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 in 

 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. 



SEAL FROM THE BEHRING SEA. 



llistriophoca fasciata, Zimiii. 



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 



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