X.] 
NATURE OF THE COUNTRY. 
469 
separated by low land, whose banks were covered with a pretty 
luxuriant carpet, formed of mosses, grasses, and Carices. But 
first on the neighbouring high land, where the weathered gneiss 
strata yielded a more fertile soil than the sterile sand thrown 
up out of the sea, did the vegetation assume a more variegated 
stamp. No trace of trees ^ was indeed found there, but low 
willow bushes, entensive carpets of Empetriim nigrum and 
Andromeda tetragona were seen, along with large tufts of a 
species of Artemisia. Between these shoot forth in summer, to 
judge partly from the dried and frozen remains of plants which 
Dr. Kj oilman collected in autumn, partly from collections made 
in spring, a limited number of flowering plants, some of which 
are well known at home, as the red whortleberry, the cloud¬ 
berry, and the dandelion. 
Although experience from preceding Polar journeys and 
specially from the Swedish expedition of 1872-73, showed that 
even at the 80th degree of latitude the sea may suddenly break 
up in the middle of winter, w^e however soon found, as has 
been already stated, that we must make preparations for 
wintering. The necessary arrangements were accordingly made. 
The snow which collected on deck, and which at first was daily 
swept away, was allowed to remain, so that it finally formed a 
layer 30 centimetres thick, of hard tramped snow or ice, which 
in no inconsiderable degree contributed to increase the resistance 
of the deck to cold, and for the same purpose snowdrifts were 
thrown up along the 'vessel’s sides. A stately ice stair was 
carried up from the ice to the starboard gunwale. A large tent 
made for the purpose at Karlskrona was pitched from the bridge 
to the fore, so that only the poop was open. Aft the tent was 
quite open, the blast and drifting snow having also free entrance 
from the sides and from an incompletely closed opening in the 
fore. The protection it yielded against the cold was indeed 
1 Low brush is probably to be met with in the interior of the Chukch 
peninsula at places which are protected from the cold north winds. 
