570 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. xiv. 



the voyage. But I found, on reacliing them, that the stratified • 

 rocks only consisted of crystalhne schists without any traces of 

 animal or vegetable remains. Nor did we find on the shore 

 any whale-bones or any of the remarkable mammoth-bearing 

 ice-strata which were discovered in the bay situated immediately 

 north of Behring's Straits, which was named after Dr. EsCH- 

 SCHOLZ, medical officer during Kotzebue's famous voyage.^ 



Immediately after the anchor fell we were visited by several 

 very large skin boats and a large number of kayaks. The 

 latter were larger than the Greenlanders', being commonly in- 

 tended for two persons, who sat back to back in the middle of 

 the craft. We even saw boats from which, when the two 

 rowers had stepped out, a third person crept who had lain 

 almost hermetically sealed in the interior of the kayak, 

 stretched on the bottom without the possibility of moving his 

 limbs, or saving himself if any accident should happen. It 

 appeared to be specially common for children to accompany 

 their elders in kayak voyages in this inconvenient way. 



After the natives came on board a lively traffic commenced, 

 whereby I acquired some arrow-points and stone fishing-hooks. 

 Anxious to procure as abundant material as possible for 

 instituting a comparison between the household articles of 

 the Eskimo and the Chukches, I examined carefully the skin- 

 bags which the natives had with them. In doing so I picked 

 out one thing after the other, while they did not object to me 

 making an inventory. One of them, however, showed great 

 unwillingness to allow me to .^et to the bottom of the sack, but 

 this just made me curious to ascertain what precious thing was 

 concealed there. I was lu'gent, and went through the bag half 



^ These strata were discovered diiriiig Kotzebue's circumnavigation of 

 he globe {Eiddeckungs Re'ise, Weimar, 1821, i. p. 146, and ii. p. 170). 

 The strand-bank was covered by an exceedingly luxuriant vegetable 

 carpet, and rose to a height of eighty feet above the sea. Here the " rock," 

 if this word can be used for a stratum of ice, was found to consist of pure 

 ice, covered with a layer,, only six inches thick, of blue clay and turf-earth. 

 The ice must have been several hundred thousand years old, for on its 

 being melted a large number of bones and tusks of the mammoth appeared, 

 from which we may draw the conclusion that the ice-stratum was formed 

 during the period in which the mammoth lived in these regions. This 

 remarkable observation has been to a certain extent disputed by later 

 travellers, but its correctness has recently been fully confirmed by Dall. 

 On the other hand, the extent to which the strong odour, which was 

 observed at the place and resembled that of burned horns, arose from the 

 decaying mammoth remains, is perhaps uncertain, Kotzebue fixed the 

 latitude of the place at 66° 15' 36". During Beechey's voyage in 1827 the 

 place was thoroughly examined by Mr. Collie, the medical officer of the 

 expedition. He brought h.ome thence a large number of the bones of the 

 mammoth, ox, musk-ox, reindeer, and horse, which were described by the 

 famous geologist Buckland (F. W. Beechey, Narrative of a Vot/age to the 

 Pacific and Behring^s Straits, 1825-28. Londonj 1831, ii. Appendix). 



