68 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
mingled with the feelings of tempestuous joy which now rushed 
through the breast of every Vega man. 
The Vega met no more ice-obstacles on her course to the 
Pacific. Serdze Kamen was passed at 1.30 A.M. of the 19th, but 
the fog was so dense that we could not clearly distinguish the 
contours of the land. Above the bank of mist at the horizon 
we could only see that this cape, so famous in the history of the 
navigation of the Siberian Polar Sea, is occupied by high 
mountains, split up, like those east of the Bear Islands, into 
ruin-like gigantic walls or columns. The sea was mirror-bright 
and nearly clear of ice, a walrus or two stuck up his head 
strangely magnified by the fog in our neighbourhood, seals swam 
round us in large numbers, and flocks of birds, which probably 
breed on the steep cliffs of Serdze Kamen, swarmed round the 
vessel. The trawl net repeatedly brought up from the sea- 
bottom a very abundant yield of worms, molluscs, Crustacea, &c. 
A zoologist would here have had a rich working field. 
The fog continued, so that on the other side of Serdze Kamen 
we lost all sight of land, until on the morning of the 20th dark 
heights again began to peep out. These were the mountain 
summits of the easternmost promontory of Asia, East Cape, an 
unsuitable name, for which I have substituted on the map that 
of Cape Deschnev after the gallant Cossack who for the first 
time 230 years ago circumnavigated it. 
By 11 A.M. we were in the middle of the sound which unites 
the North Polar Sea with the Pacific, and from this point the 
Vega greeted the old and new worlds by a display of flags and 
the firing of a Swedish salute. 
Thus finally was reached the goal towards which so many 
nations had struggled, all along from the time when Sir Hugh 
Willoughby, with the firing of salutes from cannon and with 
hurrahs from the festive-clad seamen, in the presence of an 
innumerable crowd of jubilant men certain of success, ushered 
in the long series of North-East voyages. But, as I have before 
