LONELY NORTHERN WASTES. 429 



would cause a startling revision of all the natural order of life in 

 Bering Sea and our Arctic Ocean. 



Cape Prince of Wales, which forms the extreme narrowing of 

 Bering Straits, is a high, rugged promontory, with walls on the 

 south side that are abrupt precipices of a full thousand feet, while 

 the uplands rise, culminating in a snowy crown that is twenty-five 

 hundred feet above the level of the sea. Deep gulches seam these 

 vertical walls, and are the paths of numerous tiny rivulets that 

 trickle and run in cascades down from the spongy moorlands above. 

 When, however, you stand in to the straits, homeward bound from 

 the Arctic Ocean, this cape on that side presents a wholly different 

 outline. It slopes up gradually from the beaches, and presents the 

 appearance of a tundra gently rising to a small ridge-like summit. 

 This lowland on the north side is projected under the sea for a dis- 

 tance of over eight miles in a northerly direction, making an ex- 

 ceedingly dangerous shoal, and justly dreaded by the mariner. 



The Siberian side and opposite headland is the bold and lofty 

 East Cape, and is connected with the mainland by a low neck of 

 rolling tundra, which is characteristic of Cape Prince of Wales 

 also. Both of these outposts of two mighty continents present, at 

 a small distance, the resemblance of islands. 



On June 20th, two hundred and thirty-eight years ago (1648), 

 Simeon Deschnev, a Cossack chief trader, sailed from the mouth of 

 the Siberian river Kolyma, standing to the eastward, where he in- 

 tended to cruise until the country of those Chookchie natives, who 

 had ivory for trade, should be reached. His party sailed in three 

 small " ketches," which were rude wooden shallops, decked over, 

 about thirty feet long and twelve in beam, drawing but little wa- 

 ter. They pushed on and on in that region to the eastward, from 

 which direction the nomadic natives of the Kolyma had always re- 

 turned laden with walrus-ivory. Fields of ice retarded them ; no 

 populous trading-villages rewarded their scrutiny of the rugged 

 coast as they advanced. The known waters behind them closed up 

 with floes, so returning was impossible ; while the unknown waters 

 ahead were open and invited exploration. In this manner, hug- 

 ging the coast, Deschnev and his companions sailed through the 

 straits, landing once there in September. He called it an " isthmus," 

 and described the appearance of the Diomede Islands, which he 

 plainly saw from the shore. Although no mention is made by any 

 one of this party of having seen the American continent, yet it must 



