436 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[ciiAr. 
10til. The beach was formed of a sandbank/ which immediately 
above high-water mark was covered with a close grassy turf, a 
proof that the climate here, notwithstanding the neighbourhood 
of the pole of cold, is much more favourable to the develop¬ 
ment of vegetation than even the most favoured parts of the 
west coast of Spitzbergen. Farther inland was seen a very high, 
but snow-free, range of hills, and far beyond them some high 
snow-covered mountain summits. No glaciers were found here, 
though I consider it probable that small ones may be found in 
the valleys between the high fells in the interior. Nor were 
any erratic blocks found either in the interior of the coast 
country or along the strand bank. Thus it is probable that no 
such ice-covered land as Greenland for the present bounds the 
Siberian Polar Sea towards the north. At two places at the 
level of the sea in the neighbourhood of our anchorage the solid 
rock was bare. There it formed perpendicular shore cliffs, nine 
to twelve metres high, consisting of magnesian slate, limestone 
more or less mixed with quartz, and silicious slate. The strata 
were nearly perpendicular, ran from north to south, and did’ not 
contain any fossils. From a geological point of view therefore 
these rocks were of little interest. But they were abundantly 
covered with lichens, and yielded to Dr. Almquist important 
contributions to a knowledge of the previously quite unknown 
lichen flora of this region. 
The harvest of the higher land plants on the other hand was, 
in consequence of the far advanced season of the year, incon- 
^ Of course the earth here at an inconsiderable depth under the surface 
is constantly frozen, but I have nowhere seen such alternating layers of 
earth and ice, crossed by veins of ice, as Hedenstrom in his oft-quoted 
work {Otrywld o p. 119) says he found, at the sea-coast. Probably 
such a peculiar formation arises only at places where the spring floods bring 
down thick layers of mud, which cover the beds of ice formed during the 
winter and protect them for thousands of years from melting. I shall have 
an opportunity of returning to the interesting questions relating to this 
point. 
