IVORY ISLANDS IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. Si 
as they conceal the icebergs, and hide all indications of shoals 
and sandbanks. Animal life is, in summer, wonderfully abun- 
dant and varied. Whales swim and spout in the sea. Seals: 
abound on the beach, and sport amid the waves. The white 
whale, and the beautiful narwhal with its spotted body and its 
long horn, plunge and toss to and fro in the waters, and the 
walrus in great numbers basks on the ice-fields or swims in the 
waves. Birds of all kinds exist in countless numbers, either 
soaring overhead, or perching in myriads on the ledges of the 
cliffs, where they keep up a perfectly deafening screaming. 
The ice on the Arctic Ocean to the North of Siberia breaks up 
in the end of June or in the beginning of July, and the sea, in 
this region, may freeze at any time from the middle of 
September to the beginning of October. The Vega entered the 
Kara Sea on August Ist, 1878, and was frozen in a short distance 
to the north-west of Behring’s Straits on September 28th, and 
the ice around the vessel did not break up until July 18th of 
the following year. When frozen the surface of the sea is not 
smooth, but is covered with ridges of ice which are often 70 or 
80 feet high, and are most difficult to cross in the dog-sledges 
in which the natives traverse the frozen sea. Even in winter 
animal life is not entirely absent from the icy wilderness. 
Bears prowl over the ice-fields, seals appear here and there, 
stone-foxes wander about, following the tracks of the bear, to 
pick any leavings from its feasts, and the ptarmigan and snowy- 
owl winter amidst the icy wilderness. 
The honour of discovering and of surveying the Siberian Arctic 
Ocean belongs entirely to the Russians. Sir Hugh Willoughby, 
with the English expedition of 1553, died before he could enter 
the Kara Sea, and although the Swedish expedition under 
Nordenskiold in the Veya, was the first that made a. continu- 
ous voyage in a single vessel from Novaya Zemlya to Behring’s 
Straits, the coasts along which the Vega sailed had been 
surveyed and mapped by the Russians long before. In the 
latter part of the sixteenth century the merchants of Archangel 
carried on an extensive coast trade with northern Siberia. 
They dragged their large boats across the Kanin peninsula on 
the east of the White Sea, and having traversed the Kara Sea, 
they reached the coast of the Yalmal Peninsula. Ascending a 
river in this peninsula they dragged their ight boats across the 
watershed, and descending another river they gained the Gulf 
of Obi. Thence they voyaged to the Yenesei, and made their 
way up that river to the town of Mangaseia, where they met 
merchants and natives from the south and east, and after 
