584 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



the coasts, wliich consist of stratified granitic rocks, and in the 

 offing two large and several small rocky islands form an archi- 

 pelago, separated from the mainland by the deep Senjavin 

 Sound. The wish to give our naturalists an opportunity of 

 once more prosecuting their examination of the natural history 

 of the Chukch Peninsula, and the desire to study one of the 

 few parts of the Siberian coast which in all probability were 

 formerly covered with inland ice, led me to choose this place 

 for the second anchorage of the Vega on the Asiatic side south 

 of Behring's Straits. The Vega accordingly anchored here on 

 the forenoon of the 28th July, but not, as was at first in- 

 tended, in Glasenapp Harbour, because it was still occupied by 

 unbroken ice, but in the mouth of the most northerly of the 

 fjords, Konyam Bay. 



This portion of the Chukch Peninsula had been visited before 

 us by the c(jrvette Senjavm, commanded by Captain, afterwards 

 Admiral, Fr. Liitke, and by an English Franklin Expedition on 

 board the Plover, commanded by Captain Moore. Liitke stayed 

 here with his companions, the naturalists Mertens, Postels, and 

 KiTTLlTZ, some days in August 1828, during which the harbour 

 was surveyed and various observations in ethnography and the 

 natural sciences made. Moore wintered at this place in 1848-49. 

 I have already stated that we have his companion, Lieut. W. H. 

 Hooper, to thank for very valuable inf(jrmation relating to the 

 tribes which live in the neighbourhood. The region appears to 

 have been then inhabited by a rather dense population. Now 

 there lived at the bay where we had anchored only three 

 reindeer-Chukch families, and the neighbouring islands must 

 at the time have been uninhabited, or perhaps the arrival of 

 the Vega may not have been observed, for no natives came on 

 board, which otherwise would probably have been the case. 



The shore at the south-east part of Konyam Bay, in which 

 the Vega now lay at anchor for a couple of days, consists of a 

 rather desolate bog, in which a large number of cranes were 

 breeding. Farther into the country several mountain summits 

 rise to a height of nearly 600 metres. The collections of the 

 zoologists and botanists on this shore were very scanty, but on 

 the north side of the bay, to which excursions were made with 

 the steam-launch, grassy slopes were met with, with pretty high 

 bushy thickets and a great variety of flowers, which enriched 

 Dr. Kj oilman's collection of the higher plants from the north 

 coast of Asia with about seventy species. Here were found too 

 the first land mollusca (Succinea, Limax, Helix, Pupa, &.c.) on 

 the Chu'-cch Peninsula.^ 



^ We have already found some land mollusca at Port Clarence, but none 

 a,t St. Lawrence Bay. The northernmost find of such animals now known 



