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 w^e 

 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 Avas 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 

 v^'aters. 



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 vxis the most abundant yield that the trawl-net at any one time 

 brought up during the whole of our 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 1 00 metres. The temperature of the 



