CHAP. XIV.] 
KONYAM BAY. 
249 
colours. At least the direction of the rivers appears to have 
been unchanged since then. Perhaps even the' difference 
between the Siberia where Chikanovski’s Oinho woods grew 
and the mammoth roamed about, and that where now at a 
limited depth under the surface constantly frozen ground is to 
be met with, depends merely on the isothermal lines having 
sunk slightly towards the equator. 
The neighbourhood of Konyam Bay consists of crystalline 
rocks, granite poor in mica, and mica-schist lowermost, and then 
grey non-fossiliferous carbonate of lime, and last of all magnesian 
schists, porphyry, and quartzites. On the summits of the hills 
the granite has a rough trachytic appearance, but does not 
pass into true trachyte. Here however we are already in the 
neighbourhood of the volcanic hearths , of Kamchatka, which for 
instance is shown by the hot spring, which Hooper discovered 
not far from the coast during a sledge journey towards Behring’s 
Straits. In the middle of the severe cold of February its waters 
had a temperature of + 69° O. Hot steam and drifting snow 
combined had thrown over the spring a lofty vault of dazzling 
whiteness formed of masses of snow converted into ice and 
covered with ice-crystals. The Chukches themselves appear 
to have found the contrast striking between the hot spring 
from the interior of the earth and the cold, snow, and ice on its 
surface. They offered blue glass beads to the spring, and 
showed Hooper, as something remarkable, that it was possible 
to boil fish in it, though the mineral water gave the boiled fish 
a bitter unpleasant taste 
The interior of Konyam Bay was during our stay there still 
covered by an unbroken sheet of ice. This broke up on the 
^ That a fire-emitting mountain was to be found in Siberia east of the 
Yenisej is already mentioned in a treatise by Isaak Massa, inserted in 
Hessal Gerritz, Detectio Freti, Amsterdam, 1612. The rumour about the 
volcanos of Kamchatka thus appears to have reached Europe at that early 
date. 
