Volume 1 — CHAPTER IX. (continued 2)

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 separated us from the open water at Behring's Straits, as whalers on several occasions had not left this region until the middle of October.

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. DALL 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 MAYNOD, 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. ELVING, 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. 1807. 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°, during 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. 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 following 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 Kolyutschin 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[214] 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. Förhandl 1874-5).

[215] Compare Ph. Avril, Voyage en divers états d'Europe et d'Asie entrepris pour découvrir un nouveau chemin à la Chine, etc., Paris, 1692, p. 209. Henry H. Howorth, "The Mammoth in Siberia" (Geolog. Mag. 1880, p. 408).

[216] 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.

[217] The word mummies is used by Von Middendorff to designate carcases of ancient animals found in the frozen soil of Siberia.

[218] 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.

[219] 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).

[220] E. Yssbrants Ides, Dreyjarige Reise nach China, etc., Frankfort, 1707, p. 55. The first edition was published in Amsterdam, in Dutch, in 1704.

[221] 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.

[222] Tilesius, De skeleto mammonteo Sibirico (Mém. de l'Acad. de St. Pétersbourg, T. V. pour l'année 1812, p. 409). Middendorff, Sib. Reise,IV. i. p. 274. Von Olfers, Die Überreste vorweltlicher Riesenthiere in Beziehung zu Ostasia-tischen Sagen und Chinesischen Schriften (Abhandl. der Akad. d. Wissensch. zu Berlin aus dem Jahre 1839, p 51).

[223] P. S. Pallas, De reliquiis animalium exoticorum per Asiam borealem repertis complementum (Novi commentarii Acad. Sc. Petropolitanae, XVII. pro anno 1772, p. 576), and Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen Reichs, Th. III. St. Petersburg, 1776, p. 97.

[224] Hedenström, Otrywki o Sibiri, St. Petersburg, 1830, p. 125. Ermann's Archiv, Part 24, p. 140.

[225] Compare K. E. v. Baer's paper in Mélanges Biologiques, T. V. St. Pétersbourg, 1866, p. 691; Middendorff, IV. i. p. 277; Gavrila Sarytschev's Achtjährige Reise in nordöstlichen Sibirien, etc., translated by J. H. Busse, Th. 1, Leipzig, 1806, p. 106.

[226] 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 finds of the same nature in the above-quoted paper in Tome V. of Mélanges Biologiques;S t. Pétersbourg, pp. 645-740.

[227] Middendorff, IV. 1, p. 272.

[228] Friedrich Schmidt, Wissenschastliche Resultate der sur Aussuchung eines Mammuthcadavers ausgesandten Expedition (Mém. de l'Acad. de St. Pétersbourg, Ser. VII. T. XVIII. No. 1, 1872).

[229] Brandt, Berichte der preussischen Akad. der Wissenchasten, 1846, p. 224. Von Schmalhausen, Bull de l'Acad. de St. Pétersbourg, T. XXII. p. 291.

[230] The find is described by Heir Czersky in the Transactions published by the East Siberian division of the St. Petersburg Geographical Society; and subsequently by Dr. Leopold von Schrenck in Mém. de l'Acad. de St. Pétersbourg, Ser. VII. T. XXVII. No. 7,1880.

[231] The mean temperature of the different months is shown in the following table:—

[232] Hedenström, loc. cit. p. 128. To find stranded driftwood in an upright position is nothing uncommon.

[233] Martin Sauer, An account of a Geographical and Astronomical Expedition 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 Hedenström's stay in these regions three narwhals were enclosed in the ice near the shore at the mouth of the Yana (Otrywki o Sibiri, p. 131).

[234] 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.

[235] 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 Hedenström in his oft-quoted work (Otrywki o 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 layers 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.

[236] 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 bad afterwards for some reason or other endeavoured to protect from the action of the atmosphere.

[237] H. Rink, Grönland geographisk og statistisk beskrevet, Bd. 2, Copenhagen, 1857, p. 344.

[238] C. von Dittmar, Bulletin hist.-philolog, de l'acad. de St. Pétersbourg, XIII. 1856, p. 130.

[239] Krascheninnikov, Histoire et Description du Kamtschatka, Amsterdam 1770, II. p. 95. A. Ennan, Reise urn die Erde,D.1, B.2, p. 255.

[240] 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.

[241] 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. III. (by James King), London, 1784, p. 259, pl. 52.

[242] The greatest number of mammoth tusks is obtained from the stretches of land and the islands between the Chatanga and Chaum 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).

[243] Among the bears' skulls brought 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.

[244] Wrangel's Reise, Th. 2, Berlin, 1839, p. 220.

[245] According to a paper in Deutsche Geografische Blätter, 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.

[246] Cf. Redogörelse för den svenska polarexpeditionen år 1872-73 (Bihang till Vet Ak. handl. Bd. 2, No. 18, p. 91).

[247] 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 an icing down, though with a fortunate issue, befell the steamer Sofia in the month of October off Bear Island, during the Swedish Polar Expedition of 1868.

[248] Irkaipij 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.