XI.] 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 cliif 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 under the sea} Fur on the coast the bottom often 

 consists of hard frozen sand — " rock-hard sand," as the dreds^ers 

 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 during 

 summer. The frozen sea-bottom again appears to have been 

 formed by the sand washed down by the rivers having carried 



•^ 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 tlie middle of Sweden, are filled in a few years with a coherent 

 mass of i<-e if tlie 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.) 



