[ xxiv 



We shall look with the most intense interest for the accounts of 

 your arrival and of the reception you will meet with, both from 

 your countrymen and from all who have the progress of civiliza- 

 tion and science at heart, in the great cities of Europe which you 

 may visit. We shall ever consider ourselves fortunate that the 

 homeward course of the first circumnavigator of Europe and Asia 

 brought him past our Settlement at the extreme South of that 

 great Continent, and enabled us to meet one, who may look forward 

 to the happiness of being reckoned among the benefactors of 

 mankind. 



Professor Nordenskjold replies as follows : — 



" The Straits Branch of the Eoyal Asiatic Society, — The 

 kind reception to-day by which the Straits Settlements' branch of 

 the Eoyal Asiatic Society has honoured the Members of the Swedish 

 Expedition has for us quite a peculiar interest, which could be 

 afforded in no other place and by no other learned Society in the 

 world. 



Having passed the North Cape of Asia, Cape Tscheliskin, or 

 the much discussed Promontorium Tabin of Ptolomeus, where even 

 in the hottest summer's day the scanty vegetation and the scarce 

 flowers are surrounded by ice and snow, where the land always was 

 uninhabited, and where scarcely a man has been before us but the 

 Russian Explorer whose name it bears ; we at present enjoy the 

 hospitality of a nourishing community in the southernmost part of 

 Asia, where snow is unknown, and even during the winter a luxu- 

 rious evergreen vegetation surrounds a numerous and thriving 

 population. The contrast is so striking that one could hardly 

 believe that it would be possible for men to sustain two so different 

 climates. 



I believe, however, that the horrors with which popular 

 authors have surrounded the Northern Coast of Asia are much 

 exaggerated. It is true the winter we passed at the verge of the 

 Polar Circle on the Tschukschi Peninsula was very serious, with 

 a constant snow monsoon and a temperature often below the freez- 

 ing point of mercury, more severe indeed than the winter I passed 

 seven years ago nearly eight hundred miles farther to the North at 

 a place where the sun for nearly four winter months is constantly 

 below the horizon. 



But even in the far North the summer has its charms, the 

 snow melts and evaporates. The soil is then, during a few weeks, 

 covered with a flower carpet unrivalled in the South. The ice 

 breaks and melts away along the shores in the latter part of the 

 summer. And finally Southerly winds and warm currents from 

 the- Siberian rivers open a broad channel of ice free water from 



