IX.] COMPELLED TO LIE-TO. 329 



Oil 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 

 Avest 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, incon- 

 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 algse. 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 



^ Of course the earth here at an inconsiderable depth under the surface 

 is constantly frozen, but I have nowhere seen such alternating layers of 

 eartli and ice, crossed by veins of ice, as Hedenstrbm in his oft-quoted 

 work [Otnjivki Slbiri, 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 tlie 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. 



