228 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. XIV. 
ice-strata whicli were discovered in the bay situated immediately 
north of Behring's Straits, which was named after Dr. Esch- 
SCHOLZ, medical officer during Kotzebue’s famous voyage.^ 
Immediately after the anchor fell we were visited by several 
very large skin boats and a large number of kayaks. The 
latter were larger than the Greenlanders’, being commonly in¬ 
tended for two persons, who sat back to back in the middle of 
the craft. We even saw boats from which, when the two 
rowers had stepped out, a third person crept who had lain 
almost hermetically sealed in the interior of the kayak, 
stretched on the bottom without the possibility of moving his 
limbs, or saving himself if any accident should happen. It 
appeared to be specially common for children to accompany 
their elders in kayak voyages in this inconvenient way. 
After the natives came on board a lively traffic commenced, 
whereby I acquired some arrow-points and stone fishing-hooks. 
Anxious to procure as abundant material as possible for 
1 These strata were discovered during* Kotzebue’s circumnavigation of 
the globe {Entdeckungs Reise, Weimar, 1821, i. p. 146, and ii. p. 170). 
The strand-bank was covered by an exceedingly luxuriant vegetable 
carpet, and rose to a height of eighty feet above the sea. Here the “ rock,” 
if this word can be used for a stratum of ice, was found to consist of pure 
ice, covered with a layer, only six inches thick, of blue clay and turf-earth. 
The ice must have been several hundred thousand years old, for on its 
being melted a large number of bones and tusks of the mammoth appeared, 
from which we may draw the conclusion that the ice-stratum was formed 
during the period in which the mammoth lived in these regions. This 
remarkable observation has been to a certain extent disputed by later 
travellers, but its correctness has recently been fully confirmed by Dali. 
On the other hand, the extent to which the strong odour, which was 
observed at the place and resembled that of burned horns, arose from the 
decaying mammoth remains, is perhaps uncertain. Kotzebue fixed the 
latitude of the place at 66° 15' 36". During Beechey’s voyage in 1827 the 
place was thoroughly examined by Mr. Collie, the medical officer of the 
expedition. He brought home thence a large number of the bones of the 
mammoth, ox, musk-ox, reindeer, and horse, which were described by the 
famous geologist Buckland (F. W. Beechey, Narrative of a Voyage to the 
Pacific and Behring''s Straits, 1825-28. London, 1831, ii. Appendix). 
