and is
believed to be caused by unvarying food and want of exercise.
It is very obstinate, but is often cured in two or three years
with chloride of iron, albumen, change of diet from the common
Japanese to the European, with red wine, milk, bread, vegetables,
&c, This disease begins with a swelling in the legs, then the
skin becomes insensible, first on the legs, next on the stomach,
the face, and the wrists. Then the swelling falls, fever comes on,
and death takes place. There are besides, certain wells for
curing rheumatism, for which from two to three years are
required ; for eye-diseases and for headache, the latter playing an
important part among the illnesses that are cured at Kusatsu.
It principally attacks women between twenty and thirty years
of age. One of the Kusatsu wells acts very beneficially im
this case. Its water is conducted to a special bathing-shed
open to the street, intended exclusively for the men and
women who suffer from this disease.

Many of the baths at Kusatsu are taken so hot that special
precautions must be adopted before one steps down into the
water. These consist in winding cotton cloths round those parts
of the body which are most sensitive, and in causing the body to
perspire strongly before the bath is taken, which is done by the
bathers with cries and shouts and with certain movements
stirring the water in the basin with large heavy boards. They
then all step down into the bath and up again simultaneously at
a sign given by the physician sitting at the back of the bathing
shed. Without this arrangement it would perhaps be difficult
to get the patients to go into the bath, for agreeable it could not
be, to judge from the grave faces of the bathers and the fire-red
colour of their bodies when they come out.

The baths are under open sheds. Men and women all bathe
in common, and in presence of both male and female spectators.
They make their remarks without reserve on the diseases of the
patients, even if they are of that sort about which one would
not speak willingly even to his physician. Often the bath-basin
is not fenced off in any way, except that it is protected from

rain and sunshine by a roof resting on four posts. In such cases
the bathers dress and undress in the street.

In consequence of the situation of Kusatsu at a height of
1050 metres above the sea, the winter there is very cold and
windy. The town is then abandoned not only by the visitors to
the baths, but also by most of the other inhabitants. Already,
at the time of our visit, the number of bathers remaining was
only inconsiderable. Even these were preparing to depart.

XVII. ] ON THE ROAD TO ASAMAYAMA. 659

During the second night that we passed at Kusatsu, our night’s
rest was disturbed by a loud noise from the next room. It was
a visitor who was to leave the place the following morning, and
who now celebrated his recovery with saki (rice-brandy) and
string music.

The environs of Kusatsu are nearly uncultivated, though the
vegetation is exceedingly luxuriant. It consists partly of bam-

_boo thickets, partly of a high rich grass, above which rise solitary:

pines, mixed with a few oaks or chestnuts.

On the 3rd October we continued our journey to the foot of
Asamayama. The road was very bad, so that even the kago
bearers had difficulty in getting along. It first ran across two

BATH AT KUSATSU.

valleys more than 300 feet deep, occupied with close, luxuriant,
bushy thickets. We then came to an elevated plain of great,
extent covered with unmown grass, studded with beautiful oaks
and chestnuts. The plain was not turned to any account, though
thousands of the industrious population could find an abundant.
living there by tending cattle. Farther up the oaks and chest-
nuts were mixed with a few birches, resembling those at home,
and we came next to complete deserts, where the ground consisted
of lava blocks and lava gravel, scarcely covered by any grass,
and yielding nourishment only to solitary pines. This continued
to the place—Rokvriga-hara—where we were to pass the night,
U Wed

660 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

and from which the next day we were to ascend the summit of
Asamayama.

Rokuriga-hara is situated at a height. of 1270 metres above
the sea. ‘There was no inn here, nor any place inhabited all the
year round, but only a large open shed. ‘This was divided into
two by a passage in the middle. We settled on one side of this,
making our bed as well as we could on the raised floor, and pro-
tecting ourselves from the night air with coverimgs which our
thoughtful host at Kusatsu had lent us. On the other side of
the passage our kago bearers and guide passed the night crowd-
ing round a log fire made on a stone foundation in the middle
of the floor. ‘The kago bearers were protected from the very
perceptible night cold only by thin cotton blouses. In order to
warm them I ordered an abundant distribution of sakz, a piece
of generosity that did not cost very much, but which clearly won
me the undivided admiration of all the coolies. They passed
the greater part of the night without sleep, with song and Jest,
with their sakz bottles and tobacco pipes. We slept well and
warmly after partaking of an abundant supper of fowl and eggs,
cooked in different ways by Kok-San with his usual talent and
his usual variety of dishes.

We had been informed that at this place we would hear a
constant noise from the neighbouring volcano, and that hurtful
gases (probably carbonic acid) sometimes accumulated in such
quantities in the neighbourimg woods that men and horses would
be suffocated if they spent the night there. We listened in vain
for the noise, and did not observe any trace of such gases. All
was as peaceful as if the glowing hearth in the interior of the
earth was hundreds of miles away. But we did not require the
evidence of the column of smoke which was seen to rise from
the mountain top, which formed the goal of our visit, or of
the inhabitants who survived the latest eruption, to come
to the conclusion that we were in the neighbourhood of an
enormous, still active voleano. Hverywhere round our resting-
place lay heaps of small pieces of lava which had been thrown
out of the volcano (so-called lapilli), and which had not yet had
time to weather sufficiently to serve as an under-stratum for
any vegetation, and a little from the hut there was a solidified
lava stream of great depth.

. Next day, the 4th October, we ascended the summit of the
mountain. At first we travelled in kago over a valley filled
with pretty close wood, then the journey was continued on foot
up the steep volcanic cone, covered with small lava blocks and
lapili. The way was staked out with small heaps of stones
raised at a distance of about 100 metres apart. Near the crater
we found at one of these cairns a little Shinto shrine, built of
sticks. Its sides were only half a metre in Jength. Our guide

xvu.] ASCENT OF ASAMAYAMA. 661

performed his devotions here. One of them had already at a
stone cairn situated farther down with great seriousness made
some conjurations with reference to my promise to make an extra
distribution of red wine, if we got good weather at the top.

As on Vesuvius, we can also on Asamayama distinguish a
large exterior crater, originating from some old eruption, but
now almost completely filled up by a new volcanic cone, at
whose top the present crater opens. This crater has a cir-
cumference of about two kilometres; the old crater, or what
the old geologists called the elevation-crater, has been much
larger. The volcano is still active. For it constantly throws
out “smoke,” consisting of watery vapour, sulphurous acid, arid
probably also carbonic acid. Occasionally a perceptible smell
of sulphuretted hydrogen is observed. It is possible without
difficulty to crawl to the edge of the crater and glance down
into its interior. It is very deep. The walls are perpendicular
and at the bottom of the abyss there are to be seen several
clefts from which vapours arise. In the same way “smoke ”
forces its way at some places at the edge of the crater through
small imperceptible cracks in the mountain. Both on the
border of the crater, on its sides and its bottom there is to be
seen a yellow efflorescence, which at the places which I got at
to examine it consisted of sulphur. The edge of the crater is
solid rock, a little-weathered augiteandesite dittering very much in
its nature at different places. The same or similar rocks also pro-
ject at several places at the old border of the crater, but the
whole surface of the volcanic cone besides consists of small loose
pieces of lava, without any trace of vegetation. Only at one
place the brim of the old crater is covered with an open pine
wood. The volcano has also small side craters, from which
gases escape. The same coarse fantasy, which still prevails in
the form of the hell-dogma among several of the world’s most
cultured peoples, has placed the home of those of the followers
of Buddha who are doomed to eternal punishment in the
glowing hearths in the interior of the mountain, to which these
crater-openings lead; and that the heresies of the well-meaning
Bishop Lindblom have not become generally prevalent in Japan
is shown among other things by this, that many of these open-
ings are said to be entrances to the “children’s hell.” Neither
at the main crater nor at any of the side craters can any true
lava streams be seen. Evidently the only things thrown out
from them have been gases, volcanic ashes, and lapilli. On the
other hand, extensive eruptions of lava have taken place at
several points on the side of the mountain, though these places:
are now covered with volcanic ashes.

After having eaten our breakfast in a cleft so close to the
smoking crater that the empty bottles could be thrown directly

662 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. XVII.

into the bottomless deeps, we commenced our return journey.
At first we took the same way as during the ascent, but after-
wards held off to the right, down a much steeper and more
difficult path than we had traversed before. The mountain side
had here a slope of nearly forty-five degrees, and consisted of a
quite loose voleanic sand, not bound together by any vegetable
carpet. It would therefore have been scarcely possible to ascend
to the summit of the mountain this way, but we went rapidly
downwards, often at a dizzy speed, but without other incon-
venience than that one now and then fell flat and rolled head-
foremost down the steep slopes,and that our shoes were completely
torn to tatters by the angular lava gravel. Above the mountain-
top the sky was clear of clouds, but between it and the surface
of the earth there spread out a thick layer of cloud which seen
from above resembled a boundless storm-tossed sea, full of
foaming breakers. The extensive view we would otherwise have
had of the neighbouring mountain ridges from the top of Asa-
mayama was thus concealed. Only here and there an opening
was formed in the cloud, resembling a sun-spot, through which
we got a glimpse of the underlying landscape. When we came
to the foot of the mountain we long followed a ridge, covered
with greenery, formed of an immense stream of lava, which had
issued from an opening in the mountain side now refilled. This
had probably taken place during the tremendous eruption of
1783, when not only enormous lava-streams destroyed forests and
villages at the foot of the mountain, but the whole of the neigh-
bouring region between Oiwake and Usui-toge, previously fertile;
was changed by an ash-rain into an extensive waste. Across
this large plain, infertile and little cultivated, situated at a
height of 980 metres above the sea, we went without a guide
to the village Oiwake, where we lodged for the night at an inn
by the side of the road Nakasendo, one of the cleanest and best
kept of the many well-kept inns I saw during our journey in
the interior of the country.

Hence I sent a messenger on foot to Takasaki to order a
carriage to Tokio. A former samurai undertook for a payment
of three yen (about 12s.) to carry the message. Oiwake is indeed
situated on the great. road Nakasendo, but it can here only with
difficulty be traversed by carriages, because between this village
and Takasaki it is necessary to go over the pass Usui-toge, where
the road, though lowered considerably of late, rises to a height
of 1200 metres. We therefore here used jinrikishas, a mode of
conveyance very agreeable to tourists, which, though introduced
only recently, has already spread to all parts of the country.

Every one with an open eye for the beauties of nature and
interest in the life and manners of a foreign people, must find a
journey in a jinrikisha over Usui-toge pleasant in a high degree.

Him
pit

:
i i

JAPANESE LANDSCAPE,

664 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

The landscape here is extraordinarily beautiful, perhaps un-
matched in the whole world. The road has been made here
with great difficulty between wild, black, rocky masses, along
deep clefts, whose sides are often covered with the most luxuriant
vegetation. No fence protects the jinrikisha m its rapid progress
down the mountains from the bottomless abysses by the wayside.
A man must therefore not be weak in the nerves if he is to derive
pleasure from the journey. He must rely on the coolie’s keen
eye and sure foot. On all sides one is surrounded by a confused
mass of lofty shattered mountain tops, and deep down in the
valleys mountain streams rush along, whose crystal-clear water
is collected here and there into small lakes confined between
heights covered with greenery. Now the traveller passes a
dizzy abyss by a bridge of the most defective construction, now

he sees a stream of water rushing down from an enormous

height by the wayside. "Thousands of foot-passengers, crowds of

pilgrims, long rows of coolies, oxen and horses bearing heavy
burdens meet the traveller, who during frequent rests at the
foot of the steep slopes has an opportunity of studying the
variegated life of the people. He is always surrounded by
cheerful and friendly faces, and the pleasant impression is never
disturbed by the expressions of coarseness in speech and
behaviour which so often meet us in Kurope.

It is not until the traveller has passed the mountain ridge
and descended to a height of only 300 metres above the sea
that the road becomes passable for a carriage. While we ex-

changed, not without regret, our clean, elegant junrikishas for
two inferior vehicles drawn by horses, | saw two men wandering
from shop to shop, standing some moments at each piace, ringing
a bell and passing on when they were not attended to. On my
inquiry as to what sort of people they were, I was informed
that they were wandering players. For me of course they did
not ring in vain. For a payment of fifty cents they were ready
immediately to show in the street itself a specimen of their art.
One of them put on a well-made mask, representing the head
of a monster, with a movable jaw and terrible teeth. To the

mask was fastened a cloak, in which the player wrapt himself

during the representation. He then with great skill and supple
tasteful gestures, which would have honoured a European
danseuse, represented the monster now creeping forward fawn-
ingly, now rushing along to devour its prey. A numerous crowd
of children collected around us. The small folks followed the
representation with great glee, and gave life to the play, or
rather formed its proper background, by the feigned terror with
which they fled when the monster approached with open mouth
and rolling eyes, and the eagerness with which they again
followed and mocked it when its back was turned.

:
5
:
;
,
:
:
‘

_s

XVII. ] THE JAPANESE THEATRE. 665

In few countries are dramatic representations of all kinds so
much thought of as in Japan. Playhouses are found even in
small towns. The play is much frequented, and though the
representations last the whole day, they are followed by the
spectators with the liveliest interest. There are playbills as at
home, and numerous writings on subjects relating to the theatre.
Among the Japanese books which I bought, there was for
instance a thick one, with innumerable woodcuts, devoted to
showing how the first Japanese artists conceived the princi-
pal scenes in their réles, two volumes of playbills bound up
together, &c.

BURDEN-BEARERS ON A JAPANESE ROAD.
Japanese drawing.

The Japanese pieces indeed strike a European as childish and
monstrous, but one must admire many praiseworthy traits in
the play itself, for instance the naturalness with which the
players often declaim monologues lasting for a quarter or half
an hour. The extravagances which here shock us are perhaps
on the whole not more absurd than the scenes of the opera of
to-day, or the buskins, masks, and peculiar dresses, which the
Greeks considered indispensable in the exhibition of their great
dramatic masterpieces. When the Japanese have been able to
appropriate what is good in European culture, the dramatic art
ought to have a grand future before it among them, if the

666 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

development now going on is carried out cautiously so that the
peculiarities of the people are not too much effaced. For, in
many departments, and not least in that of art, there is much to
be found here which when properly developed will form a new
and important addition to the culture of the West, of which we
are so proud.

The large Japanese theatres, besides, often resemble the
European ones in their interior arrangement. The partition
between the stage and the space occupied by the spectators is
the same as among us. Between the acts the former is con-
cealed by a curtain. The stage is besides provided with painted
scenes representing houses, woods, hills, &c., supported on
wheels, so that a complete change of scene can be effected in
a few moments. The music has the same place between the
stage and the spectators asat home. The latter, as at home, are
distributed partly in a gently rising amphitheatre, partly im
several tiers of boxes rising one above another, the lowest tier
being considered the principal one. The Japanese do not sit
in the same way as we do. Neither the amphitheatre nor the
boxes accordingly are provided with chairs or benches, but are
divided into square compartments one or two feet deep, each in-
tended for about four persons. They sit on cushions, squatting
ceross-legged in the common Japanese fashion. The compart-
ments are divided by broad cross beams, which form the passages
by which the spectators get to their places. During the play
we saw attendants running about with tea, saki, tobacco pipes,
and small braziers. For every one smokes during the acts, and
places himself in his crib as comfortably as possible. The piece
is followed with great attention, favourite actors and favourite
passages being saluted with lively applause. Even women and
children visit the theatre, and I have seen the former give their
children suck without the least discomposure among thousands
of spectators. Besides the plays intended for the public, there
are given also a number of other dramatic representations, as
society plays, peculiar family plays intended for the homes of the
old feudal princes, spectacles got up for the Mikado, and some
which have a half religious significance, &e.

On the evening of the 5th October we came to Takasaki,
prepared to start immediately for Tokio. But though the
messenger we sent had duly executed his commission, horses
could not be procured before midnight. We passed the evening
with our former host, who at our first visit received us so un-
willingly, but now with great friendliness. We would easily
have reconciled ourselves to the delay, for a Japanese small
town such as Takasaki has’ much worth seeing to offer a
European, but a great part of the time was wasted in fruit-
less attempts to get the horse-hirer to let us have the horses

XVIL.] TOILET OF JAPANESE GIRLS. 667

a few hours earlier. In spending time in long conversations
mixed with civilities and bows the Japanese are masters. Of
this bad habit, which still often makes the Kuropean desperate,
it will not perhaps be long necessary to complain, for everything
indicates that the Japanese too will soon be carried along at the
endlessly roaring speed of the Steam Age.

When we had at last got horses we continued our journey, first
in a carriage to Tokio, then by rail to Yokohama, arriving there
on the afternoon of the 6th October. From this journey I shall
only relate an incident which may form a little picture throwing
hight on life in Japan.

While we halted for a short time in the morning of the 6th
October at a large inn by the roadside, we saw half a dozen
young girls finishing their toilets in the inn-yard. In passing
we may say, that a Japanese peasant girl, like girls in general,
may be pretty or the reverse, but that she generally is, what
cannot always be said of the peasant girls at home, cleanly and
of attractive manners. They washed themselves at the stream
of water in the inn-yard, smoothed their artistically dressed hair,
which, however, had been but little disturbed by the cushions on
which they had slept, and brushed their dazzlingly white teeth.
Soap is not used for washing, but a cotton bag filled with bran.
The teeth were brushed with a wooden pin, one end of which
was changed by beating into a brush-like collection of wooden
cords. The tooth-powder consisted of finely powdered shells and
corals, and was kept in small, neat wooden boxes, which, along
with tooth-brushes and small square bundles of a very strong
and cheap paper, all clearly intended for the use of the peasants,
were sold for a trifle in most of the innumerable shops along
the road. For such stupid regulations as in former times in
Europe rendered traffic in the country difficult, and often obliged
the countryman to betake himself to the nearest town to buy
some horse-shoes or a roll of wire, appear not to be found in
Japan, on which account most of the peasants living on a
country road seek a subsidiary way of making a living by
trafficking in small articles in request among the country people.

Incidents of the sort referred to we had seen so many times
before that on this occasion it would not have attracted any
further attention on our part, if we had not thereby been
reminded that we must look after our own exterior, before we
could make our entrance into the capital of Japan. We there-
fore took from the carriage our basket with linen, shaving
implements, and towels, settled down around the stream of
water at which the girls stood, and immediately began to
wash and shave ourselves. There was now general excitement.
The girls ceased to go on with their own toilet, and crowded
round us in a ring in order to see how Europeans behave in

663 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP,

such cases, and to give us the assistance that might be required.
Some ran laughing and bustling about, one on the top of another,
in order immediately to procure us what we wanted, one held
the mirror, another the shaving-brush, a third the soap, &c.
Round them gathered other elder women, whose blackened
teeth indicated that they were married. A little farther off
stood men of all ages. Chance had here quite unexpectedly
shown usa picture from folk-life of the most agreeable kind. This
pleasant temper continued while we immediately after, in the
presence of all, ate our breakfast in the porch of the ground-
floor, surrounded by our former ministering spirits, now kneeling
eae us, continually bowing the head us the ground, laughing
and chattermg. The same fun went on when a little “after
I bought some living fresh-water fishes and put them in spirit,
yet with the difference that the girls now, with some cries, to
show their fear of handling the lving animals—though fish-
cleaning was one of their ordinary occupations handed over to
the men the trouble of taking the fishes and putting them into
the spirit-jars. For a worm placed in spirit they feigned the
greatest terror, notwithstanding its covering of spirit and
class, and ran shrieking away when any one suddenly brought
the jar with the worm near their faces. It ought to be noted
to the honour of the Japanese, that although we were by no
means surrounded by any select circle, aoe was not heard
during the whole time a single offensive word among the
closely-packed spectators, a fact. which gives us an idea of the
excellent tone of society which prevails here, even among
the lowest of the population, and which shows that the
Japanese, although they have much to learn from the Kuro-
peans, ought not to imitate them in all. In J apan there is much
that is good, old, and national to take note of, perhaps more
than the Japanese at present have any idea of, and undoubtedly
more than many of the European residents will allow.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Farewell dinner at Yokohama—The Chinese in Japan—Voyage to Kobe—
Purchase of Japanese Books—Journey by rail to Kioto—Biwa Lake
and the Legend of its Origin—Dredging there—Japanese Dancing-
Girls—Kioto—The Imperial Palace—Temples—Swords and Sword-
bearers—Shintoism and Buddhism—The Porcelain Manufacture —
Japanese Poetry—Feast in a Buddhist Temp!e—Sailing across the
Inland Sea of Japan—Landing at Hirosami and Shimonoseki—Nagasaki
—Excursion to Mogi—Collection of Fossil Plants—Departure from
Japan.

THE last days at Yokohama were taken up with farewell visits
there and at ‘Tokio. An afternoon’s leisure during the last day

*, PAS oe

XVIII. ] THE CHINESE IN JAPAN. 669

I spent in the capital of Japan I employed in making an ex-
cursion in order to dredge from a Japanese boat in the river
debouching at the town. The Japanese boats differ from the
European in being propelled not by rowing but by sculling.
They have usually a deck above the level of the water, which
is dazzlingly white and laid with matting, like the rooms in a
Japanese house. The dredging yielded a great number of
Anodonta, large Paludina, and some small shells.

During our stay in Japan I requested Lieutenant Nordquist
to make as complete a collection of the land and fresh-water
crustacea of the country as the short time permitted. In conse-
quence of the unusual poverty of the country in these animal
forms the result was much smaller than we had hoped. During
a preceding voyage to the Polar Sea I had assisted in making
a collection of land crustacea on Rence, an island north of the
limit of trees in the outer archipelago of northern Norway. It is
possible to collect there in a few hours as many animals of this
group as in fertile Japan in as many days. There are parts of Japan,
covered with thick woods and thickets of bushes, where during
a, forenoon’s excursion one can scarcely find a single crustacean,
although the ground is full of deep, shady clefts m which
masses of dried leaves are collected, and which therefore ought
to be an exceedingly suitable haunt for land mollusca. The
reason of this poverty ought perhaps to be sought in the want
of chalk or basic calcareous rocks, which prevails in the parts of
Japan which we visited.

. After the Swedish-Dutch minister had further given us a
splendid farewell dinner at the Grand Hotel, to which, as before,
the Japanese ministers and the representatives of the foreign
powers in Japan were invited, we at last weighed anchor on the
11th October to prosecute our voyage. At this dinner we saw
for the first time the Chinese embassy which at the time visited
Japan with the view of settling the troublesome Loo-Choo affair
which threatened to lead to a war between the two great powers
of Eastern Asia. The Chinese ambassadors were, as usual, two
in number, being commissioned to watch one over the other.
One of them laughed immoderately at all that was said during
dinner, although he did not understand a word. According
to what I was told by one who had much experience in the
customs of the heavenly empire, he did this, not because he
heard or understood anything worth laughing at, but because
he considered it good manners to laugh.

Remarkable was the interest which the Chinese labourers
settled at Yokohama took in our voyage, about which they
appeared to have read something in their own or in the
Japanese newspapers. When I sent one of the sailors ashore
to execute a commission, and asked him how he could do that

670 THE. VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [oHar.

without any knowledge of the language, he replied, “ There is no
fear, I always meet with some Chinaman who speaks English
and helps me.” The Chinese not only always assisted our
sailors as interpreters without remuneration, but accompanied
them for hours, gave them good advice in making purchases,
and expressed their sympathy with all that they must have
suffered during our wintering in the high north. They were
always cleanly, t tall, and stately in their figures, and corresponded
in no particular to the calumnious descriptions we so often read
of this people in European and American writings.

From Yokohama the course was shaped for Kobe, one of the
more considerable Japanese ports which have been opened to
Europeans. Kobe is specially remarkable on account of its
having railway communication with Osaka, the most important
manufacturing town of Japan, and with Kioto, the ancient
capital and seat of the Mikado’s court for centuries.

I had already begun at Yokohama to buy Japanese books,
particularly such as were printed before the opening of the
ports to Europeans. In order to carry on this traffic with
ereater success, I had procured the assistance of a young
Japanese very familiar with French, Mr. OKUSCHI, assistant im
Dr. Geertz’ chemico-technical laboratory at Yokohama. But
because the supply of old books in this town, which a few years
ago had been of little importance, was very limited, I had at
first, in order to make purchases on a larger scale, repeatedly
sent Mr. Okuschi to Tokio, the seat of the former Shogun
dynasty, and from that town, before the departure of the Vega
from Yokohama, to Kioto, the former seat of learning in Japan.
The object of the Vega’s call at the port of Kobe was to fetch
the considerable purchases made there by Mr. Okuschi.t

Kobe, or Hiogo, as the old Japanese part of the town is
called, is a city of about 40,000 inhabitants, beautifully situated
at the entrance to the Inland Sea of Japan, «¢., the sound
which separates the main island from the south islands, Shikoku
and Kiushiu. Mountain ridges of considerable height here run
along the sea-shore. Some of the houses of the European
merchants are built on the lower slopes of these hills, with high,
beautiful, forest-clad heights as a background, and a splendid
view of the harbour in front. The Japanese part of the town
consists, as usual, of small houses which, on the side next the
street, are occupied mainly with sale or work-shops where the
whole family lives all day. The streets have thus a very lively

1 The number of the works which the collection of Japanese books
contains is somewhat over a thousand. The number of volumes amounts
to five or six thousand; most of the volumes, however, are not larger than’
one of our books of a hundred pages. So far as can be judged by
the Japanese titles, which are often little distinctive, the works may be

~*~ >

XVII. KOBE. 671

appearance, and offer the foreigner an endless variety of remark-
able and instructive pictures from the life of the people. The
European part of the town, on the other hand, is built with
stately houses, some of which are situated on the street that runs
along the shore. Here, among others, are to be found splendid
European hotels, European clubs, counting-houses, shops, &e.
Not far from Kobe, and having railway communication with
it, is Osaka, the largest manufacturi ing town of Japan, famed for
its theatres and its dancing-girls. Unfortunately I had not time
to visit it, for I started for the old capital, Kioto, a few hours
after the Vega anchored, and after I had waited on the governor
in order to procure the passport that is ‘still required for travel-
ling in the interior. He received me, thanks to a letter of
introduction I had with me from one of the ministers at Tokio,
in an exceedingly agreeable way. His reception-room was part
of a large European stone house, the vestibule of which was
tastefully fitted up in European style with a Brussels carpet
gay with variegated colours. At our visit we were offered
Japanese tea, as is customary everywhere in Japan, both in the
palace of the Emperor and the cabin of the poor peasant. The
Governor was, as all the higher officials m Japan now are,
dressed like a European of distinction, but he could not speak

distributed among the various branches of knowledge in the following
way.:

Number
of Works.

History ... ass Mi re Se. teat LG
On Buddhism and Education ae ms a som AGL
On Shintoism —... a oe os i NO
On Christianity (printed i in 171 3) wy. aks nee a 1
Manners and Customs ... eS ae ay ae He ¥ 233
The Drama — ae ae ae sa See aay eS
Laws ade ee 5a So cee si — 83 5)
Politics, Political argumentative writings, partly new and

privately printed against the recent statues... a ok
Poetry and Prose fiction is Bae a oe ee LS
Heraldry, Antiquities, Ceremonies... a ee ew’
The Art of War and the Use of # Weapons ae Ae shia al
Chess ae — ae pF 1
Coining ... see Ss ise 1 be ae tp i 4
Dictionaries, Grammars ss ae me = Be Als)
Geography, Maps ah ~~ re on : 76
Natural History . “sts 2 is are EOS
The Science of Medicine ie ae ae te tel ealen
Arithmetic, Astronomy, Astro! lovy din ae Bh ea, MED
Handicrafts, Agriculture te ae be: se 3 43
Notebooks i: ey Fay peo
The art of making bouquets (Horticulture %) i oe alg
Bibliography ~... yee e: shy 4 sat a 3)
Various ... at fs ah ae ze wide oe

Totals \.. oe PC son HOBIE

ili
| A i}

JAPANISE SHOP

CHAP. XVIII. ] A JAPANESE RAILWAY. . 673

any European language. He showed himself, however, to be
much interested in our voyage, and immediately ordered an
official in his court, who was well acquainted with English,
Mr. YANIMOTO, to accompany me to Kioto.

We travelled thither by a railway constructed wholly in the
European style. At Kioto my companion, at my special request,
conducted me, not to the European hotel there, but to a
Japanese inn, remarkable as usual for cleanliness, for a
numerous crowd of talkative female attendants, and for the
extreme friendliness of the inn people to their guests as soon
as they indicated, by taking off their boots at the door, that it
was their intention not to break Japanese customs and usages
in any offensive way. A calling card and a letter from Admiral
Kawamura, minister of marine, which I sent from the hotel to
the Governor of Kioto, procured me an adjutant No. 2, a young,
cheerful, and talkative official, Mr. Kopa-Yascui, whose eyes
sparkled with intelligence and merry good humour. One would
sooner have taken him for a highly-esteemed student president
at some northern university, than for a Japanese official. It
was already late in the day, so that before nightfall I had time
only to take the bath which, at every Japanese inn not of too
inferior a kind, is always at the traveller’s call, and arrange the
dredging excursion which, along with Lieut. Nordquist, I
intended to make next day on Lake Biwa.

The road between Kioto and Biwa we travelled the following
morning in jinrikishas. In a short time there will be com-
munication between these two places by a railway constructed
exclusively by native workmen and native engineers. It will
be, and is intended to be, an actual Japanese railway. For a
considerable distance it passes through a tunnel, which, how-
ever, as some of the Europeans at Kobe stated, might easily
have been avoided “if the Japanese had not considered it
desirable that Japan, too, should have a railway tunnel to
show, as such are found both in Europe and America.” It is
probable, in any case, that the bends which would have been
required if the tunnel was to be avoided, would have cost more
by the additional length than the tunnel, and that therefore the
procedure of the Japanese was better considered than their
envious European neighbours would allow. There appears to
prevail among the European residents in Japan a certain
jealousy of the facility with which this country, till recently so
far behind in an industrial respect, assimilates the skill in art
and industry of the Europeans, and of the rapidity with which
the people thereby make themselves independent of the wares
of the foreign merchants.

When we reached Lake Biwa we were conducted by Mr.
Koba-Yaschi to an inn close by the shore, with a splendid view

> bo

674 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA, [ CHAP.

of the southern part of the lake. We were shown into beautiful
Japanese rooms, which had evidently been arranged for the
reception of Huropeans, and in which accordingly some tables
and chairs had been placed. On the tables we found, on our
arrival, bowls with fruit and confections, Japanese tea, and
braziers. The walls were formed partly of tastefully gilt paper
panels ornamented with mottoes, reminding visitors of the
splendid view.

A whole day of the short time which was allowed me to
study the remarkable things of Kioto I devoted to Lake Biwa,
because lakes are exceedingly uncommon in the south, for they
occur only in the countries which have either been covered with
glaciers in the most recent geological periods, or, in consequence
of the action of volcanic forces, have been the scene of violent
disturbances of the surface of the earth. I believed that Lake
Biwa would form an exception to this, but I was probably
mistaken ; for tradition relates that this lake was formed in a
single night at the same time that the high volcanic cone of
Fusiyama was elevated. This tradition, in its general outline,
corresponds so closely with the teaching of geology, that scarcely
any geologist will doubt its truth.

After our arrival at the inn we had to,wait a very long time
for the steamer I had ordered. On this account I thoughtlessly
enough broke out in reproaches on my excellent Japanese adju-
tants, who, however, received my hard words only with friendly
smiles, which increased still further my impatience at the loss of
time which was thus occasioned. It was not until far on in the
day, when I was already out dredging from a small steamer, that
I was informed as to the cause of the delay. The Biwa Steamship
Company had, at the request of the Governor, intended to place
at my disposal a very large boat well provided with coal, but after
taking the coal on board it had sunk so deep that it grounded
in the mud of the harbour. We had already got far out with
the little steamer when the large one at last got off. I-was
now obliged to exchange vessels in order to be received “in a
more honourable way.’ It was not until this took place that
I was informed that- I was guest and not master, on which
account I was obliged to employ the rest of the afternoon in
excusing my former violent behaviour, in which, with the help
of friendly words, beer, and red wine, I succeeded pretty well,
to judge by the mirth which soon began to prevail among my
now very numerous Japanese companions.

On the little steamer I had ordered two of my crew whom I
had brought with me from the Vega to prepare a meal for the
Japanese and ourselves. In this way the dinner that had been
arranged for us, without my knowledge, became superfluous.
I was obliged instead to receive as a gift the provisions and

a

xvwI, | ; LAKE BIWA, 675

liquors purchased for the dinner, consisting of fowls, eggs,
potatoes, red wine and beer, giving at the same time a receipt
as a matter of form.

During our excursion on the lake we met with various boats
laden with sea-weed, which had been taken up from the bottom
of the lake to be used as manure for the neighbouring culti-
vated fields. Partly among these alge, partly by dredging,
Lieut. Nordquist collected various interesting fresh-water crus-
tacea (Paludina, Melania, Unio, Planorbis &c.,) several sorts
of shrimps (a Hippolyte) small fishes, &. Lake Biwa abounds
in fish, and harbours besides a large clumsily-formed species of
lizard. In order to make further collections of the animal
forms occurring there, Lieut. Nordquist remained at the lake
till next day. I, on the other hand, went immediately back to
Kioto, arriving there in the evening after nightfall.

After having eaten, along with my two Japanese companions
an unexceptionable European dinner at the inn of the town,
kept by Japanese, but arranged in European style, we paid a
visit to a company of Japanese dancing-girls.

Kioto competes with Osaka for the honour of having the
prettiest dancing-girls. These form a distinct class of young
girls, marked by a peculiar variegated dress. They wear besides
a peculiar hair-ornament, are much painted, and have their lips
coloured black and gold. At the dancing places of greatest note
a European is not received, unless he has with him a known
native who answers for his courteous behaviour. After taking
off his shoes on entering, the visitor is introduced to a separate
room with its floor covered with matting and its walls orna-
mented with Japanese drawings and mottoes, but without
other furniture. A small square cushion is given to each of the
guests. After they have settled themselves in Japanese fashion,
that is to say, squatting cross-legged, pipes and tea are brought
in, on which a whole crowd of young girls come in and, chatting
pleasantly, settle themselves around the guests, observing all the
while complete decency even according to the most exacting
European ideas. There is not to be seen here any trace of the
effrontery and coarseness which are generally to be found in
similar places in Europe. One would almost believe that he
was among a crowd of school-girls who had given the sour moral
lessons of their governess the slip, and were thinking of nothing
else than innocently gossiping away some hours. After a while
the dance begins, accompanied by very monotonous music and
singing. The slow movements of the legs and arms of the
dancers remind us of certain slow and demure scenes from
European ballets. There is nothing indecent in this dance,
but we learn that there are other dances wilder and less
decorous.

EZ

676 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

The dancing-girls are recruited exclusively from the poorer
classes ; pretty young girls, to help their parents or to earn some
styvers for themselves, selling themselves for a certain time to
the owners of the dancing-places, and when the time agreed
upon has come to an end returning to their homes, where not-
withstanding this they marry without difficulty. All the
dancing-girls therefore are young, many of them pretty. even
according to European ideas, though their appearance is
destroyed in our eyes by the tasteless way in which they
paint themselves and colour their lips. Unfortunately I had

JAPANESE COURT DRESS.

not time to avail myself of the opportunity which Kioto offers
the foreigner of judging with certainty regarding the Japanese
taste in female beauty. For here, as at various other Japanese
towns, there are a number of girls who have been officially
selected as the most beautiful among the youth of the place.
The Japanese may visit them for a certain payment, but to
Europeans they do not show themselves willingly, and only
fora large sum. When this takes place at any time, it is
only a dumb show for a few moments, during which no
words are exchanged.

The Governor had promised to carry me round next day

XVIII. | THE OLD IMPERIAL PALACE GOSHO 677

to see whatever was remarkable in the town. I was not much
delighted at this, because I feared that the whole day would
be taken up with inspecting the whole or half-European
public offices and schools, which had not the slightest interest
forme. My fear however was quite unjustified. The Governor
was a man of genius, who, according to the statements of
my companions, was reckoned among the first of the con-
temporary poets of Japan. He immediately declared that he
supposed that the new ‘public offices and schools would in-
terest me much less than the
old palaces, temples, porcelain
and fatence manufactories of
the town, and that he there-
fore intended to employ the
day Ispent under his guidance
in showing me the latter.
Wemade a beginning with the
old imperial palace Gosho, the
most splendid dwelling of Old
Japan. It is not however very
grand according to European
ideas. A very extensive space
of ground is here covered with
a number of one-story wooden
houses, intended for the Em-
peror, the imperial family, and
their suite. The buildings
are, like all Japanese houses,
divided by movable panels into
a number of rooms, richly
provided with paintings and
gilded ornamentation, but
otherwise without a trace of
furniture. For the palace now ————
stands uninhabited since the NOBLE IN ANTIQUE DRESS.
Mikado oyerthrew the Shogun
dynasty and removed to Tokio. It already gives a striking
picture of the change which has taken place in the land. Only the
imperial family and the great men of the country were formerly
permitted to enter the sacred precincts of Gosho, Now it
stands open to every curious native or foreigner, and it has
even as an exhibition building been already pressed into the
service of industry. Alongside the large buildings there are
several small ones, of which one was intended to protect
the Emperor-deity during earthquakes; the others formed
play-places for the company of grown children who were then
permitted to govern the country.

678 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

Much more remarkable and instructive than the now de-
serted imperial palace are the numerous temples at Kioto, of
which we visited several. We were generally received by the
priests in a large vestibule, whose floor was covered with a
fine woollen carpet and was provided with tables and chairs of
European patterns. The priests first offered us Japanese tea,
cigars, and sweetmeats; then we examined some valuable
articles exhibited in the room, consisting of bronzes, works in
the noble metals, splendid old lacquer work, and a number of
famous swords dedicated to the
temple. These were the only
things that our freethinking
Governor treated with rever-
ence; for the rest neither the
priests nor their reliques seemed
to inspire him with any par-
ticular respect.

When a valuable Japanese
sword is exhibited one touches
neitherthe hilt nor the scabbard,
and of course still less the blade,
with the bare hand, but it is
taken hold of either with a
gloved hand, or with the hand
with a handkerchief or piece of
cloth wrapped round it. The
blade is only half bared, the
steel setting is looked at against
the light and admired ; on the
often exceedingly valuable
blades which are not moun-
ted, but only provided with a
wooden case to protect them
from rust, the maker’s mark is

BUDDHIST PRIEST. examined, and so on. As

among us in former times, the

swordsmith’s is the only handicraft which in old times was
held in high esteem in Japan, and immense sums were often
paid for sword-blades forged by famous masters of the art.
Among old Japanese writings are to be found many works
specially treating of the making of weapons. But since the
swordsmen (samurai) have now been forbidden to show them-
selves armed, old Japanese swords are sold in all the towns
by hundreds and thousands, often for a trifle. During our
stay in the country I purchased for a comparatively limited
sum a fine collection of such weapons. Even those who cannot
appreciate the artistic forging of the blade, the steel-setting,

XVUI. WEARING THE SWORD IN JAPAN. 679

and tempering, must admire the exceedingly tasteful casting
and embossing of the ornamentation, especially of the guard-
plates of the sword. They are often veritable works of art,
unsurpassed in style and execution.

It is not very many years ago since the men who belonged to
the samurai class never showed themselves abroad without
being armed with two swords. Even schoolboys went armed to
the first European schools that were established in the country.
This gave occasion to several acts of violence during the time
which succeeded the opening of the ports, for which reason the
European ambassadors some
years after requested that
carrying the sword in time
of peace should be prohib-
ited. To this the Japanese
government answered that
it would make short work
with the minister who
should publish such a pro-
hibition. Soon after, how-
ever, it gave permission to
those who desired it to go
without weapons, and the
carrying of arms soon be-
came so unfashionable that
one of the authorities did
dare at last to issue a distinct
prohibition of it. During
our stayin Japan, accord-
ingly, we did not see a
single man armed with the
two swords formerly in use.

After we had seen and
admired the treasures in
the temple vestibule, we
visited the temple itself. A SAMURAI.

This is always of wood,

richly ornamented with carvings and gilding. If it is dedicated
to Shinto, there are no images in it, and very few ornaments, if
we except a mirror and a large locked press with the doors
smashed in, which sometimes occupies the wall opposite the
entrance, and in which, as I have already stated, the spirit of the
deity is said to dwell. The Shinto temples are in general poor.
Many are so inconsiderable as to look almost like dovecotes.
They are often completely deserted, so that it is difficult to
discover them among the magnificent trees by which they were
surrounded. ‘The entrance to the temple is indicated by a gate

680 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHap.

(torryt) of wood, stone, or copper, and here and there are ropes,
stretched over the way, to which written prayers and vows are
affixed.

Even those who have long studied Japan and its literature
have very little knowledge of the inner essence of Shintoism.
This religion is considered by some a pure deism, by others a
belief with political aims, the followers of which worship the
departed heroes of the country. Of a developed morality this
religion is wholly devoid. In the same way it appears to be
uncertain whether Shintoism isa survival of the original religion
of the country or whether it has been brought from abroad.

GATE ACROSS THE ROAD TO A SHINTO TEMPLE.

Buddhism was introduced from China by Corea. Its temples
are more ornamented than the Shinto temples, and contain images
of deities, bells, drums, holy books, and a great quantity of altar
ornaments. The transmigration of souls, and rewards and
punishments in a life after this, are doctrines of Buddhism.
Outside the temples proper there are to be found in many places
large or small images in stone or bronze of the deities of
Buddha. The largest of these consist of colossal statues in
bronze (Dazbutsu), representing Buddha in a sitting position, and
themselves forming the screen to a temple with smaller i images.

XVI. | STATUES OF BHUDDA. 681

A similar statue is also to be found at Kamakura, another at
Tokio, a third at Nara near Kioto, and so on. Some have of
late years been sold for the value of the metal; one has in this
way been brought to London, and is now exhibited in the
Kensington Museum. The metal of the statues consists of an
alloy of copper with tin and a little gold, the last named
constituent giving rise to the report that their value is very

BUDDHIST TEMPLE AT KOBE.

considerable. To give an idea of the size of some Daibutsu
statues it may be mentioned that the one at Nara is fifty-three
and a half feet high, and that one can crawl into the head
through the nose orifices.

Nearly all the Daibutsu images are made after nearly the
same design, which has been improved from generation to
generation until the countenance of the image has received a

682 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

stamp of benevolence, calm, and majesty, which has probably never
been surpassed by the productions of western art. Daibutsu
images evidently stand in the same relation to the works of
private sculptors as folk-poetry to that of individual bards.

As I have before pomted out, the Western taste for the
gigantic was not prevalent in Old Japan. It was evidently
_ elegance and neatness, not grandeur, that formed the object

towards which the efforts of the artist, the architect, and
the gardener were directed. Only the Daibutsu images, some
bells, and other instruments of worship form exceptions to
this. During our excursion at Kioto we passed an inclosure
where the walls were built of blocks of stone so colossal, that
it was difficult to comprehend how it had been possible to
lift and move them with the means that were at the dis-
posal of the Japanese in former times. In the neighbourhood
of that place there was a grave, probably the only one of its
kind. It is described in the following way in an account of
the curiosities of Kioto written by a native :—

“Mimisuka, or the grave of the noses and the ears, was
erected by Hideyoshi Taiko, who lived about A.D. 1590. When
the military chiefs of this famous man attacked Corea with
a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers, he gave orders that they
should bring home and show him all the ears and noses of the
enemies who were killed in the contest, for it was an old
practice in Japan to cut off the enemies’ heads to show them
to the king or the commander of the army. But it was now
impossible to bring the heads of the dead Corean warriors to
Japan, because the distance was too great. Hideyoshi therefore
gave the above order, and the ears and noses, which were brought
to Japan, were buried together at that place. The grave is
730 feet in circumference, and is 30 feet high.”

Kioto is one of the principal places for the manufacture of
faience, porcelain, and cloisonné. The productions of the ceramic
art are, as 1s well-known, distinguished by their tasteful forms
and beautiful colours, and are highly valued by connoisseurs,
on which account they are exported on a large scale to Europe
and America. The works are numerous and small, and are
owned for the most part by families that for a long succession
of generations have devoted themselves to the same occupation.
The articles are burned in very small furnaces, and are commonly
sold in a shop which is close to the place where they are made.
The making of porcelain in Japan, therefore, bears the stamp
rather of handicraft than of manufacturing industry. The wares
gain thereby in respect of art to an almost incredible degree.
They have the same relation to the productions of the great

XVIII. | PRESENTATION OF A MOTTO. 683

European manufactories that the drawing of an artist has to
a showily coloured lithograph. But the price is high in propor-
tion, and the Japanese porcelain is too dear for every-day use
even in its own country. Nearly all the large sets of table
porcelain that I saw in Japan were, therefore, ordered from
abroad. The cups which the natives themselves use for rice,
tea, and sakz are, however, of native manufacture; but even
in a well-provided Japanese household there is seldom so much
_ porcelain as would be required for a proper coffee-party
at home.

In the evening the Governor had invited us to a dinner,
which was given in a hall belonging to a literary society in
the town. The rooms were partly furnished in European style
with tables, chairs, Brussels carpets, &e. The dinner was
European in the arrangement of dishes, wines, and speeches.
The dishes and wines were abundant and in great variety. The
company were very merry, and the host appeared to be greatly
pleased, when I mentioned that at one of the places which I
had seen that day I saw a wall adorned by a motto of his
composition. He immediately promised to write a similar one
on me with reference to my visit to the town, and when a few
moments after he had the first line ready, he invited his
Japanese guests to write the second. They tried for a good
while with merry jests to hit upon some suitable conclusion,
but in vain. Early the following morning Mr. Koba-Yaschi
came to me, bringing with him a broad strip of silk on
which the following was pencilled in bold, nobly-formed
characters :

Umi hara-no-hate-made
Akiva-Sumi-watare,

which when translated runs thus:

“ As far as the sea extends
The autumn moon spreads her beneficent light.”

According to the explanation which I received the piece
points out that the autumn moon spreads her beneficent rays
as far as to that place in the high north where we wintered.
After the above-quoted verse came the following addition in
Japanese: Written by Machimura Masanavo, Governor of
Kioto-Fu, to Professor Nordenskiéld, on the occasion of a dinner
given to him during the autumn of 1879.” The whole besides
was signed with the authors common, as well as his poetical,
name, and had his seal attached. His poetical name was Rio-
SAN, which may be literally translated “ Dragon-Mountain.”

The poetry of the Japanese is so unlike that of the Western
nations that we find it difficult to comprehend the productions

684 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. XVIII.

of the Japanese poets. Perhaps they ought more correctly to
be called poetical mottoes. They play a great part in the
intellectual life of the Japanese. Their authors are highly
esteemed, and even in the homes of the poorer classes the walls
are often ornamented with strips of silk or paper on which
poems are written in large, bold, pencil characters. Among the
books I brought home with me are many which contain
collections of the writings of private poets and poetesses, or
selections from the most famous of the productions of Japanese
literature in this department. A roll of drawings which turned
up very often represents the sorrowful fate of a famous poetess.
First of all she is depicted as a representative Japanese beauty,
blooming with youth and grace, then she is represented in
different stages of decay, then as dead, then as a half-decayed

RIO-SAN’S SEAL.

corpse torn asunder by ravens, and finally as a heap of bones.
The series ends with a cherry-tree in splendid bloom, into which
the heroine, after her body had passed through all the stages of
annihilation, has been changed. The cherry-tree in blossom is
considered by the Japanese the ideal of beauty in the vegetable
kingdom, and during the flowering season of this tree excursions
are often undertaken to famous cherry-groves where hour after
hour is passed in tranquil admiration of the flower-splendour
of the tree. Unfortunately I was so late in getting the
explanation of the beautiful poetical idea that ran through
this series of pictures, some of which were executed with
execrable truth to nature, that I missed the opportunity of
purchasing it.

I was obliged to leave Kioto too early in order to be present

Mh
mu
(id a AN

oii Tu
que nT

BURYING PLACE AT KIOTO,

686 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [caar.

at a féte, which was given to us at Kobe by the Japanese,
Europeans, and Chinese who were interested in our voyage.
The entertamment was held in a Buddhist temple without
the town, and was very pleasant and agreeable. The Japanese
did not seem at all to consider that their temple was desecrated
by such an arrangement. In the course of the afternoon for
instance there came several pilgrims to the temple. I observed
them carefully, and could not mark in their countenances any
trace of displeasure at a number of foreigners feasting in the
beautiful temple grove whither they had come on pilgrimage.
They appeared rather to consider that they had come to
the goal of their wanderings at a fortunate moment, and
therefore gladly accepted the refreshments that were
offered them,

On the morning of the 18th October the Vega again weighed
anchor, to proceed on her voyage. The course was shaped
through the Inland Sea of Japan for Nagasaki. When I
requested of the Governor of Kobe permission to land at two
places on the way, he not only immediately granted my request,
but also sent on the Vega the same English-speaking official
from his court who had before attended me to Kioto. The
weather was clear and fine, so that we had a good opportunity
of admiring the magnificent environs of the Inland Sea. They
resemble much the landscape in a northern archipelago, The
views here are however more monotonous in consequence of
their being less variety im the contours of the mountains.
Here as at Kobe the hills consist mainly of a species of granite
which is exposed to weathering on so large a scale that the
hard rocks are nearly everywhere decomposed into a yellow
sand unfavourable for vegetation. The splendid wild granite
cliffs of the north accordingly are absent here, All the hill-tops
are evenly rounded, and everywhere, except where there has
been a sand-slip, covered with a rich vegetation, which in
consequence of the evenness of height of the trees gives little
variety to the landscape, which otherwise is among the most
beautiful on the globe.

We landed at two places, on the first occasion at Hirosami.
Here some fishermen’s cabins and some peasants’ houses formed
a little village at the foot of a high, much-weathered granite
ridge. The burying-place was situated near one of the houses,
close to the shore. On an area of some hundred square yards
there were numerous gravestones, some upright, some fallen.
Some were ornamented with fresh flowers, at one was a Shinto
shrine of wooden pins, at another stood a bowl with rice and a
small sakt bottle. Our zoologists here made a pretty rich
collection of littoral animals, among which may be mentioned a
cuttle-fish which had crept down amongst the wet sand, an

XVII] SHIMONOSEKI, 687

animal that is industriously searched for and eaten by the
natives. Among the cultivated plants we saw here, as many
times before in the high-lying parts of the country, an old
acquaintance from home, namely buckwheat.

The second time the Vega anchored at a peasant village right
opposite Shimonoseki. When we landed there came an official
on board, courteously declaring that we had no right to land at
that place. But he was immediately satisfied and made no
more difficulties when he was informed that we had the
permission of the Governor, and that instead of the usual pass-
port an official from Kobe accompanied the vessel. Shimonoseki

ENTRANCE TO NAGASAKI.

has a melancholy reputation in European-Japanese history from
the deeds of violence done here by a united English, French,
Dutch, and American fleet of seventeen vessels on the 4th
and 5th September, 1864, in order to compel the Japanese to
open the sound to foreigners, and the unreasonably heavy
compensation which after the victory was won they demanded
from the conquered. Although only fifteen years have passed
since this occurred, there appears to be no trace of bitter feeling
towards Europeans among the inhabitants of the region. At
least we were received at the village in the neighbourhood of
which we landed with extraordinary kindness. The village was

688 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

situated at the foot of a rocky ridge, and consisted of a number
of houses arranged in a row along a single street, the fronts of
the houses being as usual occupied as shops, places for selling
saki, and workshops for home industry. The only remarkable
things besides that the village had to offer consisted of a Shinto
temple surrounded by beautiful trees and a considerable salt-
work, which consisted of extensive, shallow, well-planned ponds
now nearly dry, into which the sea-water is admitted in order
to evaporate, and from which the condensed salt liquid is
afterwards drawn into salt-pans in order that the evaporation
may be completed. It was remarkable to observe that
several crustacea throve exceedingly well in the very
strong brine.

On the surrounding hills we saw thickets of the Japanese
wax tree, Rhus succedaneus. The wax is pressed out of the
berries of this bush with the help of heat. It is used on a
large scale in making the lights which the natives themselves
burn, and is exported bleached and refined to Europe, where it
is sometimes used in the manufacture of lights. Now, however,
these wax lights are increasingly superseded by American kero-
sene oil. The price has fallen so much that the preparation of
vegetable wax is now said scarcely to yield a profit.

We left this place next morning, and on the 21st October the
Vega anchored in the harbour of Nagasaki. My principal
intention in visiting this place was to collect fossil plants,
which I supposed would be found at the Takasima coal-
mine, or in the neighbourhood of the coal-field. In order to
find out the locality without delay, I reckoned on the fondness of
the Japanese for collecting remarkable objects of all kinds from
the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. {I therefore hoped
to find im some of the shops where old bronzes, porcelain,
weapons, &c., were offered for sale, fossil plants from the neigh-
bourhood, with the locality given. The first day, therefore, I
ran about to all the dealers in curiosities, but without success.
At last one of the Japanese with whom I conversed told me
that an exhibition of the products of nature and art in the
region was being arranged, and that among the objects exhibited
I might possibly find what I sought for.

Of course I immediately availed myself of the opportunity to
see one of the many Japanese local exhibitions of which I had
heard somuch. It was yet in disorder, but I was; at all events,
willingly admitted, and thus had an opportunity of seeing much
that was instructive to me, especially a collection of rocks from
the neighbourhood. Among these I discovered at last, to my

1 Further information on this point is given by Henry Gribble in ‘The
Preparation of Vegetable Wax” (Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan,
vol. iii. part i. p. 94. Yokohama, 1875).

XVIIL] VISIT TO MOGI. 689

great satisfaction, some beautiful fossil plants from Mogi, a place
not far from Nagasaki.

Immediately the following morning I started for Mogi, accom-
panied by the Japanese attendant I had with me from Kobe,
and by another adjutant given me by the very obliging governor
of Nagasaki. We were to travel across the hills on horse-
back. I was accompanied, besides my Japanese assistants and a
man from the Vega, all on horseback, by a number of coolies
carrying provisions and other equipment. The Governor had
lent me his own horse, which was considered by the Japanese
something quite grand. It was a yellowish-brown stallion, not
particularly large, but very fine, resembling a Norwegian horse,
very gentle and sure-footed. The latter quality was also quite
necessary, for the journey began with a ride up a hundred
smooth and not very convenient stone steps. Farther on, too,
the road, which was exceedingly narrow and often paved with
smooth stones, went repeatedly up and down such stairs, not very
suitable for a man on horseback, and close to the edge of preci-
pices several hundred feet deep, where a single false step would
have cost both the horse and its rider their lives. But as has
been said, our horses were sure-footed and sure-eyed, and the
riders took care in passing such places not to pull the reins.

None of the mountain regions I have seen in Japan are so well
cultivated as the environs of Nagasaki. Every place that is some-
what level, though only several hundred square yards in extent, 1s

S)
used for growing some of the innumerable cultivated plants of

the country, principally rice : but as such easily cultivated places
occur in only limited numbers, the inhabitants have by industry
and hard labour changed the steep slopes of the mountains
into a succession of level terraces rising one above the other, all
carefully watered by irrigating conduits.

Mogi is a considerable fishing village lying at the seaside
twenty kilometres south of Nagasaki in a right line, on the
other side of a peninsula occupied by lava beds and_ volcanic
tuffs, which projects from the island Kiushiu, which at that place
is nearly cut asunder by deep fjords. No European lives at the
place, and of course there is no European inn there. But we
got lodgings in the house of one of the principal or richest men
in the village, a maker and seller of saki, or as we would call
him in Swedish, a brandy distiller and publican. Here we were
received in a very friendly manner, in clean and elegant rooms,
and were waited on by the young and very pretty daughter of
our host at the head of a number of other female attendants.
It may be supposed that our place of entertainment had no
resemblance to a public-house in Sweden. We did not witness
here the tipsy behaviour of some human wrecks, and as little
some other incidents which might have reminded us of public-

YOY

690 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP, XVIII.

house life in Europe. All went on in the distillery and the
public-house as calmly and quietly as the work in the house of
a well-to-do country squire in Sweden who does not swear and
is not quarrelsome.

Saki is a liquor made by fermenting and distilling rice. It
is very variable in taste and strength, sometimes resembling
inferior Rhine wine, sometimes more like weak grain brandy.
Along with saki our host also manufactured vinegar, which was
made from rice and saki residues, which with the addition of
some other vegetable substances were allowed to stand and
acidify in large jars ranged in rows in the yard.

When my Parrival became known I was visited by the prin-
cipal men of the village. We were soon good friends by the
help of a friendly reception, cigars and red wine. Among
them the physician of the village’ was especially of great use to
me. As soon as he became aware of the occasion of 1 my visit he
stated that such fossils as I was in search of did indeed occur in
the region, but that they were only accessible at low water. I
immediately visited the place with the physician and my com-
panions from Nagasaki, and soon discovered several strata
containing the finest fossil plants one could desire. During
this and the following day I made a rich collection, partly with
the assistance of a numerous crowd of children who zealously
helped me in collecting. They were partly boys and partly girls,
the latter always having a little one on their backs. These little
children were generally quite bare-headed. Notwithstanding
this they slept with the crown of the head exposed to the hot-
test sun-bath on the backs of their bustling sisters, who jumped
lightly and securely over stocks and stones, and never appeared
to have any idea that the burdens on their backs were at all
unpleasant or troublesome.

According to Dr. A. G. NaTHoRST’s examination, the fossil
plants which I brought home from this place belong to the
more recent Tertiary formation, Our distinguished and acute
vegetable paleontologist fixes attention on the point, that we
would have expected to find here a fossil flora allied to the
recent South Japanese, which is considered to be derived from
a Tertiary flora which closely resembles it. There is, however,
no such correspondence, for impressions of ferns are almost com-
pletely wanting at Mogi, and even of pines there is only a single
leaf-bearing variety which closely resembles the Spitzbergen
form of Sequoia Langsdorfit, Brag. On the other hand, there
are met with, in great abundance, the leaves of a species of
beech nearly allied to the red beech of America, Fagus
ferruginea, Ait., but not resembling the recent Japanese
varieties of the same family. There were found, besides, leaves of
Quercus, Juglans, Populus, Myrica, Salix, Zelkova, Liquidambar,

= S88 EE
SSS
SSS

SSS a
SSS

= EEA
AEE

—=S=S=S=——S

a

|

iit
a
Hil

HI

FOSSIL PLANTS FROM MOGI.

1, 2. Beech Leaves (Fagus ferruginea, Ait., var. pliocena, Nath.). 3. Maple Leaf (Acer Mono,
Max., var. pliocena, Nath.).

692 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [OHAP.

Acer, Prunus, Tilia, &c., resembling leaves of recent types
from the forests of Japan, from the forest flora of America,
or from the temperate flora of the Himalayas. But as the
place where they were found is situated at the sea-shore,
quite close to the southern extremity of Japan, it is singular
that the tropical or sub-tropical elements of the flora of Japan
are here wanting. From this Dr. Nathorst draws the con-
clusion that these are not, as has been hitherto supposed, the
remains of a flora originating in Japan, but that they have since
migrated thither from a former continent situated further to the
south, which has since disappeared. Dr. Nathorst’s examination
is not yet completed, but even if this were the case, want of
space would not permit me to treat of this point at greater
length. I cannot, however, omit to
mention that it was highly agreeable
to be able to connect with the memory
of the Vega expedition at least
a small contribution from more
southerly lands to vegetable paleeon-
tology, a branch of knowledge to
which our preceding Arctic expe-
ditions yielded new additions of
such importance through the fossil
herbaria from luxuriant ancient
forests which they brought to light
from the ice-covered cliffs of Spitz-
bergen and from the basalt-covered
sandstones and schists of the Nour-
soak Peninsula in Greenland, now
so bleak.
After our return from Mogi I
FOSSIL PLANT FROM MOGI. 2 = Q
timed ere eae made an excursion to the coal-mine
pliocena, Nath. at Takasami, situated on an island
some kilometres from the town.
Even here I succeeded in bringing together some further
contributions to the former flora of the region.

After the inhabitants of Nagasaki, too, had given us a grand
parting feast, at which speeches were spoken in Japanese,
Chinese, English, Freneh, German, Italian, Dutch, Russian,
Danish, and Swedish, a proof of the mixture of nationalities
which prevailed there, the Vega again weighed anchor on the
27th October, in order to continue her voyage. We now left
Japan to commence in earnest our return, and on our departure
we were saluted by the crews of two English gun-boats anchored
in the harbour, the Hornet and the Sylvia, manning the yards
and bulwarks. It was natural that the hour of departure, after
fifteen months’ absence from home, should be looked forward to

LON
a

XIX.] THE FUTURE OF JAPAN, 693

with joy. But our joy was mixed with a regretful feeling that
we were so soon compelled to leave—without the hope of ever
returning—the magnificent country and noble people among
whom a development is now going on which probably will not
only give a new awakening to the old cultured races of Eastern
Asia, but will also prepare a new soil for European science,
industry, and art. It is difficult to foresee what new undreamed-
of blossoms and fruit this soil will yield. But the Europeans
are perhaps much mistaken who believe that the question here
is only that of clothing an Asiatic feudal state in a modern
European dress. Rather the day appears to me to dawn of a
time in which the countries round the Mediterranean of eastern
Asia will come to play a great part in the further development
of the human race.

CHAPTER XIX.

Hong Kong and Canton—Stone-polishing Establishments at Canton—
Political Relations in an English Colony—Treatment of the Natives—
Voyage to Labuan—Coal Mines there—Excursion to the shore of
Borneo—Malay Villages—Singapore—Voyage to Ceylon—Point de
Galle—The Gem Mines at Ratnapoora—Visit to a Temple—-Purchase
of Manuscripts—The Population of Ceylon—Dr. Almquist’s Excursion
to the Interior of the Island.

SomE days after our arrival at Yokohama the Vega was
removed to the dock at Yokosuka, there to be protected by
coppering against the boring mussels of the warm seas, so
injurious to the vessel’s hull; the opportunity being also taken
advantage of by me to subject the vessel to some trifling repairs
and alterations in the fitting up, which were desirable because
during the remainder of our voyage we were to sail not in a cold
but in a tropical climate. The work took somewhat longer
time than was reckoned on, so that it was not until the 21st
September that the Vega could leave the dock and return to
Yokohama. It had originally been my intention to remain in
Japan only so long as was necessary for the finishing of this
work, during which time opportunity could be given to the
officers and crew of the Vega to rest after the labours and
sufferings of the long winter, to receive and answer letters from
home, and to gather from the newspapers the most important
occurrences that had taken place during our fourteen months’
absence from the regions which are affected by what takes place
in the world. But as appears from the foregoing narrative, the
delay was longer than had been intended, This indeed was

694 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

caused in some degree by the difficulty of tearing ourselves
away after only a few days’ stay from a people so remarkable, so
lovable, and so hospitable as the Japanese, and from a land so
magnificently endowed by nature. Besides, when the Vega was
again ready for sea, it was so near the time for the change of
the monsoon, that it was not advisable, and would not have been
attended with any saving of time, to sail immediately. For at
that season furious storms are wont to rage in these seas, and
the wind then prevailing is so unfavourable for sailing from
Japan to the southward, that a vessel with the weak steam-
power of the Vega cruising between Japan and Hong Kong
in a head-wind might readily have lost the days saved by an
earlier departure. On the other hand, in the end of October
and the beginning of November we could, during our passage
to Hong Kong, count on a fresh and always favourable breeze.
This took place too, so that, leaving Nagasaki on the 27th
October, we were able to anchor in the harbour of Hong Kong
as early as the 2nd November.

There was of course no prospect of being able to accomplish
anything for the benefit of science during a few ‘days’ stay in
a region which had been examined by naturalists immumerable
times before, but I at all events touched at this harbour that I
might meet the expressed wish of one of the members of the
expedition not to leave eastern Asia without having, during the
voyage of the Vega, seen something of the so much talked of
“heavenly kingdom” so different from all other lands.

For this purpose, however, Hong Kong is an unsuitable place.
This rich and flourishing commercial town, which has been
created by England’s Chinese politics and opium trade, is a
British colony with a European stamp, which has little to show
of the original Chinese folk-life, although the principal part of
its population consists of Chinese. But at the distance of a
few hours by steamer from Hong Kong lies the large old
commercial city of Canton, which, though it has long been open
to Europeans, is still purely Chinese, with its peatstack-like
architecture, its countless population, its temples, prisons,
flower-junks, mandarins, pig-tailed street-boys, &c. Most of the
members of the expedition made an excursion thither, and were
rewarded with innumerable indescribable impressions from
Chinese city life. We were everywhere received by the
natives in a friendly way,! and short as our visit was, it was

' Yet with one very laughable exception. I wished for zoological pur-
poses to get one of the common Chinese rats, and with this object in view
made inquiries through my interpreter at a shed in the street, where rats
were said to be cooked for Chinese epicures. But scarcely had the question
been put, when the old, grave host broke out in a furious storm of abuse,
especially against the interpreter, who was overwhelmed with bitter

xix] ORIENTAL POLISHING, 695

yet sufficient to dissipate the erroneous impressions which a
number of European authors have been pleased to give of the
most populous nation. One soon saw that he has to do with
an earnest and industrious people, who, indeed, apprehend much
—virtue and vice, joy and sorrow—in quite a different way
from us, but towards whom we, on that account, by no means
have the right to assume the position of superiority which the:
European is so ready to claim towards coloured races.

The greater portion of my short stay in Canton I employed
in wandering about, carried in a sedan-chair—horses cannot be
used in the city itself—through the streets, which are partly
covered and are lined with open shops, forming, undoubtedly, the
most remarkable of the many remarkable things that are to be
seen here. The recollection I have of these hours forms, as
often happens when one sees much that is new at once, a
variegated confusion in which I can now only with difficulty
distinguish a connected picture or two. But even if the im-
pressions were clearer and sharper it would be out of the
question to occupy space with a statement of my own super-
ficial observations. If any one wishes to acquire a knowledge
of Chinese manners and customs, he will not want for books on
the country, his studies will rather be impeded by their enormous
number, and often enough by the inferior nature of their con-~
tents. Here I shall only touch upon a single subject, because
it especially interested me as a mineralogist, namely, the
stone-polishing works of Canton.

It is natural that in a country so populous and rich as China,
in which home and home life play so great a ré/e, much money
should be spent on ornaments. We might therefore have
expected that precious stones cut and polished would be used
here on a great scale, but from what I saw at Canton, the
Chinese appear to set much less value on them than either the
Hindoo or the European. It appears besides as if the Chinese
still set greater value on stones with old “oriental polishing,”
i.e. with polished rounded surfaces, than on stones formed ac-
cording to the mode of polishing now common in Europe with
plane facets. Instead the Chinese have a great liking for pecu-
liar, often very well executed, carvings in a great number of
different kinds of stones, among which they set the greatest
value on nephrite, or, as they themselves call it,“ Yu.” It is
made into rings, bracelets, ornaments of all kinds, vases, small
vessels for the table, &e. In Canton there are numerous lapi-
daries and merchants, whose main business is to make and sell
ornaments of this species of stone, which is often valued higher

reproaches for helping a “foreign devil” to make a fool of his own
countrymen. All my protestations were in vain, and I had to go away
with my object unaccomplished.

696 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cuar.

than true precious stones. It was long so important an_ article
of commerce that the place where it was found formed the goal
of special caravan roads which entered China by the Yui gate.
Amber also appears to have a high value put upon it, especially
pieces which inclose insects. Amber is not found in China, but
is brought from Europe, is often fictitious, and contains large
‘Chinese beetles with marks of the needles on which they have
been impaled. Other less valuable mimerals, native or foreign,
are also used, among others, compact varieties of talc or soap-
stone and of pyrophyllite. But works executed in these minerals
do not fetch a price at all comparable to that of nephrite. In
the same shop in which I purchased pieces of nephrite carefully
placed in separate boxes, I found at the bottom of a dusty chest,
along with pieces of quartz and old refuse of various kinds, large
crystals, some of which were exceedingly well formed, of trans-
lucent topaz. They were sold as quartz for a trifle. I bought
besides two pieces of carved topaz, one of which was a large and
very fine natural crystal, with a Chinese inscription engraved on
its terminal surface, which when translated runs thus: “ Literary
studies confer honour and distinction and render a man suitable
for the court.’ The other was a somewhat bluish inch-long
crystal, at one end of which a human figure, perhaps some
Buddhist saint, was sculptured. The polishing of stones is
carried on as a home industry, principally in a special part of
the town. The workshop is commonly at the side of a small
sale counter, in a room on the ground-floor, open to the street.
The cutting and polishing of the stones is done, as at home,
with metal discs and emery or comminuted corundum, which
is said to be found in large quantities in the neighbourhood
of Canton.

Large, commodious, well fitted up, but in their exterior very
unwieldy river steamers, built after American designs, now run
between Hong Kong and Canton. They are commanded by
Europeans. The dietary on board is European, and exceedingly
good. There are separate saloons for Europeans and Chinese.
All over the poop and the after-saloon weapons are hung up so
as to be at hand, in case the vessel should be attacked by
pirates, or, as happened some years ago, a number of them
should mix themselves up with the Chinese passengers with
the intention of plundering the vessel.

Hong Kong was ceded to England in consequence of the war
of 1842. The then inconsiderable fishing village is now one of
the most important commercial cities of the globe. The har-
bour is spacious, affording good anehorage, and is well protected
by a number of large and small granite islands. The city is
built on the largest of these on slopes which rise from the
shore towards the interior of the island. On the highest points

xIXx.] HONG KONG. 697

the wealthiest foreign residents have built their summer’ houses
which are surrounded by beautiful gardens. In winter they live
in the city. We here met with a very gratifymg reception both
from the Governor, Mr. PopE HENNEssyY, and from the other in-
habitants of the town. The former invited Captain Palander and
me to live in the beautiful Governor’s residence, gave a dinner,
arranged a stately official reception in our honour, and pre-
sented to the Expedition a fine collection of dried plants from
the exceedingly well-kept botanical garden of the city, which is
under the charge of Mr. CHARLES ForD; the latter presented
me with an address of welcome at a festive meeting in the
City Hall, specially arranged for the purpose and numerously
attended by the principal men of the town. The meeting was
opened by the Chairman, Mr. KEswick, with a speech of wel-
come, after which Mr. J. B. CoUGHTRIE read and presented the
address, bound in red silk and beautifully illuminated in black,
gold, and red, with 414 signatures, among which many were by
Chinese. The address ended with a hearty congratulation to
us all and a promise of a memorial of our visit to Hong Kong
which should indicate the way in which the Vega expedition
was appreciated there. ‘Some time after our return home
Palander and I received from members of the community of
Hong Kong a splendid silver vase each.

I here embraced with great interest the opportunity, which
my coming in contact with the principal men of the place
afforded, of getting a glance into the political relations which
prevailed in this vigorous and promising colony. At first sight
they appeared to be by no means satisfactory. Peace and
unanimity evidently did not prevail; for dissatisfaction with
the Governor was loudly expressed by many of the Europeans
settled in Hong Kong. He favoured, they said, the Chinese in
an exceedingly partial way, and mitigated their punishments to
such a degree that Hong Kong would soon become a place of
refuge for all the robbers and thieves of Canton. At the time
of our visit an instructive parliamentary debate on a small
scale was proceeding in the Legislative Council of the city.
The controversy was carried on with a certain bitterness, but
with a proper observance of the parliamentary procedure cus-
tomary in the mother country. The eloquent leader of the
opposition had evidently, as is usual in such cases, the general
feeling of the Europeans on his side. For they appeared to be
pretty well agreed that the only means of protecting themselves
against the evil-doers from the great heavenly empire would be
to punish them in an inhuman way when they were taken in
the act.

To an outsider it appeared, however, that the Governor not
only had humanity and justice on his side, but also acted with

698 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

a true insight into the future. When he came to the colony
the corporal punishments to which the Chinese were con-
demned were exceeding barbarous, although mild in comparison
with those common in China—a state of things which the op-
position brought forward in defence of the severer punishments.
Prisoners were repeatedly flogged with “the cat,” often with the
result that they were attacked by incurable consumption ;
they were prepared for the punishment by being subjected for
some time to a starvation-diet of rice and water; they were
branded when they left the prison, &c. Proceeding on the view
that the greatest security for a colony such as Hong Kong hes

co)
in the affection which is cherished for it by the numerous

native population, the Governor had sought to protect it from
unjust attacks by Huropeans. Considering that too barbarous
punishments are likely rather to promote. than to deter from
the commission of crimes, in consequence of the protection the
criminal in such a case may reckon upon from sympathising
fellow-creatures, and that mild punishments are the first con-
dition of a good protective police, the Governor had diminished
the floggings, forbidden the public infliction of the ae
given a reprimand in cases where “by mistake” or by
evasion of the letter of the law extra strokes had been aan
to criminals, exchanged “the regulation cat” for the rattan,
abolished the preliminary starvation-diet and the branding,
improved the prisons, &c. All this was now loudly complained
of by the European merchants, but was approved by the Chinese
subjects in the colony, who were however dissuaded from making
any contrary demonstrations.

When we came afterwards to other English possessions, we
found that the inhabitants were often more or less in conflict
with the authorities, but nowhere was there anything to pre-
vent the opposition from endeavouring to promote their views
by public meetings, by addresses in newspapers and pamphlets.
In this way a pretty active political life arises early, and this
is probably one of the main conditions of the capacity of the
English colonies for self-government, and of their vigour and
influence on the surrounding country.

It will in truth be highly interesting to see what influence
will be exerted on the great neighbouring empire if Mr.
Hennessy’s politics with reference to the Chinese settled in
Hong Kong be carried out, and they be converted into fellow-
citizens conscious that they are protected by law in person and
property, that they do not require to crawl in the dust before
any authority, and that so long as they keep within the limits
of the law they are quite safe from the oppressions of all officials,
and in the enjoyment of all the rights and privileges which the
English law confers upon the citizen.

?

XIX.] POLITICAL LIFE AT HONG KONG. 699

Many of the Europeans settled at Hong Kong were convinced
that for another thousand years one would be justified in using
the expression regarding China: “Thou art what thou wast, and
thou wilt be what thou art.” Others again stated that contact
with Europeans at Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and
the accounts given by the emigrants returning to China in
thousands from California and Australia are by slow degrees
changing the aspect of the world in the “heavenly empire,’ and
thereby preparing for a revolution less violent, but as thorough
as that which has recently taken place in Japan. If this comes
about, China will be a state that must enter into the calculation
when the affairs of the world are settled, and whose power will
weigh very heavy in the scales, at least when the fate of Asia
is concerned. At Hong Kong and Canton the report was
current that the far-sighted Chancellor of the German Empire
had taken this factor into calculation in settling his plans
for the future.

Already the Chinese took part in the European life. <A
number of Chinese names, as I have already said, were attached
to the address that was presented to me; at the Governor's
reception many stout, smiling heads provided with pigtails were
seen; and Chinese had taken part in the meetings at which
the Governor’s scheme of reform was under discussion. There
have also existed in the country from time immemorial secret
societies, which are said only to wait for a favourable opportunity
to endeavour to link their fates to the new paths.’ The observa-
tions that I made at Hong Kong and Canton are, however, too
superficial for me to wish to detain my reader with these
matters. I accordingly point to the numerous works on these
cities published by authors who have lived there as many
months or years as I have days, and proceed to sketch the
continuation of the voyage of the Vega.

Accompanied by the good wishes of many newly acquired
friends, we left the harbour of Hong Kong on the morning of
the 9th November. It was my original intention to steer our
course to Manilla, but the loss of time during our long stay in
Japan compelled me to give up that plan. The course was
shaped, however, not directly for Singapore, but for Labuan, a
small English possession on the north side of Borneo. Its
northern extremity (the coal mine) lies in 5° 33’ N.L. and
115° 12’ E.L. England took possession of Labuan on account
of the coal-seams which are found there, which are of special
importance on account of the situation of the island nearly
in the midst of the large, numerous, and fertile islands of
south-eastern Asia. It was the coal-seams too that attracted

1 See on this subject W. A. Pickering, ‘“‘ Chinese Secret Societies ” (Journal
of the Straits Branch of the R. Asiatic Society, 1878, No. 1, pp. 63-84).

700 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

me to the place. For I wished to see whether I could not,
in the neighbourhood of the equator itself, collect valuable
contributions towards ascertaining the nature of the former
equatorial climate.

We at first made rapid progress, thanks to a fresh and
favourable monsoon wind. But when we reached the so-called
belt of calms, the wind ceased completely, and we had now to
avail ourselves of steam, which, in consequence of the low
power of the Veya’s engine and a strong counter current, carried
us forward so slowly that it was not until the 17th November
that we could anchor in the harbour of Labuan.

The largest of the islands belonging to the colony has, with
a pretty considerable breadth, a length of 10’ from N.E. to 8.W.
It is inhabited by some thousands (3,300 in 1863) of Chinese
and Malays, together with a few Englishmen, who are either
crown officials or employed at the coal mine. The north part
of the island has a height of 140 metres above the sea, but
towards the south the Jand sinks to an extensive sandy plain,
closely overgrown with bushy thickets and traversed by low
marshes. Most of the inhabitants live along the shore of the
harbour which bears the now, or perhaps only for the present,
indispensable name for English colonies (which on that account
conveys little information) of Victoria. The Governor's fine
residence lies at a little distance from the harbour town in the
interior of the island, the coal mine on its north side. At the
time of our visit the coal company had recently gone into
liquidation, and work had therefore been stopped at the mine,
but it was hoped that it would soon be resumed. The sandy
plain is of little fertility in comparison with the neighbouring
tropical lands. It had recently been burned, and was therefore
for the most part covered only with bushes, among which stems
of high, dried-up, half-burned trees raised themselves, giving to
the landscape a resemblance to a northern forest devastated by
an accidental fire. In consequence of the fire which had thus
passed over the island the plain which, when Jooked at from a
distance appeared to be completely even, was seen everywhere
to be studded with crater-formed depressions in the sand, quite
similar to the os-pits in the osar of Scandinavia! On the north
side there was sandstone rock rising from the sea with a steep
slope six to fifteen metres high. Here tropical nature appeared
in all its luxuriance, principally in the valleys which the small
streams had excavated in the sandstone strata.

The coal mine is sunk on coal-seams, which come to the surface
on the north side of the island. The seams, according to the
information I received on the spot, are four im number, with a

* Concerning their formation and origin see a paper by K,. Nordenskiéld
in Ofversigt af Vet.-akad, Férh. 1870, p. 29.

XIX. ] THE COAL-SEAMS OF LABUAN. 701

thickness of 3:3, 0:9, 0'4 and 1:0 metre. They dip at an angle
of 30° towards the horizon, and are separated from each other by
strata of clay and hard sandstone, which together have a thickness
of about fifty metres. Above the uppermost coal-seam there are
besides very thick strata of black clay-slate, white hard sandstone
with bands of clay, loose sandstone, sandstone mixed with coal,
and finally considerable layers of clay-slate and sandstone, which
contain fossil marine crustacea, resembling those of the present
time. The strata which lie between or in the immediate
neighbourhood of the coal seams do not contain any other fossils
than those vegetable remains, which are to be described farther
on. Thirty kilometres south of the mine a nearly vertical coal-
seam comes to the surface near the harbour, probably belonging
to a much older period than that referred to above ; and out in
the sea, eighteen kilometres from the shore north of the harbour,
petroleum rises from the sea-bottom. The manager of the mine
supposed from this that the coal-seams came to the surface again
at this place. The coal-seams of Labuan are besides, notwith-
standing their position in the middle of an enormous, circular,
volcanic chain, remarkably free from faults, which shows that
the region, during the immense time which has elapsed since
these strata have been deposited, has been protected from
earthquakes. Even now, according to Wallace, earthquakes
are scarcely known in this part of Borneo.

From what has been stated above we may conclude that the
coal, sand, and clay strata were deposited in a valley-depression
occupied by luxuriant marshy grounds, cut off from the sea, in
the extensive land which formly occupied considerable spaces
of the sea between the Australian Islands and the continent
of Asia. A similar state of things must besides have prevailed
over a considerable portion of Borneo. On that island there are
coal-seams under approximately similar circumstances to those
on Labuan. So far as I know, however, they have not hitherto
been closely examined with respect to vegetable palzontology.

At Labuan fossil plants are found, though very sparingly,
imbedded in balls of clay ironstone from strata above the two
lowermost coal-seams. The upper coal-seams are besides ex-
ceedingly rich in resin, which crosses the coal in large veins.
From the thickness and conversion into a hard sandstone of the
layers of sand lying between and above the coal-seams we may
conclude that a very long time, probably hundreds of thousands
or millions of years have passed since these coal-seams were
formed. They also belong to a quite recent period, durmg which
the vegetation in these regions varied perhaps only to a slight
extent from that of the present time. It is, however, too early
to express one’s self on this subject, before the fossils which we
brought home have been examined by Dr. Nathorst.

702 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

Coal mining was stopped for the time, but orders were
expected by every post to resume work. The road between the
mine and the harbour town was at all events pretty well kept,
and Mr. Cooke, one of the directors of the company, still lived
at the place. He showed me all possible hospitality during the
time I remained on the north side of the island for the purpose
of collecting fossils. The rest of the time I was the guest of the
acting Governor, Mr. TREACHER, a young and amiable man, who
showed me several collections in natural history from Labuan
and the neighbouring parts of Borneo, and after our return to
Kurope sent me a collection of leaves and fruit of the kinds of
trees which now grow on the island. I expect that this
collection will be very instructive in the study of the fossil plants
we brought home with us.

At the steep shore banks on the north coast very fine sections
of the sandstone strata, which le under and above the coal, are
visible. While I went along the shore in order to examine
these, I visited some Malay huts built on poles. They were
surrounded at flood tide by water, at ebb by the dry beach, bare
of all vegetation. In order to get inside these huts one must
climb a ladder two to two sal a half metres high, standing
towards the sea. The houses have the same appearance as a
warehouse by the seaside at home, and are built very slightly.
The floor consisted of a few rattling bamboo splints lying loose,
and so thin that I feared they would give way when I stepped
upon them, The household articles consisted only of some mats
and a pair of cooking vessels. I saw no fireplace ; probably fire
was lighted on the beach. I could see no reason why this place
should be chosen as a dwelling in preference to the neighbouring
shore with its luxuriant vegetation, which at the same time was
not at all swampy, unless it was for the coolness which arises
from the airy situation on the beach, and the protection which
the poles give from the thousands of crawling animals which
swarm in the grassy meadows of tropical regions. It is
probable also that the mosquitos are less troublesome along
the sea-shore than farther into the interior of the country.

Some of my companions saw similar huts durimg an excursion,
which they undertook in the steam launch, to the mouth of
a large river debouching on the neighbouring coast of Borneo.
Regarding this excursion Dr. Stuxberg gives the following
report

“On the 19th November Palander, Bove, and I, together with
two men, undertook an excursion in the steam launch of the
Vega to the river Kalias debouching right opposite to Labuan.
We started at dawn, a little after six o’clock. The course was
shaped first north of Pappan Island, then between the many

XIX.] EXCURSION TO THE KALIAS. 703

shoals that le between it and the considerably larger Daat
Island, and finally south of the latter island.

“Pappan Island is a small beautiful island, clothed down to
high-water mark with a dark green primeval forest. On Daat
Island, on the contrary, the primeval forest on the east side has
been cut down, and has given place to a new plantation of cocoa-
nut trees, the work of a former physician on Labuan, which
yields its present owner a considerable revenue.

“We had no little difficulty in finding a way over the sandy
bar, which is deposited in front of the river mouth at a distance
of a nautical mile and a half to three miles from the coast
of Borneo. After several attempts in the course of an hour
we at last succeeded in finding the deep channel which leads to
the river, It runs close to the mainland on the north side, from
Kalias Point to the river mouth proper. At the bar the depth
was only a metre, in the deep channel, it varied between 3°5 and
7 metres, in the river mouth it was fourteen to eighteen metres
and sometimes more.

“On the south side of the tongue of land, which projects north
of the mouth ef the Kalias, were found two Malay villages,
whose inhabitants appeared to view our passage up the river
with curious glances. A crowd of half or wholly naked children
began a race along the shore, as soon as they set eyes upon the
fast steam launch, probably in order to keep us in sight as long
as possible. We now had deep water and steamed up the river
without delay. The longed-for visit to some of the Malay
villages we thus reserved till our return.

“We steamed about ten or twelve English miles up one of the
many winding river arms, when the limited depth compelled us
to turn. The vegetation on the mainland, as on the shores of
the islands lying near the river-mouth, was everywhere so close
that it was nearly impossible to find a place where we could
land ; everywhere there was the impenetrable primeval forest.
Next the mouth of the river this consisted of tall, shady broad-
leaved trees, which all had dark green, lustrous, large leaves.
Some were in flower, others bore fruit. The greater number
consisted of fig trees, whose numerous air-roots twining close
on each other formed an impenctrable fence at the river bank,
These air-root-bearing trees play an important 7é/e in increasing
the area of the land and diminishing that of the water. They
send their strong air-roots from the branches and stem far out
into the water, and when the roots have reached the bottom,
and pushed their way into the mud, they make, by the close
basket-work they form, an excellent binding medium for all the
new mud which the river carries with it from the higher ground
in the interior. It has struck me that the air-root-bearing trees
form one of the most important means for the rapid increase of

704 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

the alluvial land on Borneo. Farther up the river there com-
menced large stretches of a species of palm, which with its
somewhat lighter green and its long sheath-formed leaves was
sharply distinguished from the rest of the forest. Sometimes
the banks on one side were covered with palms only, on the
other with fig-trees only. The palm jungles were not so
impenetrable as the fig-tree thickets; the latter preferred the
more swampy hollows, while the palms on the other hand grew
on the more sandy and less marshy places. Of herbs and
underwood there was nowhere any trace.

“During the river voyage we saw now and then single green-
coloured kingfishers flying about, and a honeysucker or two, but
they were not nearly so numerous as might have been expected
in this purely tropical zone. We saw some apes leaping in pairs
among the trees, and Palander succeeded in shooting a male.
Alligators from one to one and a half metre in length, frightened
by the noise of the propeller, throw themselves suddenly into the
water. Smal! land lizards with web-feet jumped forward with
surprising rapidity on the water near the banks. This was all
we saw of the higher animals.

“ After a run of two hours, during which we examined the
banks carefully in order to find a landing place, we lay to at the
best possible place for seeing what the lower fauna had to offer.
It was no easy matter to get to land. The ground was so muddy
that we sank to the knees, and could make our way through the
wood only by walking on an intermediate layer of palm leaves
and fallen branches. The search for evertebrates did not yield
very much, A half-score mollusca, among them a very re-
markable naked leech of quite the same colour-marking and
raggedness as the bark of tree on which it lived, was all that
we could find here. It struck me as very peculiar not to find
a single insect group represented. The remarkable poverty in
animals must be ascribed, I believe, to the complete absence
of herbs and underwood. Animal life was as poor as vegetation
was luxuriant and various in different places. Over the landscape
a peculiar quietness and stillness rested.

“ During our return we visited one of the two Malay villages
mentioned: above. It consisted of ten different houses, which
were built on tall and stout poles out in the water at the mouth
of the river, about six to ten metres from the shore. All the
houses were built on a common large platform of thick bamboo,
which was about a man’s height above the water. At night
angles to the beach there floated long beams, one end being
connected with the land, while the other was anchored close to
the platform. From this anchored end a plank rose at a steep
angle to the platform. Communication with land was kept up in
this way. The houses were nearly all quadrangular, and contained

xx, | VISIT TO MALAY VILLAGES, 765

a single room, had raised, not flat roofs, and were provided at
one of the shorter sides, near one corner, with a high rectangular
door opening, which certainly was not intended to be closed, and
on one of the long sides with a square window-opening. The
building material was bamboo, from eight to eleven centimetres
in thickness, mostly whole, but sometimes cleft. The roof had
a thin layer of palm leaves upon it to keep out the rain. The -
house in its entirety resembled a cage of spills to which the
least puff of wind had always free entrance. The floor bent
and yielded much, and at the same time was so weak that one
could not walk upon it without being afraid of falling through.
One half, right opposite the door opening, was overlaid with a
thin mat of some plant; it was evidently the sleeping place of
the family. Some pieces of cloth was all the clothing we could
discover. Of household articles there was scarcely any trace.
Nor were there any weapons, arrows, or bows. The fireplace
was in one corner of the room; it consisted of an immense ash-
heap on some low stones. Beside it stood a rather dirty iron
pot. All refuse from meals, bones and mollusc-shells, had been
thrown into the water under the floor; there lay now a regular
culture-layer, a couple of feet higher than the surrounding
sea-bottom, consisting for the most part of mussel shells. The
floor of the room was very dirty and black ; it looked as if it
had never been in contact with a drop of water. The interior
of the whole house struck one as being as poor and wretched as
that of a Chukch tent. Its inhabitants appeared scarcely to own
more than they stood or walked in, 7c. for every person a large
piece of cloth round the waist. Small boats lay moored to the
platform. They were nothing else than tree-stems hollowed
out, without any separate planks at the sides, at most two to
two and a half metres long, and capable of carrying only two
men. We had met such a boat a little way up the river, rowed
by two youths, and laden with palm-leaves; it was not more
than five to eight centimetres above the water, and appeared as
if it would capsize with the least indiscreet movement on the
part of the boatmen. Some dogs of middle size went about
loose on the platform; they were at first shy and suspicious
of us, and growled a little, but soon allowed themselves to be
caressed.

“Of the natives, the Malays, unfortunately we saw at close
quarters only some middle-aged men. When we approached the
long floating beams which led to the platform, the women and
children fled precipitately out of the nearest houses, and by the
time we got to the platform, they had fortified themselves in a
distant house, where they sat motionless and cast curious glances
at us through a hole. The children showed their fear of us by
loud crying, kept up the whole time. When we attempted to

ZZ

706 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHar.

approach the fugitives, they hastened farther away. We won
their favour with some cigarettes, which Palander distributed
among them, and with which they were evidently delighted.
They had a serious, reserved, perhaps rather indifferent appear- |
ance. A. physiognomist would perhaps have had difficulty in
saying whether their countenances expressed ferocity, determi-
nation, or indifference. It appeared as if it would not be
easy to bring forth a look of mirth or gladness on their faces.

“ At the Malay villages which we visited, some Chinese had a
sago plantation. With some Malays as workmen in their
service, they were now employed in loading a vessel of lght
draught with sago meal, of which they appeared to have a large
quantity in store. Another vessel had just taken on board its
cargo and was starting. The Chinese here made the same favour-
able impression on me as their countrymen, whom I had seen
before in Japan and Hong Kong, and whom I was afterwards to
see at Singapore—the impression of an exceedingly industrious,
thriving, contented, and cleanly race.”

Labuan strikes me as a very suitable starting-point for a
naturalist who may wish to explore Borneo. Surrounded by
Europeans, but undisturbed by the distractions of a large city,
he would have an opportunity of accustoming himself to the
climate, which, though rather warm for a dweller in the North,
is by no means unhealthy, to get acquainted with the manners
and customs of the natives, to acquire a knowledge of the com-
monest forms of the luxuriant nature, which would otherwise be
apt to overwhelm the northern naturalist ; in a word, to make
such preparations for the journey as are necessary to secure its
success. This region of Borneo appears to be one of the least
known parts of the Indian Archipelago, and one need not go
far from the coast to come to places which are never visited
by Europeans. Labuan itself and its immediate neighbourhood
have much that is interesting to offer to the observer, and from
thence short excursions may be made with ease and without
excessive cost to the territory of the Sultan of Bruni, who is
favourable to foreigners, and to the mountain Kini Balu, near the
northern extremity of Borneo, which is 4,175 metres high, and
visible from Labuan. When, before our arrival at Japan, I
arranged the plan of our voyage home, I included in it a visit
to this mountain, at whose summit a comparatively severe
climate must prevail, and whose flora and fauna, therefore, not-
withstanding its equatorial position, must offer many points of
comparison with those of the lands of the north. But when I
was told that the excursion would require weeks, I had to give
it up

On the 12th November, the Vega again weighed anchor to

XIX.] BORNEO. 707

continue her voyage by Singapore to Point de Galle in Ceylon.
Between Labuan and Singapore our progress was but slow, in
consequence of the calm which, as might have been foreseen ,
prevailed in the sea west of Borneo.

Singapore is situated exactly halfway, when a vessel, starting
from Sweden, circumnavigates Asia and Europe. We staid here
from the 28th November to the 4th December, very hospitably
received by the citizens of the town, both European and Asiatic,
who seemed to vie with the inhabitants of Hong Kong in
enthusiasm for the voyage of the Vega. A Babel-like confusion
of speech prevails in the town from the men of so many different
nationalities who live here: Chinese, Malays, Klings, Bengalees,
Parsees, Singhalese, Negroes, Arabs, &c. But our stay was all
too short for independent studies of the customs and mode of
life of these different races, or of the rich vegetable and animal
worlds in the neighbourhood of the town. I must refer those
who are interested in these subjects to previous descriptions of
that region, and to the abundant contributions to a knowledge
of it which have been published by the Straits Branch of
the Asiatic Society, which was founded here on the 4th
November, 1877.

We arrived at Galle on the 15th December, having during
our passage from Singapore had a pretty steady and favourable
monsoon. While sailing through the Straits of Malacca strong
ball-lightning was often seen a little after sunset. The electrical
discharges appeared to go on principally from the mountain
heights on both sides of the Straits.

I allowed the Vega to remain in the harbour of Poimt de
Galle, partly to wait for the mail, partly to give Dr. Almquist
an opportunity of collecting lichens on some of the high moun-
tain summits in the interior of the island, and Dr. Kjellman
of examining its alge, while I myself would have time to
visit the famous gem-diggings of Ceylon. The return was as
‘good as could have been expected considering our short stay
at the place. Dr. Almquist’s collection of lichens from the
highest mountain of Ceylon, Pedrotalagalla, 2,500 metres high,
was very large; Kjellman, by the help of a diver, made a not
inconsiderable collection of algze from the neighbourhood of the
harbour; and from an excursion which I undertook in company
with Mr. ALEXANDER C. Drxon, of Colombo, to Ratnapoora,
the town of gems, where we were received with special kindness
by Mr. Corin Murray, assistant government agent, I brought
home a fine collection of the minerals of Ceylon.

Precious stones occur in Ceylon mainly in sand beds, especially
at places where streams of water have flowed which have rolled,
crumbled down, and washed away a large part of the softer
constituents of the sand, so that a gravel has been left remaining

Z2Z2

708 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. XIX.

which contains considerably more of the harder precious stone
layer than the original sandy strata, or the rock from which they
originated. Where this natural washing ends, the gem collector
begins. He searches for a suitable valiey, digs down a greater
or less depth from the surface to the layer of clay mixed with
coarse sand resting on the rock, which experience has taught
him to contain gems. At the washings which I saw, the
clayey gravel was taken out of this layer and laid by the side of
the hole until three or four cubic metres of it were collected.
It was then carried, in shallow, bowl-formed baskets from half
a metre to a metre in diameter, to a neighbouring river, where
it was washed until all the clay was carried away from the sand.
The gems were then picked out, a person with a glance of
the eye examining the wet surface of the sand and collecting
whatever:had more or less appearance of a precious stone. He
then skimmed away with the palm of the hand the upper stratum
of sand, and went on in the same way with that below it until
the whole mass was examined. The certainty with which he
judged in a moment whether there was anything of value among
the many thousand grains of sand was wonderful. I endeavoured
in a very considerable heap of the gravel thus hastily examined,
to find a single small piece of precious stone which had escaped
the glance of the examiner, but without success.

The yield is very variable, sometimes abundant, sometimes
very small, and though precious stones found in Ceylon are
yearly sold for large sums, the industry on the whole is
unprofitable, although now and then a favourite of fortune has
been enriched by it. The English authorities, therefore, with
full justification, consider it demoralising and unfavourable to
the development of the otherwise abundant natural resources
of the region. For the numerous loose population devotes itself
rather to the easy search for precious stones, which is as exciting

1 Emerson ‘l'ennent says on the subject :—The gem collectors penetrate
through the recent strata of gravel to the depth of from ten to twenty
feet in order to reach a lower deposit, distinguished by the name of Nellan,
in which the objects of their search are found. ‘This is of so early a
formation that it underlies the present beds of rivers, and is generally
separated from them or from the superincumbent gravel bya hard crust
(called Kadua), a few inches in thickness, and so consolidated as to have
somewhat the appearance of laterite or sun-burnt brick, The nellan is for
the most part horizontal, but occasionally it is raised into an incline as it
approaches the base of the hills. It appears to have been deposited pre-
vious to the eruption of the basalt, on which in some places it reclines,
and to have undergone some alteration from the contact. It consists of
water-worn pebbles firmly imbedded in clay, and occasionally there occur
large lumps of granite and gneiss, in the hollows under which, as well as
in “ pockets ” in the clay (which from their shape the natives denominate
‘elephants’ footsteps ”), gems are frequently found in groups, as if washed
in by the current. (E, Tennent, Ceylon. London, 1860, i. p. 34.)

RA.

200

INGS AT RATNAE

EM DIGG

710 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

as play, than to the severer but surer labours of agriculture, and
when at any time a rich find is made, it is speedily squandered,
without a thought of saving for the times when the yield is
little or nothmg. A large number of the precious stones are
polished at special polishing places at Ratnapoora, but the work
is very bad, so that the stones which come into the market are
often irregular, and have uneven, curved, ill-polished surfaces.
Most of them perhaps are sold in the Hastern and Western
Indian peninsulas and other parts of Asia, but many are
also exported to Europe. The precious stones which are
principally found at Ratnapoora, consist of sapphires, com-
monly blue, but sometimes yellow or violet, sometimes even
completely colourless. In the last case they have a lustre
resembling that of the diamond Rubies I saw here only in
limited numbers.

The precious stones occur in nearly every river valley which
runs from the mountain heights in the interior of the island
down to the low land. According to a statement by
Mr. Tennent (1. p. 33), the river-sand at many places contains
so much of the harder minerals that it may be used directly
for the polishing of other stones. The same writer, or more
correctly Dr. GYGAXx, who appears to have written the rather
scanty mineralogical contributions to Tennent’s famous work,
states that a more abundant yield ought to be obtained by
working in the solid rock than by the usual method. This idea
is completely opposed to the experience of mineralogy. The
finest gems, the largest gold nuggets, as is well known, are
never, or almost never, found in solid rock, but in loose earthy
layers. In such layers in Ceylon the abundance of precious
stones, that is to say, of minerals which are hard, translucent,
and strongly lustrous, is very great, and enormous sums would
be obtained if we could add up the value of the mass of
precious stones which have been found here for thousands of
years back. Already Marco Polo says of Ceylon: “In ista
insula nascuntur boni et nobiles rubini et non nascuntur in
aliquo loco plus. Et hic nascuntur zafiri et topazi, ametisti,
et aliquee aliz petree pretiose, et rex istius insule habet
pulcriorem rubinum de mundo.”

But some one perhaps will ask, where is the mother-rock of
all these treasures in the soil of Ceylon? The question is
easily answered. All these minerals have once been imbedded
in the granitic gneiss, which is the principal rock of the
region.

In speaking of granite or gneiss in southern lands, or at least

} Diamonds are wanting in Ceylon. And neither gold nor platinum
appears to occur in noteworthy quantity in the gem gravel.

XIX, | GEOLOGICAL FORMATION OF THE COUNTRY. 711

in the southern lands we now visited, I must, in the first place,
point out that these rocks next the surface of the earth in the
south have a much greater resemblance to strata of sand, gravel,
and clay than to our granite or gneiss rocks, the type of what
is lasting, hard, and unchangeable. The high coast hills, which
surround the Inland Sea of Japan, resemble, when seen from
the sea, ridges of sand (osa7) with sides partly clothed with
wood, partly sandy slopes of a light yellow colour, covered by
no vegetation. On a closer examination, however, we find that
the supposed sandy ridges consist of weathered granitic rocks,
in which all possible intermediate stages may be seen between
the solid rock and the loose sand. The sand is not stratified,
and contains large, loose, rounded blocks im situ, completely
resembling the erratic blocks in Sweden, although with a more
rugged surface. The boundary between the unweathered
granite and that which has been converted into sand is often
so sharp that a stroke of the hammer separates the crust of
granitic sand from the granite blocks. They have an almost
fresh surface, and a couple of millimetres within the boundary
the rock is quite unaltered. . No formation of clay takes place,
and the alteration to which the rocks are subjected therefore
consists in a crumbling or formation of sand, and not, or at.
least only to a very small extent, in a chemical change. Even
at Hong Kong the principal rock consisted of granite. Here
too the surface of the granite rock was quite altered to a very
considerable depth, not however to sand, but to a fine, often
reddish, clay, thus in quite a different way from that on the
coast of the Inland Sea of Japan. Here too one could at many
places follow completely the change of the hard granite mass
to a clay which still lay in situ, but without its being possible
to draw so sharp a boundary between the primitive rock and
the newly-formed loose earthy layers as at the first-named
place. We had opportunities of observing a similar crumbling
down of the hard granite at every road-section between Galle,
Colombo, and Ratnapoora, with the difference that the granite
and gneiss here crumbled down to a coarse sand, which was
again bound together by newly-formed hydrated peroxide of
iron to a peculiar porous sandstone, called by the natives
cabook. This sandstone forms the layer lymg next the rock in
nearly all the hills on that part of the island which we visited.
It evidently belongs to an earlier geological period than the
Quaternary, for it is older than the recent formation of valleys
and rivers. The cabook often contains large, rounded, un-
weathered granite blocks, quite resembling the rolled-stone
blocks in Sweden. In this way there arise at places where the
cabook stratum has again been broken up and washed away by
currents of water, formations which are so bewilderingly lke

712 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA, [CHAP.

the ridges (osar) and hills with erratic blocks in Sweden and
Finland that I was astonished when I saw them. I was com-
pelled to resort to the evidence of the palms to convince myself
that 1t was not an illusion which unrolled before me the well-
known contours from the downs of my native land. An accurate
study of the sandy hills on the Inland Sea of Japan, of the clay
cliffs of Hong Kong, and the cabook of Ceylon would certainly
yield very unexpected contributions to an explanation of the
way in which the sand and rolled-stone osar of Scandinavia
have first arisen. It would show that much which the Swedish
geologists still consider to be glacial gravel transported by water
and ice, is only the product of a process of weathering or, more
correctly, fallmg asunder, which has gone on in Sweden also on
an enormous scale. Even a portion of our Quaternary clays
have perhaps had a similar origin, and we find here a simple
explanation of the important circumstance, which is not sufh-
ciently attended to by our geologists, that often all the erratic
blocks at a place are of the same kind, and resemble in their
nature the underlying or neighbouring rocks.

It is this weathering process which has originated the gem
sand of Ceylon. Precious stones have been found disseminated
in limited numbers in the granite converted into cabook. In
weathering, the difficultly decomposable precious stones have
not been attacked, or attacked only to a limited extent. They
have therefore retained their original form and_ hardness.
When in the course of thousands of years streams of water
have flowed over the layers of cabook, their soft, already half-
weathered constituents have been for the most part changed
into a fine mud, and as such washed away, while the hard gems
have only been inconsiderably rounded and little diminished in
size. The current of water therefore has not been able to wash
them far away from the place where they were originally im-
bedded in the rock, and we now find them collected in the
gravel-bed, resting for the most part on the fundamental rock
which the stream has left behind, and which afterwards, when
the water has changed its course, has been again covered by
new layers of mud, clay, and sand. It is this gravel-bed which
the natives call wellan, and from which they chiefly get their
treasures of precious stones.

Of all the kinds of stones which are used as ornaments there
are both noble and common varieties, without there being any
perceptible difference in their chemical composition. The most
skilful chemist would thus have difficulty in finding in their
chemical composition the least difference between corundum and
sapphire or ruby, between common beryl and emerald, between
the precious and the common topaz, between the hyacinth and
the common zircon, between precious and common spinel; and

SIX, -- COMMON AND PRECIOUS STONES. 713

every mineralogist knows that there are innumerable inter-
mediate stages between these minerals which are so dissimilar
though absolutely identical in composition. This gave the old

naturalists occasion to speak of ripe and unripe precious stones.
They said that in order to ripen precious stones the heat of the
south was required. This transference of well-known circum-
stances from the vegetable to the mineral kingdom is certainly
without justification, It points however to a remarkable and
hitherto unexplained circumstance, namely, that the occurrence
of precious stones is, with few exceptions, confined to southern
regions! Diamonds are found in noteworthy number only in
India, Borneo, Brazil, and the Transvaal. Tropical America is
the home-land of the emerald, Brazil of the topaz, Ceylon of
the sapphire and the hyacinth, Pegu of the ruby, and Persia of
the turquoise, With the exception of the diamond the same
stones are found also in the north, but in a common form.
Thus common sapphire (corundum) is found in Gellivare iron
ore so plentifully that the ore from certain openings is difficult
to smelt. Common topaz is found in masses by the hundred-
weight in the neighbourhood of Falun ; common emerald is
found in thick crystals several feet in length in felspar quarries,
in Roslagen, and in Tammela and Kisko parishes in Finland ;

common spinel occurs abundantly in Aker limestone quarry ;
common zircon at Brevig in Norway, and turquoise-like but
badly coloured stones at Vestana in Skane. True precious
stones, on the other hand, are not found at any of these places.
Another remarkable fact in connection with precious stones is
that most of those that come into the market are not found in
the solid rock, but as loose grains in sand-beds. True jewel
mines are few, unproductive, and easily exhausted. From this
one would be inclined to suppose that precious stones actually
undergo an ennobling process in the warm soil of the south.
During the excursion I undertook from Galle to Ratnapoora, I
visited a number of temples in order to procure Pali, Singhalese,
and Sanscrit manuscripts; and I put myself in communication
with various natives who were supposed to possess such manu-
scripts. They are now very difficult to get at, and the collection
I made was not very large. The books which the temples
wished to dispose of have long ago been eagerly brought
up by private collectors or handed over to public museums,
for example, to the Ceylon Government Oriental Library

1 The only considerable exceptions from this are two localities for pre-
cious stones in Southern Siberia and the occurrence of precious opal in
Hungary. The latter, however, in consequence of defective hardness
and translucency, can scarcely be reckoned among the true precious
stones.

714 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

established at Colombo.! The collector who remains a consider-
able time in the region, may however be able to reap a rich after-
harvest, less of the classical works preserved in the temples
than of the smaller popular writings in the hands of private
persons.

We see in Ceylon innumerable descendants of the races
who repeatedly subdued larger or smaller portions of the island,
or carried on traffic there, as Moormen (Arabs), Hindoos, Jews,
Portuguese, Dutchmen, Englishmen, &c., but the main body of
the people at all events varies very little, and still consists of
the two allied races, Tamils and Singhalese, who for thousands
of years back have been settled here. The colour of their
skin is very dark, almost black, their hair is not woolly, their
features are regular, and their build is exceedingly fine. The
children especially, who, while they are small, often go completely
naked, with their regular features, their large eyes, and fresh
plump bodies, are veritable types of beauty, and the same holds
true of most of the youths. Instead of buyimg im one of the

capitals of Europe the right to draw models, often enough with
forms which leave much to desire, and which must be used
without distinction for Greek or Northern divinities, for heroes
or savants of the present or former times, an artist ought to
make tours of study to the lands of the south, where man does
not need to protect himself from the cold with clothes, and
where accordingly nakedness is the rule, at least among the
poorer classes. The dress which is worn here 1s commonly
convenient and tasteful. Among the Singhalese it consists of a
piece of cloth wound round the middle, which hangs down to
the knees. The men, who still prefer the convenient national
dress to the European, go with the upper part of the body bare.
The long hair is held together with a comb which goes right
over the head, and among the rich has a large four-cornered
projection at the crown. The women protect the upper part
of the body with a thin cotton jacket. The priests wear a
yellow piece of cloth diagonally over one shoulder. The naked

1 The Catalogue of Pali, Singhalese, and Sanscrit Manuscripts in the
Ceylon Gov ernment Oriental Library, Colombo, 1876, includes :—

41 Buddhist canonical books.
71 Other religious writings.
25 Historical works, traditions.
29 Philological works.
16 Literary works.
6 Works on Medicine, Astronomy, &c.

According to Emerson Tennent (i. p. 515), the Rev. R. Spence Hardy has
in the Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Asiatic Society for 1848 given
the titles of 467 works in Pali, Sanskrit, and Elu, collected by himself
during his residence in Ceylon. Of these about eighty are in Sanskrit, 150
in Elu or Singhalese, and the remainder in Pali.

XIX. TEMPLES IN CEYLON. 715

children are ornamented with metal bracelets and with a metal
chain round the waist, from which a little plate hangs down
between the legs. This plate is often of silver or gold, and is
looked upon as an amulet.

The huts of the working men are in general very small, built
of earth or cabook-bricks, and are rather to be considered as sheds
for protection from the rain and sunshine than as houses in the
European sense. The richer Singhalese live in extensive
“verandas’”’ which are almost open, and are divided into rooms
by thin panels, resembling in this respect the Japanese houses.
The Japanese genius for ornament, their excellent taste and
skill in execution, are however wanting here, but it must also
be admitted that in these respects the Japanese stand first
among all the peoples of the earth.

In the seaport towns the Singhalese are insufferable by their
begging, their loquacity, and the unpleasant custom they have of
asking up to ten times as much, while making a bargain, as they
are pleased to accept in the end. In the interior of the country
the state of things in this respect is much better.

Among the temples which I visited in order to procure Pali
books was the so-called “devil's” temple at Ratnapoora, the
stateliest idol-house I saw in Ceylon. Most of the temples
were built of wood; all were exceedingly unpretentious, and
without the least trace of style. The numerous priests and
temple attendants lived in rather squalid and disorderly dwellings
in the neighbourhood of the temple. They received me in a
friendly way and showed me their books, of which they occa-
sionally sold some. The negotiation several times ended ‘by the
priest presenting me with the book I wished to purchase and
positively refusing to receive compensation in any form. On
one occasion the priest stated that he himself was prevented by
the precepts of his religion from receiving the purchase-money
agreed upon, but said that I might hand.it over to some of the
persons standing round. At two of the priests’ houses there was
a swarm of school-children, who ran busily about with their
palm-leaf writing books and writing implements.

The temples were very different in their arrangements, pro-
bably on account of the dissimilar usages of the various Buddhist
sects to which they belonged. A temple near Colombo contained
a large number of wooden images and paintings of gods, or men
of more than human size. Most of them stood upright like a
guard round a sitting Buddha. I could not observe any dislike
on the part of the priests to take the foreigner round their
temples. The key, however, was sometimes wanting to some
repository, whose contents they were perhaps unwilling to
desecrate by showing them to the unbeliever. This was, for

instance, the case with the press which contained the devil's

716 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

bow and arrows, in the temple at Ratnapoora. The temple
vessels besides were exceedingly ugly, tasteless, and ill-kept. I
seldom saw anything that showed any sign of taste, art, and
orderliness. How different from Japan, where all the swords,
lacquer work, braziers, teacups, &c., kept in the better temples
would deserve a place in some of the art museums of Europe.
In the sketch of the first voyage from N ovaya Zemlya to
Ceylon, a countryman of Lidner can scarcely avoid giving a

WER

STATUES IN A TEMPLE IN CEYLON.

picture of “Ceylon’s burned up vales.” In this respect the
following extract from a letter from Dr. Almquist, sketching his
journey to the interior of the island may be instructive :—

“Three hours after our arrival at Point de Galle I sat properly
stowed away in the mail-coach en route for Colombo. As
travellmg companions I had a European and two Singhalese.
As it was already pretty dusk in the evening there was not much
of the surrounding landscape visible. We went on the whole

BXIX: | DR. ALMQUIST’S EXCURSION. aie

night through a forest of tall coco-nut trees whose dark tops
were visible far up in the air against the somewhat lighter sky.
It was peculiar to see the number of fire-flies flying in every
direction, and at every wing-stroke emiting a bright flash. The
night air had the warm moistness which is so agreeable in the
tropics. Now and then the sound of the sea penetrated to our
ears. For we followed the west coast in a northerly direction.
More could not be observed in the course of the night, and all
the passengers were soon sunk in deep sleep.

“ After seven hours’ brisk trot we came to a railway station
-and continued our journey by rail to Colombo, the capital of
Ceylon. As there was nothing special to see or do there, I went
on without stopping by the railway, which here bends from the
coast to Kandy and other places. The landscape now soon
became grander and grander. We had indeed before seen
tropical vegetation at several places, but of the luxuriance which
here struck the eye we had no conception. The pity was that
men had come hither, had cleared and planted.

“Tn the lowlands I saw some cinnamon plantations. Ceylon
cinnamon is very dear; in Kurope cheaper and inferior sorts
are used almost exclusively, and most of the plantations in
Ceylon have been abandoned many years ago. Soon the train
leaves the lowland and begins to ascend rapidly. The patch of
coast country, where the coco-nut trees prevail, is exchanged for
a very mountainous landscape ; first hills with large open valleys
between, then higher continuous mountains with narrow, deep,
kettle-like valleys, or open hilly plateaus. In the valleys rice is
principally cultivated. The hills and mountain sides were pro-
bably originally covered with the most luxuriant primitive forest,
but now on all the slopes up to the mountain summits it is cut
down, and they are covered with coffee plantations. The coffee-
plant is indeed very pretty, but grows at such a distance apart
that the ground is everywhere visible between, and this is a .
wretched covering for luxuriant Ceylon.

“ At two o’clock in the afternoon we arrived at the station,
Perideniya, the nearest one to Kandy. The famous botanical
garden lies in its neighbourhood, and there I had to visit the
superintendent of the garden, Dr. THwartes. This elderly, but
still active and enthusiastic naturalist is exceedingly interested
in botanical research, and very obliging to all who work in that
department. He received me in a very friendly manner, and
it was due to him that the programme of my visit there was
so full.

“A botanic garden in Ceylon must naturally be something
extraordinary. Nowhere else can grander or more luxuriant
vegetation be seen than here. The garden has been especially
famous for the number of different varieties of trees of immense

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A COUNTRY PLACE IN CEYLON.

CHAP. XIX. | THE BOTANIC GARDEN NEAR KANDY. 719

size which it can show. Besides, all possible better known plants
are to be found here, cultivated in the finest specimens. Spices
and drugs were specially well represented. Here long tendrils of
the black pepper-plant wound themselves up the thick tree-
stems, here the cardamon and the ginger flourished, here the

HIGHLAND VIEW IN THE INTERIOR OF CEYLON.

Coffee Plantations; Adam’s Peak in the back-ground.

pretty cinnamon, camphor, cinchona, nutmeg, and cocoa trees
made a splendid show, here I saw a newly gathered harvest of
vanilla. The abundance of things to be seen, learned, and
enjoyed here was incredible. However, the next day I deter-
mined on the advice of Dr. Thwaites to make a tour up to the

720 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

mountain localities proper, in order there to get a better sight of
the lichen flora of Ceylon.

“T now travelled south partly by rail, partly by coach, until in
the evening I found myself lodged at a ‘rest-house’ at Ram-
bodde, a thousand metres above the sea, at about the same height
accordingly as that at which trees cease to grow in southern
Norway. This tropical mountain land reminds one a little, in
respect of the contours of the landscape, of the fells of Norway.
Here too are found league-long deep valleys, surrounded by
high mountain summits and ranges with outlines sharply
marked against the horizon. But here they were everywhere
overgrown with coffee bushes, or possibly with cinchona plants.
The mountain slopes were so laid bare from the bottom all the
way up that scarce a tree was left in sight ; everywhere so far as
the eye could reach only coffee.

“ Next day, attended by a Singhalese, I went, or to speak more
correctly, climbed farther up the steep coffee plantations. Ata
height of 1,300 metres above the sea coffee ceases to grow, and
we now found some not very extensive tea plantations, and above
these the primitive forest commences. At a height of 1,900
metres above the sea there is an extensive open plateau. Up
here there is a not inconsiderable place, Novara EHlliya, where
the governor has a residence, and part of the troops are in
barracks during the summer heat. One of the mountains
which surround this plateau is Pedrotalegalla, the loftiest
mountain of Ceylon, which reaches a height of 2,500 metres
above the sea.

“T have ascended not so few mountains, but of none has the
ascent been so easy as of this, for a broad footpath ran all the
way to the top. Without this path the ascent had been impos-
sible, for an hour’s time would have been required for every foot
made good through the jungle, so closely is the ground under
the lofty trees covered to the top of the mountain with bushes,
creepers, or the bamboo. In the evening I returned to my
former night-quarters, where I slept well after a walk of
thirty-six English miles.

“As I felt myself altogether unable the following day to make
any further excursion on foot, I travelled back to Peradeniya by
mail-coach. During this journey I had as my travelling com-
panion a Singhalese, whom it was a special pleasure to see at
close quarters. One of his big toes was ornamented with a
broad ring of silver, both his ears were pierced above, and
provided with some pendulous ornament, and one side of the
nose was likewise perforated, in order that at that place too might
he adorn himself with a piece of grandeur. On his head he had,
like all Singhalese, a comb by which the hair drawn right
upwards is kept in position, as little girls at home are wont to

x; THE OBJECT OF THE EXPEDITION. 721

have their hair arranged. As the man did not appear to know
a word of English, it was impossible to enter into any closer
acquaintance with him.

“ At noon on the following day I found myself compelled, by
a quite unexpected occurrence, to return precipitately to the
coast again. Dr. Thwaites and I had been invited to dinner by
his Excellency the Governor. As I was still limping after my
long excursion on foot, and besides had not had the forethought
to take a dress-suit with me, I considered that, vexatious as it
was to decline, I could not accept this gracious invitation, but
instead went my way. Thus after six exceedingly pleasant days
I came back to Point de Galle and the Vega.”

CHAPTER XX.

The Voyage Home—Christmas, 1879—Aden—Suez—Cairo—Excursion to
the Pyramids and the Mokattam Mountains —Petrified Tree-stems—The
Suez Canal—Landing on Sicily by night—Naples—Rome—The Members
of the Expedition separate—Lisbon—-England—Paris—Copenhagen—
Festive Entry into Stockholm—fétes there—Conclusion.

DURING our stay in Japan and our voyage thence to Ceylon I had
endeavoured at least in some degree to preserve the character
of the voyage of the Vega as a scientific expedition, an attempt
which, considering the short time the Vega remained at each
place, could not yield any very important results, and which
besides was rendered difficult, though in a way that was -
agreeable and flattermg to us, by I may almost say the tem-
pestuous hospitality with which the Vega men were every-
where received during their visits to the ports of Japan and ~
East Asia. It was besides difficult to find any new untouched
tield of research in regions which were the seat of culture and
civilisation long before the time when the forest began to be
cut down and seed to be sown in the Scandinavian North,
and which for centuries have formed the goal of exploratory
expeditions from all the countries of Europe. I hope how-
ever that the Vega will leave lasting memorials even of
this part of her voyage through the contributions of Stux-
berg, Nordquist, Kjellman, and Almquist to the evertebrate
fauna and the sea-weed and lichen flora of East Asia, and by
my collections of Japanese books of fossil plants from Mogi
and Laquan, &c.

With the new overpowering impression which nature and
people exerted on those of us, who now for the first time

»

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THE SCIENTIFIC MEN OF THE “ yEGaA.”

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bp,.2
Ris,
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=

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be)

F, R. Kjellman,
Almquist,

E.

CHAP. XX.] CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR'S EVE. . 723

visited Japan, China, India, Borneo, and Ceylon, it was how-
ever specially difficult, during a stay of a few days at each place,
to preserve this side of the Vega expedition. I therefore
determined after leaving Ceylon to let it drop completely,
that is, from that point merely to travel home. Regarding
this part of the voyage of the Vega I would thus have very
little to say, were it not that an obligation of gratitude compels
me to express in a few words the thanks of the Vega men for
all the honours bestowed upon them, and all the goodwill they
enjoyed during the last part of the voyage. For many of my
readers this sketch may perhaps be of interest as reminding
them of some happy days which they themselves have lived
through, and it may even happen that 1t will not be unwelcome
to the friends of geography in a future time to read this
description of the way in which the first circumnavigators of
Asia and Europe were /éfed in the ports and capitals of the
civilised countries. In this sketch however I am compelled
to be as brief as possible, and I must therefore sue for pardon
if every instance of hospitality shown us cannot be mentioned.

We started from Point de Galle on the 22nd December, and
arrived at Aden on the 7th January. The passage was tedious
in consequence of light winds or calms. Christmas Eve we
did not celebrate on this occasion, tired as we were of
entertainments, in such a festive way as at Pitlekaj, but
only with a few Christmas-boxes and some extra treating.
On New Year's Eve, on the other hand, the officers in the gun-
room were surprised by a deputation from the forecastle
clad in pesks as Chukches, who came, in good Swedish, mixed
with a few words of the Pitlekaj lingua franca not yet forgotten,
to bring us a salutation from our friends among the ice of the
north, thanks for the past and good wishes for the coming year,
mixed with Chukch complaints of the great heat hereaway
in the neighbourhood of the equator, which for fur-clad men
was said to be altogether unendurable.

We remained at Aden only a couple of days, received in
a friendly manner by the then acting Swedish-Norwegian
consul, who took us round to the most remarkable points of
the desolate environs of this important haven, among others
to the immense, but then and generally empty water reservoirs
which the English have made in the neighbourhood of the
town. No place in the high north, not the granite cliffs of
the Seven Islands, or the pebble rocks of Low Island on
Spitzbergen, not the mountain sides on the east coast of
Novaya Zemlya, or the figure-marked ground at Cape
Chelyuskin is so bare of vegetation as the environs of Aden
and the parts of the east coast of the Red Sea which we saw.
Nor can there be any comparison in respect of the abundance

Pate”

0 4

724 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

of animal life between the equatorial countries and the Polar
regions we have named. On the whole animal life in the
coast lands of the highest north, where the mountains are
high and surrounded by deep water, appears to be richer in
individuals than in the south, and this depends not only on
the populousness of the fowl-colonies and the number of large
animals of the chase that we find there, but also on the
abundance of evertebrates in the sea. At least the
dredgings made from the Vega during the voyage between
Japan and Ceylon gave an exceedingly scanty yield in
comparison with our dredgings north of Cape Chelyuskin.

Aden is now an important port of call for the vessels which
pass through the Suez Canal from European waters to the
Indian Ocean, and also one of the chief places for the export of
the productions of Yemen or Arabia Felix. In the latter
respect the harbour was of importance as far back as about
four hundred years ago, when the Italian, LupDovico pr
VARTHEMA, was for a considerable time kept a prisoner by the
Arab tribes at the place.

In the harbour of Aden the Vega was saluted by the firing of
twenty-one guns and the hoisting of the Swedish flag at the main-
top of an Italian war vessel, the despatch steamer Lsploratore
under the command of Captain AMEZAGA. The Esploratore took
part in an expedition, consisting of three war vessels, charged
with founding an Italian colony at Assab Bay, which cuts into
the east coast of Africa, north of Bab-el-Mandeb, on a tract of
land purchased for the purpose by Rubbattino, an Italian
commercial company. On board was Professor SAPETTO, an
elderly man, who had concluded the bargain and had lived at
the place for forty years. It was settled that he should be the
administrator of the new colony. On board the Lsploratore
were also the savants BeccaRiI and the Marquis Dorta, famous
for their extensive travels in the tropics and their valuable
scientific labours. The officers of the Italian vessel invited us
to a dinner which: was one of the pleasantest and gayest of
the many entertainments we were present at during our
homeward journey. When at the close of it we parted from
our hosts they lighted up the way by which we rowed forward
over the tranquil waves of the Bay of Aden with blue lights,
and the desert mountain sides of the Arabian coast resounded
with the hurrahs which were exchanged in the clear, calm
night between the representatives of the south and north
of Europe.

The Vega left Aden, or more correctly its port-town, Steamer
Point, on the 9th January, and sailed the following day through
Bab-el-Mandeb into the Red Sea. The passage of this sea,
which is narrow, but 2,200 kilometres long, was tedious,

xx] THE MOKATTAM MOUNTAINS. 725

especially in its northern part, where a strong head wind
blew. This caused so great a lowering of the temperature that
a film of ice was formed on the fresh-water pools in Cairo,
and that we, Polar travellers as we were, had again to put on
winter clothes in Egypt itself.

The Vega anchored on the 27th January at the now
inconsiderable port, Suez, situated at the southern entrance to
the Suez Canal. Most of the scientific men and officers of
the Vega expedition made an excursion thence to Cairo and the
Pyramids, and were everywhere received in a very kind way.
Among other things the Egyptian Geographical Society sent
a deputation to welcome us under the leadership of the
President of the Society, the American, Stone Pacua. He
had in his youth visited Sweden, and appeared to have a
very pleasant recollection of it. The Geographical Society
gave a stately banquet in honour of the Vega expedition.
An excursion was made to the Great Pyramids, and, as far as
the short time permitted, to other remarkable places in and
around the heap of ruins of all kinds and from all periods,
which forms the capital of the Egypt of to-day. During our
visit to the Pyramids the Swedish-Norwegian consul-general,
BODTKER, gave us a dinner in the European hotel there, and
the same evening a ball was given us by the Italian consul-
general, DE Martino. A day was besides devoted by some of
us, In company with M. GUISEPPE HAIMANN, toa short excursion
to the Mokattam Mountains, famous for the silicified tree-
stems found there. I hoped along with the petrified wood to
find some strata of clay-slate or schist with leaf-impressions.
I was however unsuccessful in this, but I loaded heavily a
carriage drawn by a pair of horses with large and small tree-
stems converted into hard flint. These lie spread about in the
desert in incredible masses, partly broken up into small pieces
partly as long fallen stems, without root or branches, but in
a wonderfully good state of preservation. Probably they had
originally lam imbedded in a layer of sand above the present
surface of the desert. This layer has afterwards been carried
away by storms, leaving the heavy masses of stone as a peculiar
stratum upon the desert sand, which is not covered by any
grassy sward. No root-stumps were found, and it thus ap-
peared as if the stems had been carried by currents of water
to the place where they were imbedded in the sandy layers
and silicified. In their exterior all these petrifactions resemble
each other, and by the microscopical examination which has
hitherto been made naturalists have only succeeded in dis-
tinguishing two species belonging to the family Nicolia, and a
palm, a pine, and a leguminous plant, all now extinct. Ttris
possible that among the abundant materials I brought home

726 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

with me some other types may be discovered by polishing
and microscopical examination. Such at least was my
expectation in bringing home this large quantity of stones,
the transport of which to the Vega was attended with a
heavy expenditure.

From Cairo we returned, on the 2nd February, to Suez, and
the following day the Vega weighed anchor to steam through the
Suez Canal into the Mediterranean. This gigantic work, created
by the genius and perseverance of LrssEps, which is unsur-
passed by the many marvels of construction in the land of the
Pharaohs, has not a very striking appearance, for the famous
canal runs, like a small river with low banks, through the mono-
tonously yellow plain of the desert. There are no sluices. No
bold rock-blastings stand as monuments of difficulties overcome.
But proud must every child of our century be when he gazes on
this proof that private enterprise can in our day accomplish
what world-empires in former times were unable to carry into
execution. We touched at Port Said for a few hours on the
5th February, after which we continued our voyage to Naples,
the first European port we were to visit.

At Aden and in Egypt I had received several letters and
telegrams informing me that great preparations were being
made at Naples for our reception, and that repeated inquiries
had been addressed to the Swedish consul-general regarding
the day of our arrival, questions which naturally it was not so
easy to answer, as our vessel, with its weak steam-power, was
very dependent on wind and weather. It was hoped that the
Vega might be signalled from the Straits of Messina, but we did
not come to the entrance to the Straits until after sunset. 1
therefore ordered the Vega to lie to there for some hours, while
Lieut. Bove and I rowed ashore to send off telegrams announc-
ing our arrival in Europe to Sweden, Naples, Rome, and other
places. The shore, however, was farther otf than we had caleu-
lated, and it was quite dark before it was reached. It was not
without difficulty that in these circumstances we could get to
land through the breakers in the open road quite unknown to
us, and then, in coal-black darkness, find our way through
thickets of prickly bushes to the railway which here runs along
the coast. We had then to go along the railway for a con-
siderable distance before we reached a station from which our
telegrams could be despatched. Scarcely had we entered the
station when we were surrounded by suspicious railway and
coast-guard men, and we considered ourselves fortunate that
they had not observed us on the way thither, for they would
certainly have taken us for smugglers, whom the coast-guard
have the right to salute with sharp shot. Even now we were
overwhelmed with questions in a loud and commanding tone,

‘

RK: RECEPTION AT NAPLES. 727

but when they saw to what high personages our telegrams were
addressed, and were informed by their countryman Bove, who
wore his uniform, to what vessel we belonged, they became very
obliging. One of them accompanied us back to our boat, after
providing us with excellent torches which spread abundant light
around our footsteps. They were much needed, for we were
now compelled to share the astonishment of our guide that in
the darkness we had succeeded in making our way over the
rugged hills covered with cactus plants and bushy thickets
between the railway and the coast, and along a railway viaduct
which we had passed on our way to the station without having
any idea of it. It was the last adventure of the voyage of the
Vega, and my first landing on the glorious soil of Italy.

On the 14th February, at 1 p.m. the Vega arrived at Naples.
At Capri a flag-ornamented steamer from Sorrento met us;
somewhat later, another from Naples, both of which accom-
panied us to the harbour. Here the Swedish expedition was
saluted by an American war-vessel, the Wyoming, with twenty-
one guns. The harbour swarmed with boats adorned with
flags. Scarcely had the Vega anchored—or more correctly
been moored to a buoy—when the envoy LINDSTRAND, the
Swedish-Norwegian consul CLAUSEN, Prince TEANO, president
of the Geographical Society, Commander MARTIN FRANKLIN,
Commendatore NEGRI, and others came on board. The last-
named, who nearly two years before had made a special journey
to Sweden to be present at the departure of the Vega, now
came from Turin commissioned by the Italian government, and
deputed by the municipalities of Florence and Venice, the
Turin Academy of Sciences, and several Italian and foreign
geographical societies, to welcome the Expedition, which had
now brought its labours to a happy issue.

After Herr Lindstrand, as King Oscar’s representative, had
welcomed the Expedition to Europe, and publicly conferred
Swedish decorations on Palander and me, and two adjutants of
the Italian Ministry of Marine had likewise distributed Italian
orders to some of the Vega men, some short speeches were
exchanged, on which the members of the Expedition, accom-
panied by the persons enumerated above, landed in the
Admiral’s steam-launch under a salute of twenty-one guns
from the Italian guard-ship. On the landing-quay, where
a large crowd of the inhabitants of the city was assembled
the Swedish seafarers were received by the Syndic of Naples,
Count GIUSSO, accompanied by a deputation from the munici-
pality, &e. Here we were taken, between rows of enthusiastic
students, in the gala carriages of the municipality, to the Hotel
Royal des Etrangeres, where a handsome suite of apartments,
along with equipages and numerous attendants, was placed at

728 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [cHAP.

our disposal. We were there received by the committee in
charge of the festivities, Prince BELMONTE and Cavalier Riccio,
who afterwards, during our stay in the city, in the kindest
way arranged everything to make our stay there festive and
agreeable.

On Sunday the 15th several deputations were received,
among them one from the University. A beautifully-bound
address was presented by “Ateneo Benjamino Franklin,” and
a number of official visits were made and received. We dined
with the Swedish-Norwegian consul, Clausen. On Monday
the 16th an address was presented from “Scuola d’Applicazione
per gl’Ingenieri,’ and from “ Neapolitana Archzologiz, Litter-
arum et Artium Academia,’ a song of welcome in Latin,
written by Professor ANTONIO MrRABELLI. Then followed a
grand dinner given by the municipality of the city in a hall of
the hotel, which was now inaugurated and was named the
Vega Hall, and was on this occasion ornamented with the
royal cipher, the Swedish and Italian flags, &e. In the even-
ing there was a gala representation at San Carlo, where the
members of the Expedition scattered among the different boxes
were saluted with repeated loud cries of “ Bravo !”—On Tuesday
the 17th the Committee had arranged an excursion to Lake
Averno, the Temple of Serapis, and other places famous in a
geological and historical respect, situated to the north-west of
Naples. Prince Urusov entertained some of the members of
the Expedition to dinner. There was an afternoon musical
entertainment at the “ Societa Filarmonica,’ where there was a
numerous attendance of persons moving in the first circles
in the city——Wednesday the 18th, excursion along with the
Committee to Pompeii, where the Swedish guests were received
by the famous superintendent of the excavations, Director
RuaGierI. Breakfast was eaten with merry jests and gay
speeches in a splendid Roman bath, still in good preservation,
excavations were undertaken, &c. In the afternoon there was
a grand dinner, followed by a reception by the admiral in
command, and a festive representation at the Bellini Theatre—
Thursday the 19th, Dr. Franz KUun, arrived from Vienna,
deputed by the Geographical Society there to welcome us.
Excursion in company with Professor PALMIERI and the Com-
mittee to Vesuvius, which at the time of our visit was emitting
thick columns of smoke, was pouring out a stream of lava, and
casting out masses of glowing stone. We ascended the border
of the crater, not without inconvenience from the heat of the
half-solidified lava streams over which we walked, from the
gases escaping from the crater, and from the red-hot stones
flung out of it. The new railway, not then ready, was inspected,
and the observatory visited. We dined with the Committee at

Xx. ] RECEPTION AT NAPLES. 729

the hotel—Friday the 20th, journey to Rome, where the
members of the Expedition arrived at 2 P.M., and were, in the
same way as at Naples, received in a festive manner by the
Syndic of the city, Prince Ruspout, president and director of
the Geographical Society, by members of the University,
the Scandinavian Union, &c. Carriages met the Swedish
guests, in which they were taken past the Swedish-Norwegian
minister’s hotel, decked with innumerable flags, to Albergo di
Roma in the Corso, where a splendid suite of apartments, along
with equipages, was placed at the disposal of the Expedition.
In the evening we dined with the Swedish minister, and were
afterwards received by Prince PALLAVICINI at his magnificent
palace——Saturday the 21st, visit to the Chamber of Deputies,
private excursions, dinner given by the Duke NIcoLAs of
Leuchtenberg, to Nordenskiold and Nordquist.—Sunday the
22nd, public meeting of the Geographical Society, at which its
grand gold medal was presented to Nordenskiold. In the
evening a grand dinner, given by the Geographical Society, in
the Continental Hotel. Among the toasts which were drunk
may be mentioned one to the King of Sweden and Norway,
proposed in a very warm and eloquent speech by the Premier,
CArROLI; to Nordenskiéld, by Prmce Teano; to Palander, by
the Minister of Marine, Admiral Acton; to the other members
of the Expedition, to its munificent patrons, Oscar Dickson
and Alexander Sibiriakoff, to Bove, the Italian officer, who
took part in it, &e—Monday the 23rd. Audience of the King.
In the evening a grand reception at the Palazzo Teano, where
almost all that was distinguished and splendid of Roman
society appeared to be assembled.—Tuesday the 24th. Dined
at the Quirinal with King Humbert. There were present,
besides the King and his suite, the Swedish minister, the
members of the Vega expedition, Prince Teano, President of
the Geographical Society ; Commendatore Negri; Cairoli,
Premier; Acton, Minister of Marine; MAtvano, Secretary of
the Cabinet; Major BARATIERI, and the Italian naval officer,
EUGENIO PARENT, a member of the Swedish Polar expedition
of 1872-3, and others. In the evening, reception by the English
minister, Sir A. B. Pacer, and a beautifully arranged /éte at
the Scandinavian Union, at which a number of enthusiastic
speeches were made, and flowers and printed verses were dis-
tributed—Wednesday the 25th. Farewell visits. Some of the
members of the Expedition travelled north by rail. Captain
Palander made an excursion to Spezzia to take part in a cruise
on the large ironclad Duilio. The others remamed some days
longer in Rome in order to see its lions, undisturbed by
official fétes.

While the Vega lay in the harbour of Naples she was literally

730 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. ficHAP, XX.

exposed to storming by visitors. The crew were on several
occasions invited to the theatres there by the managers. Ex-
cursions to Pompei had besides been arranged for them by the
consul for the united kingdoms, Clausen, who spared no pains to
make the stay of the expedition at Naples honouring to the
mother-country and as pleasant as possible to the guests, as well
as in arranging the more formal details of the visit. We
had besides the joy of meeting in Italy our comrade from
the severe wintering of 1872-3, Eugenio Parent, who soon
after had the misfortune to be in the tower of the ironclad
Duilio, when the large Armstrong cannon placed there burst,
and the wonderful good fortune to escape with life and without
being seriously hurt from this dreadful accident. The only
mishap on board the Vega during the latter part of her long
voyage home occurred besides in the harbour of Naples, one of
the sailors who was keeping back an enthusiastic crowd of
people who stormed the Vega, being thrown down from the
bulwarks with the result that he broke an arm.

On the 29th February the Vega left the harbour of Naples,
but no longer with her staff complete. Doctors Kjellman,
Almquist, and Stuxberg, and Lieut. Nordquist had preferred
the land route from Italy to Stockholm to the long détour by
sea, and Lieut. Bove was obliged, by family circumstances, to
leave the Vega at Naples. We, however, all met again at
Stockholm. At our departure from Naples the gunroom per-
sonnel thus consisted only of me, Captain Palander, and Lieuts.
Brusewitz and Hovgaard.

Through M. A. RaBaut, President of the young, but already
so well known Geographical Society of Marseilles, I had re-
ceived repeated invitations to visit along with my companions
the birthplace of Pytheas, the first Polar explorer and the
discoverer of the Scandinavian Peninsula. With great reluct-
ance I was compelled to decline this invitation. We had to
hasten home, and I wished to save some days for a visit to the
fatherland of HENRY the Navigator and VAsco DA GAMA.

We sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar on the 9th March,
and anchored in the harbour of Lisbon on the 11th March at
2 pM. The following day we made an excursion to the
beautiful palace of Cintra, situated about five Portuguese miles
from the capital. On Saturday we were received in audience
by the King, Dom Luiz, of Portugal, who, a seaman himself,
appeared to take a great interest in the voyage of the Vega.
Later in the day the Swedish minister in Lisbon gave a

1 An accident also happened during the first half of the expedition, the
steersman, in backing among drift-ice, having been thrown over the wheel
and hurt very seriously.

VEGA.”’

“

THE OFFICERS OF THE

E. Bruzewitz.

gaard.

A. Hoy

G. Bove.

732 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [ CHAP.

dinner, to which were invited the President of the Portuguese
Council, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the members of the
Diplomatic Corps, and others, ending in the evening with a
grand reception. On Monday the 15th we were present by
special invitation at a meeting of the Geographical Society, at
which the newly-returned African travellers, Briro-CAPELLO
and IVEN, gave addresses. Here I had besides the great pleasure
of meeting the famous African traveller, Major SERPA PINTO.
The King at the same time honoured us with decorations, and
at its meeting on the 10th March the Portuguese Chamber of
Deputies resolved, on the motion of the Deputies ENNES
and ALFREDO, to express its welcome and good wishes in a
congratulatory address to the Vega men.

We weighed anchor again on the 15th March. We were
favoured at first with a fresh breeze and made rapid progress,
but at the entrance to the Channel we met with a steady head-
wind, so that it was not until the evening of the 25th March,
considerably later than we had counted on, that we could
anchor in the harbour of Falmouth, not, as was first intended,
in that of Portsmouth. We thus missed some preparations
which had been made at the latter place to welcome us to the
land which stands first in the line of those that have sent
out explorers to the Polar Seas. We besides missed a banquet
which the Royal Geographical Society had arranged im honour
of the Vega expedition, at which the Prince of Wales was to
have presided, and which now, in the midst of the Easter
holidays and a keenly-contested parliamentary election, could
not be held! Our stay in England, at all events, was exceedingly
pleasant. Palander and I travelled on the night before
Good Friday to London, where we were received at the railway
station by the Swedish minister, Count Piper, and a large
number of our countrymen living in London. Count Piper
carried me to my future host, the distinguished Secretary of
the Geographical Society and famous Arctician and geographical
writer, CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM, who did everything to make
my stay in London as pleasant and instructive as possible.
Saturday was spent in paying visits. On Easter Sunday Consul-
General RICHTER gave a lunch in the Continental Hotel, to
which a considerable number of Scandinavians and Englishmen
were invited. The same evening we dined with the famous
Arctic traveller, Sir ALLEN Younc. On Monday we were
invited by the Earl of NorrapBroox, President of the
Geographical Society,? to his country seat, Stratton, near

1 Further particulars on this point are given in the Annual Address on
the Progress of Geography by the Right Hon. the Earl of Northbrook
(Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, 1880, p. 401). ‘

2 During our visit to London we had no opportunity of taking part in
any of the meetings of the Society, but some time after the Society gave

Ex] RECEPTION AT PARIS. 733

Winchester. Here we saw the way—an exceedingly quiet one—
in which an English parliamentary election goes on. The same
day we paid a visit to Mr. Sportiswoopg, the President of the
Royal Society, at his magnificent country seat, in the neighbour-
hood of London. Here I saw several instructive experiments
with very large machines for the production of light by
electric discharges in highly rarified air. Wednesday the 31st,
grand dinner at the Swedish minister’s, and in the evening of the
same day a Scandinavian /éte in the Freemasons’ Hall, at which
there were great rejoicings according to old northern usages.

We started for Paris on the night before the 1st April. We
went by Boulogne-sur-Mer, whose Chamber of Commerce had
invited us to a féfe to celebrate the first landing of the Vega
men on the soil of France after the North-East Passage was
achieved. Several of the authorities of the town and
Dr. HAmy, a delegate from the Geographical Society of Paris
met us in the waiting-room at the station. Here a break-
fast had been arranged, in the course of which we were
presented to a number of eminent persons of the place, with
whom we afterwards passed the greater part of the day in the
most agreeable way. After making several excursions in the
neighbourhood of the town and paying the necessary official
visits, we partook of a festive dinner arranged by the munici-
pality. From Boulogne we travelled by night to Paris, arriving
there on the 2nd April at 7 A.M.

Notwithstanding the early morning hour we were received
here at the station in a festive way by the Swedish-Norwegian
minister and the personnel of the Legation, a deputation from
the Geographical Society of Paris, and a considerable number
of the members of the Scandinavian colony in the capital of
France. The famous Madagascar traveller, GRANDIDIER,
President of the Geographical Society's Central Committee,
welcomed us, with lively expressions of assent from the sur-
rounding crowd. We were invited during our stay in the
city to live with our countryman, A. NOBEL, in a very
comfortable villa belonging to him, Rue Malakoff, No. 53, and
I cannot sufficiently commend the liberal way in which he here
discharged the duties of a host and assisted us during our stay
in Paris, which, though very agreeable and honouring to us,
demanded an extraordinary amount of exertion.

Our reception in Paris was magnificent, and it appeared as
if the metropolis of the world wished to show by the way in
which she honoured a feat of navigation that it is not without
reason that she bears on her shield a vessel surrounded by
swelling billows. It is a pleasant duty for me here to offer

Palander the Founder’s Gold Medal (I had in 1869 obtained the same
distinction) and elected me an Honorary Corresponding Member.

734 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

my thanks for all the goodwill we, during those memorable
days, enjoyed on the part of the President of the Republic, of
Admiral La RoncibRE LE Noury, President of the Geographical
Society, his colleague, M. Hecut, M. Maunorr, the Secretary of
the Society, M. QUATREFAGE, and M. DAUBREE, members of the
Institute, not to forget many other Frenchmen and Scandi-
navians. Among the /éfes of Paris I must confine myself to
an enumeration of the principal ones.

Friday, the 2nd April. Public séance de réception by the
xeographical Society in the Cirque des Champs Elysée in the
presence of a very large and select audience. Admiral La
Ronciere delivered the speech on this occasion, which I
replied to by giving a pretty full account of the Swedish
Arctic expeditions, on which the President handed me the
large gold medal of the Society “as a proof of the interest
which the public and the geographers of France take in the
voyage of the Vega.’ Dined the same day with the Swedish-
Norwegian minister, SIBBERN.—Saturday the 38rd. Invitation
to a festive meeting of delegates from twenty-eight learned
societies in France in the amphitheatre of the Sorbonne! We
were greeted by the Minister of Education in a masterly and
eloquent speech, after which he conferred upon us, on the part
of the Republic, Commander’s and Officer's Insignia of the
French Legion of Honour. “A reward,” as the Minister of the
Republic expressed himself, “for the blood of the brave and
the sleepless nights of the learned.” After that an official
dinner and reception by M. Jules Ferry—On Sunday the 4th,
an address was presented from the Scandinavian Union, under
the presidency of Herr Fortmeijer. In the evening a brilliant
entertainment on a large scale given by the Scandinavian
Union in the Hotel Continental. Among those present may
be mentioned Prince Oscar of Sweden, the President of the
Féte Committee, Herr JENSEN, Fru Kristina NILSoN-ROUZEAUD,
the Danish minister, the Swedish embassy, members of the
Russian embassy, a large number of Scandinavian artists, many
of the principal representatives of the French and foreign
press, and lastly, what ought perhaps to have been mentioned
first, a flower-garden of ladies, of which every dweller in the
north might feel proud.—Monday the 5th. Meeting of the
Institute in its well-known hall, with speeches of welcome.
Hence we were conducted to a grand festive reception, arranged
beforehand to the minutest details by the Municipal Council,
in “la Salle des Etats,” situated in that part of the Tuileries
where the Geographical Congress was held in 1878. The hall

1 These are enumerated in the Bulletin de la Société de Géographic, Mai,
1880, p. 463. In the same part (p. 450) there is also a report of the
speeches made at the séance de réception.

xx] COPENHAGEN, 735

and the ascent to it were richly ornamented with French tri-
colours and Swedish flags, beautiful Gobelins, and living plants.
A number of speeches were made, after which the President of
the Municipal Council, cn the part of the City of Paris, pre-
sented to me a large, artistically executed medal as a memorial
of the voyage of the Vega In the evening a grand dinner
was given by the Société de Geographie, with several eloquent
speeches: for King Oscar (General Pittie), for President Grévy,
for the prosperity of France (Prince Oscar), for the Veya ex-
pedition (M. Quatrefage), and so on.—Tuesday the 6th. Dinner
given by the President of the Republic, M. Grévy, to Prince
Oscar and the Vega men then in Paris——Wednesday the 7th.
Dinner given to a numerous and select company of French
savants by the then President of the Geographical Society and
of the Institute, M. A. Daubrée.—Thursday the 8th. Dinner
to a small circle at Victor Hugo’s house, where the elderly poet
and youthful-minded enthusiast in very warm, and I need not
say eloquent, words congratulated me on the accomplishment. ot
my task. Reception there the same evening.

Here ended our visit to the capital of France. Thoroughly
exhausted, but bringing with us memories which shall never
pass away, we travelled the following day to Vlissingen, whither
the Vega had gone from Falmouth, under the command otf
Brusewitz. We had been compelled to decline warm and
hearty invitations to Holland and Belgium from want of time
and strength to take part in any more festivities. The anchor
was weighed immediately after we came on board, and the
course shaped for Copenhagen. At noon on the 15th we passed
Helsingborg, which was richly ornamented with flags for the
occasion. Already at Kullaberg we had been met by the
steamer H. 2. Prior, with Lund students on board, and eight
other steamers with deputations of welcome and enthusiasts for
the voyage of the Vega, from Copenhagen, Malmo, Helsingborg,
and Elsinore. The number of passengers was stated to be 1,500,
including a number of ladies. Songs were sung, speeches made
fireworks let off, &e. At night we lay at anchor in the outer
road of Copenhagen, so that it was not until the following fore-
noon that we steamed into the harbour, saluting the fort with
nine shots of our little cannon, and saluted in turn by as many.
While the Vega was sailing into the harbour, and after she had
anchored, there came on board the Swedish Minister, Baron

1 The medal was accompanied by an “extrait du registre de procés-
verbaux du conseil municipal de la ville de Paris,” a caligraphic master-
piece illuminated in various colours and gold. The Conseil municipal also
ordered a detailed description of the féfe to be printed, with the title
Relation officielle de le réception de M. le Professeur Nordenskidld par le
conseil municipal de Paris le lunvi 5 Avril 1880,

736 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP. XX.

BecK-Frus, the Swedish consul-general EKVERLOF, the re-
presentatives of the University, of the merchants, and of the
Geographical Society under the presidency of the former President
of the Council, Count HoLsTeIN-HOLSTEINBORG, to bring us a
welcome from the corporations they represented, and accompany
us to the Toldbod, where we were received by the President-in-
chief, the Presidents of the Communal Authority, and the Bourse,
and the Swedish Unions of Copenhagen. We then drove through
the festively ornamented city, saluted by resounding hurrahs,
from a countless throng of human beings, to the Hotel
d’ Angleterre, where apartments had been prepared for us. On
the 17th a féte was given by the Geographical Society in the
Casino Hall, which was attended by the King, the Crown Prince,
and Prince John of Gliicksborg, and nearly all the distinguished
men of Copenhagen in the fields of science, business, and politics.
The speech of the /éte was delivered by Professor ERsLEv.
Thereafter a gay and lively banquet was given, at which the
Crown Prince of Denmark presided.

The 18th April. Grand entertainment given by the King.—
The 19th April. Magnificent banquet given by the Society of
Merchants to the members of the Vega expedition at the Bourse,
the rooms being richly ornamented with flowers and flags, and
with busts and paintings executed for the occasion by eminent
artists. Councillor of state MELCHIOR presided, and amongst
those present, were observed the Crown Prince, the ministers,
the speakers and vice-speakers of the folke- and lands-ting, and
a number of the principal scientific and military men and
officials. Speeches were delivered by the Crown Prince, State-
councillor TEITGEN, Manager of the Great Northern Telegraph
Company, Admiral BiLue, Professor MADvic, State-councillor
Melchior, &c. At another place, an entertainment was given at
the same time to the crew. In the evening, /é/e of the Students’
Union, the Swedish National Union, and the Norwegian Union.

I was obliged to decline an invitation to Lund, because his
Majesty, King Oscar, had expressed the wish that we should first
set foot on Swedish ground at the Palace of Stockholm.

Tt was settled that our entry into Stockholm should take place
in the evening of the 24th April, but we started from Copen-
hagen as early as the night before the 20th in order to be sure
that we would not, in consequence of head winds or other
unforeseen hindrances, arrive too late for the festivities in the
capital of Sweden. In consequence of this precaution we
arrived at the archipelago of Stockholm as early as the 23rd, so
that we were compelled during the night between the 23rd and
24th to lie still at Dalaré. Here we were met by Commander
LAGERCRANTZ, who by the King’s orders brought our families on
the steamer Skéldmon to meet us.

a

a =alll

THE CREW OF THE ‘VEGA.’
After a photograph taken at Naples.

738 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP, XX,

On the 24th at 8 AM. the Vega again weighed anchor in
order to steam on slowly, past Vaxholm into Stockholm. We
met innumerable flag-decked steamers by the way, fully laden
with friends, known and unknown, who with shouts of rejoicing
welcomed the Vega men home. The nearer we came to
Stockholm, the greater became the number of steamers, that,
arranged in a double line and headed by the Vega, slowly
approached the harbour. Lanterns in variegated colours were
lighted on the vessels, fireworks were let off, and the roar of
cannon mingled with the loud hurrahs of thousands of spectators.
After being greeted at Kastelholmen with one salute more the
Vega anchored in the stream in Stockholm at 10 P.M.

The queen of the Malar had clothed herself for the occasion
in a festive dress of incomparable splendour. The city was
illuminated, the buildings round the harbour being in the first
rank. Specially had the King done everything to make the
reception of the Vega expedition, which he had so warmly
cherished from the first moment, as magnificent as possible.
The whole of the Royal Palace was radiant with a sea of lights
and flames, and was ornamented with symbols and ciphers in
which the name of the youngest sailor on the Vega was not
omitted.

An estrade had been erected from Logaorden to the land-
ing-place. Here we were received by the town councillors,
whose president, the Governor, welcomed us in a short speech ;
we were then conducted to the Palace, where, in the presence
of Her Majesty the Queen of Sweden, the members of the
Royal House, the highest officials of the State and Court, &c.,
we were in the grandest manner welcomed in the name of the
fatherland by the King of Sweden, who at the same time con-
ferred upon us further marks of his favour and goodwill.) It
was also at the Royal Palace that the series of festivities com-
menced with a grand gala dinner, on the 25th of April, at
which the King in a few magnanimous words praised the
exploit of the Vega. Then féte followed /éte for several
weeks,

On the 26th the Swedish Yacht Club gave an entertainment
in the Grand Hotel under the presidency of Admiral Lager-
crantz. Among those who were present may be mentioned
his Majesty the King, the Crown Prince, Prince Oscar, Oscar

1 Among others to all who took part in the Expedition a Vega medal,
specially struck, to be worn on a blue-yellow riband on the breast. It may
perhaps be of interest for numismatists to know that the medals distributed
on account of the Vega expedition are to be found delineated in the eighth
and ninth parts of the Swedish Family Journal for 1880. To those that
are there delineated there have since been added a medal struck by the

Finnish Society of Sciences, and the Anthropological-Geographical Society’s
medal.

|

Hi

ali,

THE ENTRANCE OF THE ‘‘VEGA’’ INTO STOCKHOLM ON THE 241H APRIL, 1880.

740 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [CHAP.

Dickson, and Baron von Otter, Minister of Marine. On the
evening of the same day there was a torchlight procession by
pupils of the Technical High School. On the 27th there was a
gala-play, to which all the Vega men were invited. * On the 28th
at a festive meeting of the Academy of the Sciences, a medal
struck on account of the Vega. expedition was distributed,
the meeting being followed by a dinner given at the Hotel
Pheenix by the Academy under the presidency of the Crown
Prince. On the 30th April and 5th May banquets were
given by the Publicist Club, and by the Idun Society, by
the Naval Officers’ Society to the officers of the Vega, and
by the Stockholm Workman’s Union to the crew. On the 7th
and 8th May there were festivities at Upsala, the principal
attraction of which consisted of gay, lively, and imgenious
carnival representations, in which we received jocular addresses
and homage from fantastically dressed representatives of the
peoples of different countries and periods.

During this time there were daily received deputations,
addresses, and telegrams of welcome, among others from the
riksdag of Sweden, ‘the storting of Norway, ‘and the principal
towns of Norway and Finland, from the student corps at Upsala
and Helsingborg, from the St. Petersburg Geographical Society,
from women in Northern Russia (the address accompanied by
a laurel wreath in silver), &. In a word, the Stockholm
jfétes formed the climax of the remarkable triumphal pro-
cession from Japan to Stockholm, which stands unique in the
history of festivities. Even after the Expedition was broken
up in Stockholm, and the Vega had sailed on the 9th May for
Karlskrona and Gothenburg, where she was again taken over by
the whaling company that previously owned her, the /étes were
repeated at these towns. They commenced anew when the
Vega exhibition was opened with appropriate solemnities by
His Majesty the King in one of the wings of the Royal Palace,
and when some months after I visited Berlin, St. Petersburg,
and my old dear fatherland, Finland.

But I may not weary my reader with more notes of festivities.
It is my wish yet once again to offer my comrades’ and my
own thanks for all the honours conferred upon us both in
foreign lands and in the Scandinavian North. And in conclusion
I wish to express the hope that the way in which the accounts
of the successful voyage of the Vega have been received in all
countries will give encouragement to new campaigns in the
service of research, until the natural history of the Siberian
Polar Sea be completely investigated and till the veil that
still conceals the enormous areas of land and sea at the
north and south poles be completely removed, until man at
last knows at least the main features of the whole of the

heer of
| THE NORTH COAST OF THE OLD WORLD
From Blaser te Behring Straits,
the Track of the Vega Expedition,
from old and recent sources, and observations mado during the voyage of the Vega.
N.

Scale for a degree of
longitude between 66°and 78°'NL.
Py 30

9 minuter

Mean Scale -1: 4900000

‘The upright figures along the track indicate hours, the sloping the depth in matres,) zoological dredgings,o built places,
+ unbuilt places (stations, encompments o)+ astronomioal determinations of zostion, during Nordenskabld3 Arctic voyages, anative noonpments.

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Greenwich E. 180 Greenwich W.

2 <a THANKS TO ALL. 741

lanet which has been assigned him as a dwelling-place ‘in
the depths of the universe.

Hearty thanks last of all to my companions during the
voyage of the Vega; to her distinguished commander Louis
Palander, her scientific men and officers, her petty officers and
crew. Without their courage and the devotion they showed to
the task that lay before us, the problem of the North-East
Passage would perhaps still be waiting for its solution.

ABSTRACT OF THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA.

Karlskrona—Copenhagen .
Copenhagen—Gothenburg .
Gothenburg —Tromsoe
Tronisoe—Chabarova
Chabarova—Port Dickson

Port Dickson—Cape Chelyuskin

Cape Ghelyuskin—Preobraschenie Island .
Preobraschenie Island—the Mouth of the

Lena 5 ; c
The Mouth of the Lena—Irkaipij
Irkaipij—Pitlekaj . .
The Wintering

Pitlekaj—St. Lawrence Bay

St. Lawrence Bay—Port Clarence
Port Clarence—Konyam Bay :
Konyam Bay—St. Lawrence Island .
St. Lawrence Island—Behring Island
Behring Island—Yokohama
Yokohama—Kobe

Kobe—Nagasaki

Nagasaki~ Hong Kong

Hong Kong—Labuan
Labuan—Singapore .
Singapore—Point de Galle

Point de Galle—Aden

Aden—Suez
Suez—Naples .
Naples—Lisbon
Lisbon—Falmouth .
Falmouth—Vlissingen
Vlissingen— Copenhagen .
Copenhagen—Stockholm .

Total

Distance traversed.

English
1878. geographical miles
June 22—24 144 -
a) Ose 134
July 4—17 1,040
» 21—830 930
Aug. 1—6 580
» 10—19 510
», 20—24 385
», 24—27 380
Aug. 27—Sept. 12 1,260
Sept. 18—28 235
Sept. 28, 1878—
July 18, 1879
1879.
July 18—20 190
a9) 22 120
», 26—28 160
a oUso 90
Aug. 2—14 900
Aug. 19—Sept. 2 1,715
Oct. 11—13 360
», 18—21 410
Oct. 27—Nov. 2 1,080
Nov. 9—17 1,040
», 21—28 750
Dec. 4—15 1,510

. Dec. 22—Jan. 7, 1880 2,200

1880.

Jan. 9—27 1,320
Feb. 3—14 1,200
Feb. 29—March 11 1,420
March 16—25 745
April 5—8 345

>», 10—16 632

», 20—24 404

INDEX.

PND EX.

‘(n after the number of a page signifies note.)

A

AAGAARD, Aage, 230 n

Acanthostephia Malmgrent, 435

Actinia Bay, 252

Acton, Admiral, 729

Adam’s mammoth find, 308

Adam’s Peak, 719

Adam’s wood, 556 n

Aden, 723

Ahlquist, A. E., 81

Aino race, the, 548

Aitanga, Chukch woman, 442; portrait,
401

Akja, Lapp sledge, 67

Alasej, the river, discovered, 521; mam-
moth find at, 308

Alaska, 547

Alaska Commercial Company, 593

Alauda alpestris, 101 n

Albertus Magnus, 123

Alecto, see Antedon

Aleutian Islands, the, 124 n, 604 2x,
605 n; discovered, 547

Alexejev, Feodot, 522, 523, 525

Alfred the Great, 39, 40, 164

Algz, in the Kara Sea, 140; at Behring
Island, 617 2

Alibert’s graphite quarry, 576 n

Alkhornet, 88

Almquist, E., 3, 30, 32, 74, 143, 160, 243,
244, 258, 329, 335, 351, 360, 380, 381,
422, 580, 707, 721; excursion to Beli
Ostrov, 153; report on a dead man
laid out on the tundra, 464; on the
colour-sense of the Chukches, 500;
excursion in Ceylon, 716; portrait,
722

Alophus (beetle), 441

Altaic races, 81

Amber in China, 696

America, the north-west coast of, first
visited by Europeans, 557 7; Russian
voyages to, 546

American whaler, near the Vega’s winter
quarters, 353; voyages in the Siberian
Polar sea, 24; accounts of the state

of the ice north of Behring’s Straits,
347

Amezaga, Captain, 724

Ammonites with gold lustre, 209

Ammossov, Feodot, 527

Amoretti, Carlo, 560

Amulets, Chukch, 380, 500; Eskimo,
579

Anadyr, the river, 19, 455, 456, 523, 525;
is discovered, 521

Anadyrsk, 524, 529

Anauls, 524

Andersen, the photographer, 626

Andrejev Land, 551

Andrejev, Sergeant, 551

Androphagi, 62 7; 518 2

Angara river, the, 283

Anian Sound, the, 560

Anika, Russian peasant, 519

Anjou, Peter Feodorovitsch, 20 ; journey,
556; portrait, 554

Anjui river, market at the, 405, 487

Ankudinoy, Gerasim, 19, 523

Anser bernicla, 189 n; seen during the
expedition, 253

brachyrhynchus, 98

——— hyperboreus, 430

leucopsis, 98

pictus, 430

segetum, 98

Antedon Eschrichtit, 247, 248

Anziphorov, the Cossack, 530

Arachnids on Novaya Zemlya, 114

Archangel, 55

Arimaspi, Herodotus’ statement regard-
ing, 307, 512

Arnell, Dr. 290

Arvicola obscurus, 432

Asamayama, ascent and descent of, 661

Asia, views regarding its geography in
the beginning of the 18th century,
533

Astronomical determinations of position,
the first in Siberia, 533 n

Atlassov, Volodomir, 453, 525, 529

Aurora, the, at the Vegas winter
quarters, 425

3 C

746

Austrian Arctic Expedition, 204
Avatscha Bay, 536, 546
Avril, Ph., 302

B

BacuHorr, Ivan, 550

Baer, K. E. von, 122, 537, 606;
to Novaya Zemlya, 216

Baikal Lake, 283

Balena Mysticetus, 117, 130

Balenoptera Sibbaldii, 130

Baratieri, Major, 729

Barents, 81, 85 », 310; voyages, 178;
wintering, 191; death, 194; discovery
of relics from his wintering, 229

Barjatinsky, Ivan Petrovitsch, 526

Barnacle Goose; see Auser bernicla

Barrington, D., 203

Barrow, J., 176, 560

Bartlett, W., 353

Bassendine, James, 176 n

Baths in Japan, 569

Baumhauer, 425

Bavier, Consul, 633, 643, 644

Bay-ice, 320

Beaker sponges, 321, 322

Bear Island, 10, 85, 90, 119; discovery
of, 189

Bear Islands, the, 528 n, 546, 550, 551;
the Vega arrives at, 318; geological
formation, 323

Bear, land, 432; sce Polar bear

Beccari, 7 24

Beck Friis, Baron, 736

Beechey, F. W., 25, 570 n

Behemoth, 302

Behring, Vitus, 22, 25, 537 n, 544, 598 ;
first voyage, 534; second voyage, 546 ;
stay on Behring Island, 598 ; death,
598

Behring the younger, Captain, 558

Behring Island, 592; discovered, 547,

597

Behring’s Straits, 562; its hydrography,
582; is discovered, 535

Beli Ostrov, 143; excursion to, 153;
description of, 154; former visit to,
157 ; mapping of, 538

Bellot, J.R., 442

Belmonte, Prince, 728 °

Bell Sound, 88, 95, 97, 100, 107, 189 »

Beluga; see White whale

Beluga Bay, 275

Bennet, Stephen, 117, 121, 222

Bentinck, Swedish officer, 456 n

Beormas, 41, 43

Beresovy, 538

Berggren, Sven, 134

Beryl, 712

Berzelius, 642

Besimannaja Bay, 58, 88, 261

Biisk, 283

Bille, Admiral, 736

Billings, J., 457, 551, 591 n

Biwa Lake, 673

Bjelkov, hunter, 552

Black-lead pencil first mentioned, 576 n

voyage —

INDEX.

Blischni Island ; see Ljachofi’s Island

Bludnaya river, the, 542

Bodtker, Consul-general, 725

Bog iron ore formations in the Kara Sea,
140, 142

Bolschaja Reka, 546, 548

Bolschoj Kamen, 133

30olvan worship, Samoyed, 64, 69, 76

Bona Confidentia (vessel), its fate, 50,
173 2

Bona Esperanza (vessel), its fate, 50,
173 n

Books, purchase of Japanese, 670

Borgen, Dr., 111

Borgmastareport, 90

Borneo, 701, 706; excursion to the
interior of, 703

Borrowdale, graphite deposit at, 576 2

Bosman, Cornelis, 197

Boulogne-sur-Mer, arrival at, 733

Bove, G., 3, 32, 145, 243, 378, 396, 436,
582, 702, 730; excursion to Najtskaj,
411; to the interior of the Chukch
Peninsula, 418; portrait, 731

Bragin, Dmitri, 605

Brandt, J. F., 605

Brandt, W., 212

Brandy, 485

Brandywine Bay, 85

Briochov Islands, 161, 271, 287

Brown, Richard, 176 »

Bruin, Cornelis de, 453

Brun, Captain, 273

Brunel, Oliver, 180

Bruzewitz, E., 3, 32, 256, 267, 409, 432,
730, 735; his measurements of the
thickness of the ice, 351 n; excursion
to Najtskaj, 400; portrait, 731

Buache, 528

Buckland, John, 173 7

Buckland, William, 5707

Buddhism in Japan, 680

Buldakov, Timofej, 526

Bulun, 274, 279

Burgomaster, 89; met with during the
voyage, 146

Burney, James, 532

Burrough, Stephen, 50,
voyage, 166

Busa, Elisej, 520

Busch, Henry, 531

Bychov mouth of the Lena, the, 227 » 5
545

79, 130; his

C

Casook, 711
Capel Sebastian, 47, 49, 165; ponent

Go 454 n
Cairo, stay ‘in, 725
Cairoli, premier, 729
Cannibals in the North, 62 ;
Canton, 604

Cape Baranov, 21, 323, 546, 553
Cape Borchaja, 545

Cape Chelyuskin, 10, 16; arrival at, 256 ;

{

518 n

INDEX. 747

reindeer there, 261, 543 n; flora, 258 ;
is discovered, 14, 17, 544

Cape Deschnev, 450, 535

Cape Kammennoj, 554

Cape Mattesol, 539

Cape North, 338, 557

Cape Olenek, 274

Cape Onman, 345

Cape Prince of Wales, 567

Cape Ruski Savorot, 171 2

Cape Schaitanskoj, 287

Cape Schelagskoj, 322, 337, 550

Cape St. John, 169, 170

Cape Thaddeus, 17, 542

Cape Voronov, 167 x

Cape Yakan, 24, 338

Carabus truncaticollis, 441

Carlsen, Elling, 224, 225, 229

Carska Bay, 131

Carthaginians’ traffic with African races,
453 n

Caspian Sea, former views regarding,
513

Castren’s Island, 103

Ceylon, stay at, 707 ; natives, 714

Chabarova, 60; church of, 61

Chacke, Martin, 559

Chamisso, A. von, 576 n

Chancelor, Richard, 11, 50; his voyage,
54; his death, 173

Chatanga Bay, 17, 541, 542

Chatanga river, the, 268, 541, 544

Cheltinga, midshipman, 548

Chenizyn, 554, 556

Cherbinin, Lieut., 544

China, stay in, 693 ; communication with
Europe, 283 ; its future, 698

Chinese in Japan, 669; at Hong Kong,
their treatment, 697 ; in Borneo, 706

Chionecetes opilio, 447, 582

Cholodilov, 601 2

Chukches, the, compared with other Polar
races, 73; first meeting with, 324); at
Cape Yakan, 326; barter with the,
381; at Irkaipij, 339; visit the Vega,
366, 387; at Cape Deschnev, 564; at
Konyam Bay, 565, 584, 585; on the
American side of Behring’s Straits,
460, 572; divided into reindeer and
coast Chukches, 460; number of, 460;
removals, 467 ; carry on traflic between
America and Siberia, 405, 487; lan-
guage, 368, 460 ; diseases, 461 ; position
of the women, 504; their history,
physique, disposition, and manners, 451

Chukotskojnos, 19, 458, 528, 558

Chvoinoff, landmeasurer, 314, 502

Chydenius, Carl, 110

Clarke, Charles, 557

Clausen, Consul, 727, 728, 730

Clothing, 31; of the Vega men, 358

Cloudberries, a powerful antiscorbutic,
34, 38

Cochrane, John Dundas, 532

Coffee plantations, 720

Coleoptera in ee Zemlya,
at Port Clarence, 580

Collie, Dr., 570

115;

Colmogro, 172, 518

Colombo (Ceylon), 715

Colour-blindness, 501

Colours, Chukch, 501

Commander’s Islands, 593

Cook, James, 10, 22, 25, 334, 3362; 557

Cooke, Mr., 702

Copenhagen, the Vega calls at, 30;
ception at, 725

Copper Island, 593, 595, 601, 605

Corea, whales with European harpoons
caught at, 203; Japanese campaign
to, 682

poeonus caught by the Chukches, 371,

1

Corpse found in Chukch Land, 381, 464
Corundum, 696, 717

Cosmic dust, 250

Coughtrie, J. B., 697

Coxe, J. H. 557

Croyére, L’Isle de la, 546, 548, 549
Crustacea, phosphorescent, 441

Cruys Eiland, 179

Crystals found on the ice, 249
Currents in the Siberian Polar Sea, 15
Cygnus Bewickit, 99

Cystophora cristata, 127

D

Daut, Captain, 239

Daibutsu statues, 680

Dale. Fr. de la, 181, 186

Dall, W. H. 347, 559, 570 2

Datla delicatissima, 444

Dallmann, Captain, 238, 272, 347

Daubrée, A., 735

David, Russian ambassador, 45

Dawn (vessel), the, 241

Day-reckoning on board the Tega, 342 n

De Long, Captain, 369

Dementiev, 547

Deschnev Simeon, 18, 19, 22, 535, 545;
voyages of, 523

Devil’s Temple at Ratnapoora, 715

Diamonds, 710, 712

Diastylis Rathkez, 152

Diatoms, fresh-water, on sea-ice, 144

Dickson Island, 145

Dietary of the expedition, 361

Diomede Island, 563

Disco Island, 114

Dittmar, C. von, 458, 487

Dixon, Alexander C., 707

Dog-fish, 444

Dogs, Samoyed, 66; Chukch, 377, 469;
sacrificed, 592

Dolgans, 279

Dolgoi Island, 171, 181, 537

Donis, Nic., 43 7, 514

Doria, Marquis, 724

Dorma, hunter, 229

Draha alpina, 259, 260, 567

Dredgings, zoological, 183, 150, 247, 262,
265, 341, 344, 436, 450, 582, 669, 724

Driftwood, at Port Dickson, (1562; at
Beli Ostrow, 154

748

Drums, Shaman, 415, 495

Dsungaria, 283

Dudino, 272, 544; thanksgiving service
at, 279

Du Halde, J. B., 535 n

Durfoorth, Cornelius, 50

Dutch, first voyage of the, 1773; second
voyage, 185 ; third voyage, 188

Dwina, the river, 46, 47, 55, 518

Dyaks, 641

Dybovski, Benedikt, 619

E

Eartu, changes of the surface of the,
in the Arctic regions, 330

East Cape, 450, 535

Edge, Thomas, 51 7

Edward VI. of England, 49

Edward Bonaventure (vessel). 50, 166;
its fate, 173 2

Egypt, stay in, 725

Ehlertz, Russian official, 272 n

Hider, 96, 159; import of down, 97 7

Eisen, G., 115

Elfving, N. A., 347

Elliott, H. W., 125, 593 n, 609 n, 610

Elpidia glacialis, 140, 142

Emberiza lapponica, 100 n

Emberiza nivalis, 100 n

Emeralds, 712

England, stay in, 732; development of
its navigation, 48; north-east voyages
from, 50, 164

Enhydris lutris, 598, 602

Enontekis, the climate of, 38

Enoshima, excursion to, 634

Ensamheten (island), 1384, 255

Envall, A., 9

Erik the Red, 509

Eschscholz Bay, 558, 570

Eskimo in North America, 73, 457 n, 508

Eskimo at Port Clarence, barter with,
570, 576; dress, 573; implements, 571,
574; boats, 570; carvings, 578, 580,
artistic skill, 500 ; graves, 579; religion,
579 n

Eskimo in Asia, 565

Eskimo on St. Lawrence Island, 587

Eumetopias Stelleri, 602 n, 604, 616

Europeus, E. D., 156

Eurynorhynchus pygmaeus, 431

Everl6f, Consul-general, 736

Evertebrates living by turns in fresh and
salt water, 151

Exhibitions, Japanese, 632, 688

Exiles, Siberian, 293

Express (ship), 7, 59, 1383, 144, 153;

voyage of, 270

F

Fappryey Island, 552, 553
Falcons on Yalmal, 159
Falmouth, arrival at, 732
Feodor, the Cossack, 149, 271

INDEX.

Figurin, the surgeon, 556

Finmark, the settlement of, 43

Fins carry on navigation in the Murman
Sea, 167, 182

Finch, Richard, 61 », 131

Finsch, O., 157

Fire-drill, Chukch, 489

Fixed dwellings, 146 n

Flawes, Captain, 199

Fletcher, Giles, 80

Fohn wind, the, 211, 424

Fomin, the Yakut, 14

Food-plants, Chukeh, 481

Ford, Charles, 697

Foreland Sound, the, 107

Fossil plants at Mogi, 690; at Labuan,
701 ; in Egypt, 725

Foul Bay, 84, 137

Fox, the Arctic (or mountain), 113, 432,
600 ; common, 7),

Foyn, Svend, 130

Fra Mauro’s map, 516

Franklin, Martin, 727

Franz Josef Land, 139 n, 204, 230, 318

Fraser (steamer), 7, 59, 183, 143, 145,
243 ; voyage, 270

Fretum Nassovicum (Yugor Schar), 11,
131, 186

Frost-bite, 347, 461 )

Frost-formation, the Siberian, 445

Frozen ground in Finland, 445 n

Fruholm, the climate of, 37 »

Fuligula glacralis, 98 ; found during the
expedition, 436

—— Stelleri, 430

Fusiyama, 622, 674

Fusus deformis, 582

G

Gadus navaga, 662

Gagarin, Prince, 531

Gama, Vasco da, 515

Gardiner, Charles, 230

Geertz, Dr., 643, 670

Gefferson, William, 50

Gessner, Conrad, 576 n

Gillissy (Yenisej), 187

Giusso, Count, 727

Glacier-iceblocks in the Polar seas, 319;
burst asunder, 320

Glaciers, various kinds of, 136; formerly
in North-Eastern Asia, 585

Gmelin, 549

Gold lustre, stones with, on Novaya
Zemlya, 209, 211

Gold diggings, Siberian, 297

Golovin, second mate, 538

Golovin, Captain, 646

Goltschicha, 146, 149, 239

Gooseland, 57, 98

Goreloj, Andrej, 526

Gorm (larva of Oestrus tarandi), 106;
495, 507

Gosho, palace in Kioto, 677

Gothenburg, 30

Goulden, Captain, 203

INDEX. 749

Gourdon, William, 196

Graculus bicristatus, 342

Grandidier, 733

Granite, weathered, 710

Grant, U.8., General, 648

Graphite, 576

Graves, Siberian, 297 ; Chukch, 330, 465,
568 ; Eskimo, 579

Grebnitski, 617 », 618

Greeks, geographical ideas of the, 511

Green Harbour, 106

Greenland said to be continuous with
Norway, 43; Inland-ice, 135

Greenland seal, 126, 127

Greenlander’s dress, 85; compared with
other Polar races, 72, 508; are descended
from Norse colonists, 509

Grévy, President, 734, 735

“ Grip-claws ” found in Siberia, 308

Gubin, mate, 209

Gundersen, captain of the Express, 8

Gundersen, M., 230

Gusinnaya Semlya, see Gooseland

Gustaf Vasa’s plan of a north-east pas-
sage, 47

Guturoyv, Peter, 530

Gvosdarev, mate, 214

Gvosdev, Michael, 455, 557

Gyda Bay surveyed, 539

Gygax, Dr., 710

H

Haea dust, the, 251

Haimann, Guiseppe, 725

Hakluyt, Richard, 502

Hall, Captain, 558

Halo, refraction, 391, 392

Hemy," Dr., 733

Hardy, R. Spence, 639

Harelda glacialis, 253

Hares, 383, 431; snow-blind, 383

Hartman, Hendrik, 186

Haven, P. von, 539 n

Health, state of, during the wintering,
360

Hecht, 734

Hedenstrém, 20, 111, 307; travels, 552;
life, 556 n

Heemskerk, 195

Hellant, A., 399 n

Hennessy, Pope, 697, 698

Hens, Jacob, 455

Herald Island, 558

Herbertstein, Sigismund von, 45, 517

Herdebol, ore-tester, 455

Herodotus on the geography of Asia, 511,
515; on Androphagi, 62 7, 518 n

Heuglin, Baron von, 2307

Hideyoshi, Taiko, 682

Hinloopen Strait, 87, 88, 107

Hirosami, 686

Histriophoca fasciata, 563, 567, 591

Holland, development of its navigation,
177

Holmgren, A. E., 115

Holmgren, Fr., 500

Holstein-Holsteinborg, Count, 736

Homer, 511

Hong Kong, 698; rocks at, 711

Hooper, 458, 495, 5647, 565, 576 n, 584,
587

Hoorn, Jan Cornelisz van, 197

Hope Island, 128

Horn Sound, 86, 96, 107, 222

Hovgaard, A., 3, 32, 74, 148, 153, 155,
160, 345, 374, 432, 482, 485, 644, 730;
Excursion to Menka’s home, 377;
portrait, 731

Hudson, Henry, 196

Hugo, Victor, 735

Humbert, King, 729

Hyacinth (precious stone), 713

I

Ick, different kinds of, in the Polar Seas,
3818; action on the sea-bottom, 143 ;
thickness during the wintering, 351

Icebergs, 138; size of, 318

Ice Fjord, 88, 107, 261

Icing down, 340

Ides, Evert Yssbrants, 305

Idlidlja (island), 418 fi

Idothea entomon, 152, 313, 314, 317

— Sabinet, 152, 318, 315

Ignatiev, 522

Ikaho, 649

Ilgin, mate, 556

Illusions caused by mist, 263, 422

Indians, driven,

Indigirka, 545

Ingée, 34

Inland-ice, 135, 189, 585

Inland Sea of Japan, 686, 712

Inn, Japanese, 634, 637

Insects, 114, 155, 259, 440, 580; frozen
stiff, 115, 240; in a bird’s nest, 92

Insula Tazata, 517

Irgunnuk, 366, 412

Irkaipij, 333, 557

Irtisch, 283, 519, 534

Islands in the Siberian Sea, accounts of,
18, 526, 527, 528 n

Tsleif, 112

Istoma, Gregory, 45

Italy, 726

Ito-Keske, 642

Ivanov, mate, 212

Ivanov, Rodivan, 206

Iven, 732

Ivory coat of mail, 478

J

JACKMAN’S voyages, 174, 176 n

Jakovlev, Peter, 605

Janszoon, Harman, 186

Japan, 693

Japanese, 530, 536

Japanese voyage round the world, 124» ;
shop, 672

Jeannctts, the expedition of the, 339

750 INDEX.

Jinrikisha, 636

Johannes de Plano Carpini, 82 7
Johannesen, Chr., 7, 229, 267, 276, 277
Johannesen, Edward, 141, 225
Johannesen, Soren, 229

Jovius, Paulus, 48 2

Jugaria, 131

Juschkov, 209

K

Kattas river, the, 702

Kamakura, 635

Kamchatka, discovered, 529 ; subjugated,
525; first voyage to, 531; its extent
towards the south in old maps, 535

Kamchatka river, the, 529

Kamenni Ostrova, 243

Kampfer, E., 643

Kanin-nos, 170

Karaginsk Island, 692

Kara port, the, 12; Pet sails through it,
175

Kara river, wintering at the, 537

Kara Sea, the, voyage across, 141; its
name, 132 ; its boundaries, 133 ; depth,
13, 140,143 ; temperature of the water,
140; salinity, 144; fauna, 140 ; alge,
141 ; icebergs uncommon in, 139 ; “ ice-
house,” 139; navigated for the first
time by West-Europeans, 174 ; voyages
to, 218

Kargauts, 338

Karlskrona, 30

Karmakul Bay, 97, 196

Kascholong, 577 2

Kawamura, Admiral, 624, 630, 673; por-
trait of, 625

Kay, E. C. Lister, 229

Kegor, 186

Kellett, 558

Kellett Land, 558

Keswick, 697

Keulen’s Atlas, 4538

Kilduin, 181

Killingworth, George, 54

Kindakoy, 545

King’s Bay, 107

King Karl’s Land, 106 »

Kini Balu mountain, 706

Kioto, 671, 675, 678

Kirilov, secretary, 537

Kita-Shira-Kava, 627, 630

Kittiwake, see Larus tridactylus

Kittlitz, 594

Kjellman, F. R., 3, 34, 141, 145, 150, 1547,
155 n, 243, 244, 249, 253 n, 259, 268 n,
329, 341, 354, 380, 393, 407, 567, 580,
584, 590, 617, 618, 707, 720, 730 ; sketch
of a day during the wintering, 387;
portrait, 722

Klapmyts, 127

Klingstedt, 207 x, 208 n

Klokov, 213

Knoop, Baron, 272

Koba-Yaschi, 673, 683

Kobe, stay at, 670

Koch, 114

Kola, 166 n, 194 n, 195

Kolesoff. I. P., 274, 276

Kolgujev Island, 51 n, 175

Kolmogor, 173, 517 »

Kolmogorsov, 19

Kolyma river, the, 322, 522, 524, 525, 546,

. 590; discovered, 522

Kolyutschin Bay, 569,585; Vega comes
to, 345 ; its extent, 421, 422, 456

Kolyutschin Island, 344, 366

Kompakova river, the, 532

Kouungs skuggji on the walrus, 123

Konyam Bay, 565, 569; Vega comes to,
584 ts

Kopai, a Schelag, 528

Korepovsko], 248, 270

Korovin, hunter, 605, 606 n

Koryaks, 460, 525, 529

Koscheleff, 492 n

Koschelev, 539

Koschevin, 553

Kosirevskoj, Ivan, 530

Kosmin, mate, 556

Kostin Schar, 180

Kotelnoj Island, 20, 552, 553, 555

Kotsches, 19 2, 520 »

Kotschuga, 284

Kotzebue, 25, 558, 570 n; stay at St.
Lawrence Island, 591

Krascheninnikov, 458, 525 n, 529 n

Krassilinikoff, 604

Krestovski Island, 521

Krestovskoj, 148

Krestovskoj arm, the, 542

Kroma river, the, 526

Krotov, Lieut., 213

Krusenstern, M. von, 124 n, 492 n

Krusenstern, Paul von, the elder, 217

Krusenstern, Paul von, the younger, 219;
his portrait, 218

Kier, Dr., 556

Kiihn, Franz, 728

Kurbski, 8S. T., 518

Kuro-Sivo, 620

Kusakov, 527

Kusatsu, stay at, 656 ; the healing power
of the baths, 657

Kutschum Khan, 519

Kythay lacus, 518

L

LABUAN, 700

Lagomys, 565

Lagercrantz, 736, 738

Lagoon formations, 327

Lagopus hyperboreus, 101, 146, 164, 245,
384

Lagopus subalpinus, 433

La Madeléne, 561

La Martiniére, 197; his map, 198
Laminaria solidungula, 341

Lamps, Chukch, 413

Landmarks, 175

Land worms, 115

Languet, Hubert, 47

Lapland, the Dutch navigation to, 174
Lapps, the, dress, 34; spoken of by Othere,

d

INDEX. 7i1

41 n, 43; compared with other Polar
races, 72; skilful hunters, 172 n

Lapp sparrow, see Emberiza lapponica

Laptev, Chariton, 17, 18, 277 x; voyages,
542

Laptev, Dmitri, 21; first voyage, 544;
second voyage, 546

La Ronciére le Noury, 734

Larus eburneus, 92, 502 ; met with during
expedition, 259, 430

———glaucus, 89; met with during ex-
pedition, 146, 245, 267, 480

——— Rossii, 93, 430

———Sabinit, 93, 383

—tridactylus, 92; seen during ex-
pedition,253, 267, 430

Lasarev, 212

Lassinius, 21, 539 n ;

Laxman, 646

Lectures during the wintering, 400

Lemming, the, 113 ; met with during the
expedition, 146, 259, 829, 432

Lena (river), the, ascent of, 278; river
area, 282 7 ; navigable, 283 ; its natural
beauty, 5407 ; discovered, 530 ; Russian
voyages from, 540, 544

Lena (steamer), 5, 7, 33, 60, 131, 148,
153; parting from Vega, 269; voyage
up the river Lena, 278

Lena delta, the, 277 2

Leontiev, 552

Leprosy in Japan, 657

Lesseps, 726

Lestris Buffonii, 94, 253

parasitica, 94, 245, 253

pomarina, 94.

Tetons sent home, 374, 378, 402

Leuchtenberg, 7 729

Lighthouse Island, 323

Lilljeborg, W., 441

Limit of trees in the north of Europe
and Asia, 36; at the Lena, 37; at the
Yenisej, 287

Lindstrand, 727

Linnea borealis, 580, 590

Linneus, 431

Linschoten, 181, 182

Lisbon, stay in, 730

L’Isle de la Croyere, 546, 548, 549

Little Auk, see Wergulus alle

Ljachoff, 315, 317, 552

Ljachoff’s Island, 521, 550, 552
comes to, 313

Logan, J., 302

Lomme Bay, 88

London, stay at, 733

Long, Captain, 22, 588

Loons met with at Port Dickson, 146, 267

Loschkin, S8., 209, 214

Loshak, 172

Lotterus, map by, 456

Louise (steamer), 339, 272

Ludlow, miner, 212

Luiz, King of Portugal, 730

Lundstrom, A.N., 2, 148, 158,

Lussovy, 552

Liitke, von, 11, 212, 458, 558, 584;
portrait, 213

voyage, 544

; Vega

M

MacCuintock, 93

Machimura Masinovo, 683

Mack, F. E., 228

Madvig, J. N., 736

Maelson, F., 177

Magnetical observations
wintering, 384

Maguus, Johannes, 43 n

Magnus, Olaus, 113, 122; map of the
North, teh, 47: views regarding the
North-east Passage, 44 n

Maklin, F. W., 115

Malacca, Straits of, 707

Malays on Labuan and Borneo, 702, 705

Maldonado, L. F., 560

Malgin, N., 526

Malm, A. W., 393

Malmgren, A. J., 92

Maloj Island, 552, 553

Malvano, Secretary of the Italian Cabinet,
729

Malygin, 155, 208, 537

Mammoth, 20, 26, 301, 3367 ; in Europe,
302; in Chukch Land, 449; at Esch-
scholz Bay, 570”; old accounts of,
305; legends regarding its mode of
life, 305

Maosoe, stay at, 35, 57;

Maps of the North, 43

Marco Polo, see Polo

Markets in Siberia and Polar America,
405, 487

Markham, Clements R., 732

Markov, A., 527

Marmots from Chukch Land, 433

Marseilles, invitation to, 730

Martino, Consul-general, 726

Massa, Isaak, 587 x; his map, 172n
181-n ; 519 n

Massage in Japan, 650

Matiuschin, midshipman, 487 2 ;

Matotschkin Schar, 12, 56,215; mountains
in its neighbourhood, 1382; stone ram-
parts on its shores, 144; surveyed, 215

Matveyev Island, 208

Maunoir, 734

Maurice Island, 185

Maydell, G. von, 309, 458

Medals in memory of the voyage of the
Vega, 628, 738 n

Melchior, state councillor, 736

Melguer, David, 561

Melkaja Guba, 216

Menka, 373, 378, 492; portrait, 373

Mergulus alle, 86

Mertens, 584

Mesen, 43, 63

Mesenkin, 287 ; mammoth remains found
at, 309

Messerschmidt, 306 7 ;

Mestni Island, 1383, 175, 185, 227

Meteorological observations, 363, 423

Metridia armata, 441

Metschigme Bay, 419, 569

Meyenwaldt, mate, 163, 317

Micralymma Dicksoni, 259

during the

climate, 38

752

Middendorff, 14, 306 n, 585 n

Migrating birds, 429

Mikado, audience of, 627

Miller, 347

Mimisuka, the grave of the noses and
ears, 682

Minin, 14, 539, 540

Minusinsk, 283

Mirabelli, A., 728

Mogi, excursion to, 689; fossil plants at,

Moisture in the air, 364, 365

Mokattam mountains, excursion to, 725

Molin, A., 531 2

Mollusca, land and fresh-water, at Port
Clarence, 581; at Konyam Bay, 584;
in Japan, 669, 675 ; the northernmost,
584 n

Mollusca, subfossil, in Siberia, 278 n, 288

Moma, the river, 526

Moore, Captain, 458, 558, 584

Morgiouets, 170

Mormon Arcticus, 88

Morosko, L., 529

Moskwa (steamer), 272

Mesquitoes in the Polar regions, 114 x

Motora, Simeon, 524

Moxon, Joseph, 202

Mucheron, B., 177

Miiller,'G. P., 13 n, 18, 22, 523, 525 n,

028, 537, 549, 599 n

Miller, J. B., 305

Munster, 8., 5177

Murayjev, Lieut., 208, 537

Murman Sea, 11

Murray, Colin, 707

Muscovy Company, 131, 165

Musk ox, discovery of the remains of,
310, 570 x; supposed occurrence of, on
Wrangel Land, 339 n

Mustela vulgaris, 483

Mutnaja river, 205

Mutnoj Saliv, 537

Myodes obens's, 113, 432

Myodes torquatus, 432

N

NAGASAKI, arrival at, 688

Nakasendo road, the, 644, 662

Namollo, 459, 565

Naples, stay at, 727

Narainzay river, 172

Narborough, John, 200

Narwhal, 125, 315 n

Narontza river, 172 n”

Nathorst, A. G., 690, 692, 701

Nay, C., 178

Nearchus, 129

Nedrevaag, A. O., 228

Negri, C., 34, 727, 729

Nephrite among the Eskimo, 577 ; among
the Chinese, 577 n, 696

Neremskoe, 132

Neumann, C. von, 458, 487 n

New Siberian Islands, 19, 102 x, ,103,
411; 528 n; exploratory journeys to,

INDEX.

311; first visited by Europeans, 552;
journeys to, 553

Nierop, Van, 156

Nikul river, 525 n

Nilson, Rouzeaud, K., 734

Njaskaja, 280

Noah Elisej, 437 ; portrait, 437, 438

Noah’s Wood, 26, 159, 287, 556 n

Nobel, A., 733

Nordenskiold, K., 329 ; 250, 700 n

Wordenskiéld (steamer), 622, 624

Nordquist, O., 3, 30, 32, 143, 153, 155,
243, 245, 249, 335, 336 n, 369, 374, 379,
404, 409, 431, 460, 485, 634, 669, 678 ;
excursion to Menka’s home, 374; visit
to Pidlin, 379; excursion to Nutsch-
oitjin, 410; on the animals wintering
in Chukch Land, 431

Nordvik, 542

Noril Mountains, 272

North-east Land, inland ice on, 134

North-east Passage, reasons of search for,
48,177; prize for its discovery, 188, 189

North Pole, said to have been reached,
202

Norways, the, 86

Northbrook, Earl of, 732

Notti, 400, 410, 418, 496 ; portrait, 401

Novara Elliya, 720

Novaya Sibir, 552, 553, 554

Novaya Zemlya, animal life there, 83;
first known to West-Europeans, 164;
its name, 165; Russian landmarks on,
174 x; its northern extremity passed
for the first time, 190; proposal to
colonise it, 207; supposed riches in
metals, 212; Russian voyages to, 214;
Norwegian voyages to, 224; circum-
navigation of, 226

Nummelin, G. A., 161, 239 ; portrait, 241

Nunamo, 565

Nutschoitjin, excursion to, 409

O

Opn, Gulf of, Owzyn’s voyage on, 538;
surveyed, 539, 2.

Ob, river territory, 282; navigable, 283:
first mentioned, 518 n; Russian naviga-
tion to in former times, 173, 187, 207;
English vessel stranded at, 176 x, 196,
197; vessel stranded east of, 207;
Russian expedition to, 537; recent
voyages to, 238

Obdorsk, 157, 221, 538, 539

Observatory, magnetical, at Pitlekaj,
356, 384

Okotsk, 530

Okotsk, Sea of, bottom frozen, 445 n;
navigation on, 531, 532

Oiwake, 662

Okuschi, Mr., 670

Old Believers, Russian sect, 63, 207 n

Olonek river, 17, 23, 520, 541, 542

Olutorsk river, 523

Onkilon tribe, the, 459, 565; excavations
on the sites of old dwellings, 335;

INDEX. 753

implements, 835; Wrangel’s account
of them, 336;

Oom, L. G., 186

Oordt, Consul van, 622

Ophiacantha bidentata, 262

Ophioglypha nodosa, 435

Orange Island, 185

Orange Islands, 179, 190

Orca gladiator, 130

Orosius, Paulus, 39

Osaka, 671, 675

Oscar, Duke of Gotland, 734, 735

Oscar, King, 2, 3, 738, 740

Osche, 608

Oshima, 622

Osmerus eperlanus, 372

Ostatiof, M., 453

Ostyaks, 291

Otaria Steller, see Sea-lion

ursina, see Sea-bear .

Othere, 122 ; voyage, 40

Otter, F. W. von, 2, 740

Owl, snowy, 102; observed during ex-
pedition, 259, 267

Owzyn, Lieut., 14, 538, 539

1p

PacutTussov, voyages of, 212; death of,
215

Paget, Sir A. B., 722

Paj-Koi mountain, the, 59

Palander, L., 3,7, 8 n, 9;'30, 32, 109,
132, 134, 145, 243, 264, 324, 344, 357,
360, 384, 450, 491, 569, 592, 622, 697,
704, 706, 727, 729, 730, 733 n, 741;
excursion to a reindeer-chukch camp,
460 ; portrait, 406

Pallas, 558, 605

Pallavicini, Prince, 729

Palliser, John, 225

Palmieri, Prof. 728

Panelapoetski, 201

Pansch, Dr., 109 n

Pappan Island, 703

Perideniya, botanic garden at, 717

Parent, E., 729

Paris, fétes at, 734

Parositi, Asiatic tribe, 82 n

Parry Island, 88, 103

Parry, Sir Edward, 508, 556

Pauloy, Lieut., 208, 537

Paulutski, D., 455, 565

Payer, 204, 318

Pedrotalagalla, 707, 720

Pekarski, 605

Pelikan, Consul, 622

Penschina Bay, 455

Penschina River, 524

Permakov, J., 527

Perry, Commodore, 621

Pet, A., 50, 131 ; his voyages, 174

Petzora river, 46, 167, 172, 518

Peter the Great, 531, 534

Petermann, A., his belief that the Polar
Sea is occasionally navigable, 203

Petersen, C., 111, 319

Petropaulovsk, 546, 599, 618

Pet’s Straits, 131

Phalarope, 100, 146, 244; observed
during the expedition, 313, 329, 430

Philip and Mary (vessel), 173 x

Phipps Island, 103

Phoca barbata, 123 n, 125, 259

Groenlandica, 125; young of the,

126

hispida, 125, 252

Pidlin, 366; excursion to, 379

Pinto, Major, 732

Piper, Count, 732

Pitlekaj, 366; flora at, 354; appearance
of, 444, 445

Pjasina River, 146, 520; is discovered,
520

Plancius, Dutch geographer, 177

Pleuropogon Sabini, 253 n

Pliny the elder, 513, 518 n

Plover expedition, 458, 584

Podurids, Novaya Zemlya, 114

Poetry, Japanese, 683

Pogytscha, River, 521

Point de Galle, arrival at, 707 ; departure
from, 723

Polar bear seen during the expedition,
145, 256, 267 ; account of, 107

Polar Sea hunting, 222

Pole of cold, 357

Police in Japan, 647

Polo, Marco, 48, 112,
life, 515

Polynias, 352

Pompeii, excursion to, 72

Pontchartrin, Count de, 561

Poole, J., 222

Popov, 457

Porcelain manufacture in Japan, 682

Port Clarence, 569

Port Dickson, 15; stay at, 144;. its
discovery, 237

Porthan, 40

Portugal, stay in, 730

Pospjelov, 212

Postels, 584

Postnik, 521

Potatoes, antiscorbutic, 9

Preobraschenie Island, 268

Pribyley, 558

Pribyloyv Islands, 593 7

Priluschnoj, 149

Procellaria glacialis, 85

Promontorium Seythicum, 515

Tabin, 515

Prontschischev, 17, 540, 541

Protodiakonoff, Z., 316

Priéven (hunting sloop), 1, 223

Provision depét on land, 546

Ptolemy, 514

Purchas, 51 7

Puschkarey, 552

Pustosersk, 60

Putrefaction slow in the Polar regions,
128

Pyramids, the, visit to, 725

3D

516, 517 ”; his

754

Q

QUAEN SA, 164

Quaens, skilful harpooners, 172
Quale, P., 228

Quatrefage, M., 734

R

Rasavt, A., 730

Railway, Siberian, 284

Rambodde, 720

Ratnapoora, 710

Recherché’s wintering, 425

Red ochre, 576

Red Sea, 724

Reindeer, tame, 62 ; wild, 103

Reindeer’s skin used for clothing, 30

Reindeer’s stomach, contents of, con-
sumed by the Chukches, 327

Reitinacka, 442

Renee, 36

Rhinoceros antiquitatis, 306

———— Mercku, 310

Rhytina, 603

Riccio, 728

Richter, Consul-general, 732

Rijp, 189

Riksdag, the, supports the expedition, 6

Rio-San, 683

Rirajtinop, 366

Robeck, 558

Rodgers, 22

Rokuriga-hara, 660

Romanzoy, 552

Rondes (sable), 112

Rookery, 610

Rossmuisloy, 209

Rotgansen, 189

Rotschilten, 407, 421

Roule, C., 199

Rubies, 710

Ruggieri, Prof., 726

Ruin-like rock formations, 323

Runeberg, R., 7

Ruspoli, Prince, 729

Russians, at Chabarova, 62

8

Sabinea septemcarinata, 434

Sachanich Bay, 181 7

Sacrificial heights, 73

Saigo Kichinosuke, 626

Sajsan, Lake, 283

Salix artica, 448

Samoyeds, 60; their idols, 67, 75; their
dress, 71 ; compared with other Polar
races, 72; burying-place, 77; their
weapons, 79; old accounts of them,
79; their place in ethnography, 103

Samurai, 679

Sandman, Captain, 619

Sandpiper, see Phalarope

Sankin, Grigorej, 527

Sannikov, 20

Sanyo Sanitomi, 626

INDEX.

Saostrovskoj, 237
Sapetto, Prof., 724
Sapphires, 710
Satow, E. M., 639
Sauer, Martin, 315 x
Savavatari, 651
Savina river, 214
Schalaurov, 549
Schelags, 528
Schelechov, G., 601 2
Scheltinga, 548
Schestakov, A., 454
Schigansk, 280
Schmidt, F., 309
Schmidt, H., 272 2
Schrenck, L. von, 310
Schtinnikov, A., 536

Schwanenberg, D., 8, 240

Scoresby, 111
Scurvy, 38, 620
Sea-bear, the, 603
Sea-cow, 603
Sea-lion, 336 7, 602
Sea-otter, 598, 602
Sea-spider, 265
Seals, 125

Sealskin used as clothing, 30 2
Searchthrift (vessel), 166

Seebohm, Mr., 239
Selenetz Islands, 174
Selenga, 284

Selennoe Lake, 205
Self-dead animals, 246
Selifontov, 156
Selivaninsko], 293
Selivestrov, 525
Semenoffski Island, 313
Semipalitinsk, 285
Senjavin Sound, 584
Senkiti-San, 650
Serdze Kamen, 353
Seribrenikoff, 8. J., 35
Seven Islands, 92
Severnoe Siante, 162
Shamans, 495
Shaman drums, 415
Shimonoseki, 687
Shintoism, 680
Sibbern, 734

Siberian Polar Sea, 24

Siberian cattle plague, 65

Sibir, 519

Sibiriakoff, A., 2, 3, 7, 20

Sidoroff, M., 162

Sidoroff’s graphite quarry, 576
Siebold, P. H. F. von, 643

Siebold, H. von, 643
Steversia glacialis, 151
Simonsen, 229
Simovies, 146
Simpson, John, 487 n
Singapore, 707
Singhalese, 714
Sirovatskoj, 552
Skoptzi in Siberia, 293
Skuratov, 156

Slaves among the Chukches, 493

Sledges, 65

INDEX. 755

Smitt, F. A., 444

Snobberger, C. P., 199

Snow-blindness, 359, 403

Snow-drifting, 364

Snow-shoes, 475

Snow-spectacles, 359, 403

Snow, the melting of the, 423

Suups, M., 518

Sokolov, 532

Solovets, 518

Somateria molissima, 96

spectalnlis, 96, 430

— _ V -nigrum, 430

Spangberg, Martin, 534

Spinel, 713

Spirits, 332, 405, 485, 487

Spitzbergen hunting, history of, 222

Spitzbergen, its discovery ascribed to
Willoughby, 51 2; discovered by
Barents, 190; Russian voyages to, 223 ;
Norwegian voyages to, 224

Spottiswoode, Mr., 733

Springs, hot, 656

St. James’s Islands, 171

St. Laurens Bay, 181

St. Lawrence Bay, 558, 562

St. Lawrence Island, 118, 587

Stegocephalus Kesslert, 434

Stellar, G. N., 458, 5389 n, 549, 598; his
death, 600

Steppes, Siberian, 290

Sterna macroura, 96

Stockholm, arrival at, 738

Stolbovoj Island, 313

Stone Pacha, 725

Stone polishing works in Canton, 695

Strabo, 511, 513

Strahlenberg, 306 x

Strix nyctea, 102

Stroganoyv, Russian commercial house,
180 x

Stuxberg, A., 2, 32, 115, 148, 152, 237,
247, 330, 341, 568, 617, 634, 721;
portrait, 722

Suez, arrival at, 725

Sujeff, student, 141 n

Swan, Bewick’s, 98

Swedish expedition of 1875, the, 9; visits

Yalmal, 157; reaches the Yenisej, 237

Swedish prisoners of war in Siberia, 531

Swell from falling pieces of ice dangerous
to vessels, 139 n

Sword-bearing in Japan 697

Sylvia Ewersmanni 429

Sylvius, Aineas, 44 2

dt

Tarn, Promontorium, 10, 185

Tagil river, the, 519

Taimur Island, 252

Taimur lake, 544

Taimur Land, inhabited by Samoyeds,
187 2; position of its east coast, 267 ;
Minin’s travels along the coast, 540

Taimur river, the, 309

Takasima coal mine, 692

Tamils, 714

Tanning reindeer hides, 490

Tas-ary, 274, 279

Tas river, the, 517, 520 n

Tatarinoy, Feodor, 551

Tatarinov, Cossack, 554

Tattooing, Chukch, 376, 472; Eskimo,
at Port Clarence, 573; Eskimo, at St.
Lawrence island. 588, 589

Tazata, Insula, 517

Teano, Prince, 727, 729

Temples in Japan, 678, 679; on Ceylon,
715

Tennent, E., 708 x, 710

Yerfins, 41 2

Tetgales, B. Y., 178

Thalassiophyllum Clathrus, 619

Théel, Hj., 2, 237

Theatres in Japan, 665

Thorne, Robert, 48 x

Thunberg, C. P., 431, 642 n

Thwaites, Dr., 717

Tietgen, state councillor, 736

Tigil River, the, 325 x, 531

Tintinyaranga, 384

Tjapka, Chukch village, 411

Tyumen, 519, 600

Tobacco, its use among the Chukches,
485 ; in Japan, 639

Tobiesen, 8. K., his voyage to Spitzber-
gen, 85 2, 109, 112, 117, 229, 231; win-
tering on Bear Island, 231; his death,
233; his portrait, 231

Tobol river, the, 519

Tobolsk, 261, 539

Tokaido read, the, 634

Tokio, visit to, 626; the
graves at, 631

Topaz, 696, 710

Toporkoff Island, 617

Torosses, 321, 349, 396

Toxar Island, 181, 182

Treacher, Governor, 702

Trees, distribution of, in Siberia, 289

Tringa maritima, 430

Trofimov’s mammoth, 308

Tromsoe, Vega’s stay at, 33; its climate,
37 2

Tumat Island, 274

Tundra, appearance of the, 286, 287, 290

Tunguses, 291, 308, 542, 543

Shoguns’

U

UMBELLULA in the Kara Sea, 140
Ural-Altaic race, 81

Uria Briinnichit, 87

———_ grylle, 89
Urusov, Prince, 728

Ustjansk, 553, 654

Usui-toge, 662

A

VARDOE, 52, 53; climate of, 38 2
Varzina river, the, 54
Varthema, Ludovico de, 724

756

Vasa Murrhina, 577n

Vaygats Island, 62, 74; discovered, 164 ;
visited by Pet, 174, 175

Veer, Gerrit de, 81; his book, 188

Veya, the, purchased, 6; description of,
7; equipment of, 9; position when
frozen in, 353; action of cold on 352 ;
prepared for wintering, 354; repaired,
693; sold, 740

Vessels, Norse, 42; Russian, on the
Polar sea, 167

Viamingh, 199

Voleanic dust in Scandinavia, 251

Volcanoes, 587

Vulpes lagopus, see Fox, Arctic

— vulgaris, sce Fox, common

W

W «rN, C. F., 6

Waldburg-Zeil, Count, 157

Walden Island, 88

Walrus, 117

Walton, Lieut., 548

Wax tree, the Japanese, 688

Waxel, Lieut., 547

Weasel, 433

Werchojansk, 310

Werkon, the river, 550

Weyprecht, 204

Whales, on the coast of Norway, 41;
scarce at Novaya Zemlya, 129; fear
of, in ancient times, 129, 180; with
European harpoons, found in the Paci-
fic, 202, 203

Whale bones on Spitzbergen, 129; sub-
fossil at Pitlekaj, 391, 392 ; used as
building materials, 566; at St. Law-
rence Island, 589

Whale-fishing, described by Albertus
Magnus, 1237; at Spitzbergen, 129

Whale mummy at Pitlekaj, 393

White-fronted goose, 97

White Island, see Beli Ostrov

White Sea, the, 164

White whale, the, 63, 128

Widmark, H. A., 424 2

Wiemut, Julian, 620

Wiggins, J., portrait, 237, 239

Wilkoffski, 577 »

Willoughby, Sir Hugh, portrait, 11, 48,
49

Willoughby’s Land, 51 n

Wilui river, the, 506

Wood, Captain, 200

Woodcock, James, 176 »

W osnessenski, conservator, 606

Wrangel, Ferdinand von, 20, 203, 337,
457; journeys, 556; portrait, 555

INDEX.

Wrangel Land, 19, 23, 338, 528 », 551,
556; landing on, 557 2

Wrestlers, Japanese, 653

Wulfstan’s travels, 42

BY

YAakovigEva, 238

Yakuts, 291, 520 n

Yaknutsk, 16, 19, 21, 23, 280, 281, 540,
542, 544

Yalmal, excursion to, 154; visited in
1875, 157; population, 156 ; origin of
the name, 157; old accounts of, 156;
surveyed, 538

Yana river, the, 315

Yanimoto, 673

Yefremov Kamen, 285

Yekargauls, 375

Yelmert, 155

Yelmert Land, 158

Yenisej, the, voyages of the Fraser and
the Express up, 270; ascent of, in
1875, 293 ; river territory, 281; navig-
able, 283; its banks, 285, 286;
vegetation on, 287 ; steamers on, 298 ;
discovered, 520; Russian navigation
on, in former times, 185, 186; Russian
sea, expeditions to, 538; Minin’s
voyages on, 539; later voyages to, 237

Yermak, schooner, 217, 220

Yenisej, mouth of the, map of, 147;
formerly inhabited, 146 ; winter at, 150

Yettugin, 420, 449, 493

Yii gate, the, 696

Yinretlen, 365

Ymer (steamer), 1, 8 2, 238, 270, 271

Yokohama, 621; arrival at, 620; depar-
ture from, 693

Yokosuka, 693

VYoldia Artica, 152

Young, Sir Allen, 732

Yugor Schar, 11; expedition passes, Bil
rules for sailing through, 32; har-
bours in, 133; origin of the name, 151;
Pet did not sail through, 174, 175; map
of, 186

Yukagires, 455

Yukagir dwellings, remains of, on the
New Siberian Islands, 556

Z

Zaritza (steamer), 272 n, 273
Zeno 44n

Ziegler’s map of the north, 45
Zivolka, A. K., 216; portrait, 217
Zircon, 713

THE END.

LONDON : R. CLAY, SONS. AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.

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