IV.] 
YALMAL. 
203 
is given here of Beli Ostrov and the neighbouring coast of 
Yalmal, in which I have named the sound between the island 
and the mainland after Malygin, one of the gallant Eussian 
seamen who first sailed through it nearly a century and a 
half ago. 
Yalmal has been visited by Europeans so seldom, and their 
observations are scattered in printed papers so inaccessible, that 
it may perhaps not be out of place here to collect the most 
important facts which are known regarding this peninsula, along 
with the necessary bibliographical references. 
First as to its name, it is sometimes also written “ Yelmert 
Land,'' ^ but this is quite incorrect. 
“ Yalmal" is of Samoyed origin, and has, according to a 
private communication from the well-knovm philologist Dr. E. 
D. Eukopasus, the distinctive meaning ''land s-end." Yelmert 
again was a boatswain with the Dutch whale-fisher Vlamingh, 
who in 1664 sailed round the northern extremity of FTovaya 
Zemlya to Barents’ winter haven, and thence farther to the 
south-east. Vlamingh himself at his turning-point saw no 
land, though all signs showed that land ought to be found in 
the neighbourhood; but several of the crew thought they saw 
land, and the report of this to a Dutch mapmaker, DiCK 
Eembeaktsz. van ISTierop, led to the introduction of the supposed 
land into a great many maps, commonly as a large island in 
the Kara Sea. This island was named Yelmert Land. The 
similarity between the names Yelmert Land and Yalmal, and 
the doubt as to the existence of the Yelmert Island first shown 
on the maps, have led to the transfer of the name Yelmert 
Land to the peninsula which separates the Gulf of Obi from the 
Kara Sea. It is to be remarked, however, that the name 
^ On the maps in Linschoten’s work already quoted, printed in 1601, 
and in Blavii Atlas Major (1665, t. i. pp. 24, 25), this land is called ‘^Nieu 
West Vrieslant” and “West Frisia Nova,” names which indeed have 
priority in print, but yet cannot obtain a preference over the inhabitants’ 
own beautiful name. 
