Part 54 (1/2)
1-5. b.u.t.tons to carrying straps, representing heads of the Polar bear, seals &c., carved in walrus ivory, one-half of the natural size.
6. Carrying strap with a similar b.u.t.ton, carved, in the form of a seal, one-third.
7. Stone chisel, one-half.
8. Comb one-third.
9. b.u.t.tons of bone, gla.s.s, or stone, to be placed in holes in the lips, natural size.
10. Ivory diadem, two-thirds. ]
On the north side of the harbour we found an old European or American train-oil boiling establishment. In the neighbourhood of it were two Eskimo graves. The corpses had been laid on the ground fully clothed, without the protection of any coffin, but surrounded by a close fence consisting of a number of tent poles driven crosswise into the ground. Alongside one of the corpses lay a _kayak_ with oars, a loaded double-barrelled gun with locks at half-c.o.c.k and caps on, various other weapons, clothes, tinderbox, snow-shoes, drinking-vessels, two masks carved in wood and smeared with blood (figures 1 and 2, page 241), and strangely-shaped animal figures. Such were seen also in the tents. Bags of sealskin, intended to be inflated and fastened to harpoons as floats, were sometimes ornamented with small faces carved in wood (figure 3, page 241). In one of the two amulets of the same kind, which I brought home with me, one eye is represented by a piece of blue enamel stuck in, and the other by a piece of iron pyrites fixed in the same way.
Behind two tents were found, erected on posts a metre and a half in height, roughly-formed wooden images of birds with expanded wings painted red. I endeavoured without success to purchase these tent-idols[350] for a large new felt hat--an article of exchange for which in other cases I could obtain almost anything whatever. A dazzlingly white _kayak_ of a very elegant shape, on the other hand, I purchased without difficulty for an old felt hat and 500 Remington cartridges.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ESKIMO GRAVE. (After a drawing by O. Nordquist.) ]
As a peculiar proof of the ingenuity of the Americans when offering their goods for sale, it may be mentioned in conclusion that an Eskimo, who came to the vessel during our stay in the harbour, showed us a printed paper, by which a commercial house at San Francisco offered to ”sporting gentlemen” at Behring's Straits (Eskimo?) their stock of excellent hunting shot.
As the west coast of Europe is washed by the Gulf Stream, there also runs along the Pacific coast of America a warm current, which gives the land a much milder climate than that which prevails on the neighbouring Asiatic side, where, as on the east coast of Greenland, there runs a cold northerly current. The limit of trees therefore in north-western America goes a good way _north of_ Behring's Straits, while on the Chukch Peninsula wood appears to be wholly wanting.
Even at Port Clarence the coast is devoid of trees, but some kilometres into the country alder bushes two feet high are met with, and behind the coast hills actual forests probably occur. Vegetation is besides already luxuriant at the coast, and far away here, on the coast of the New World, many species are to be found nearly allied to Scandinavian plants, among them the _Linnaea_. Dr. Kjellman therefore reaped here a rich botanical harvest, valuable for the purpose of comparison with the flora of the neighbouring portion of Asia and other High Arctic regions.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ANIMAL FIGURE FROM AN ESKIMO GRAVE.
_a._ From above.
_b._ From the side (One-third of the natural size.) ]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ETHNOGRAPHICAL OBJECTS FROM PORT CLARENCE.
1-2. Wooden masks, found at a grave, one-sixth of the natural size.
3. Amulet a face with one eye of enamel, the other of pyrites from a harpoon-float of sealskin, one-third.
4. Oars, one-nineteenth.
5. Boathook, one-twelfth.
6. The hook or carved ivory, one-fourth.
7. Carved knife handle (?) ofivory, one-half. ]
Dr. Almquist in like manner collected very extensive materials for investigating the lichen-flora of the region, probably before very incompletely known. The harvest of the zoologists, on the other hand, was scanty. Notwithstanding the luxuriant vegetation land-evertebrates appeared to occur in a much smaller number of species than in northern Norway. Of beetles, for instance, only from ten to twenty species could be found, mainly Harpalids and Staphylinids, and of land and fresh-water mollusca only seven or eight species, besides which nearly all occurred very sparingly.
Among remarkable fishes may be mentioned the same black marsh-fish which we caught at Yinretlen. The avi-fauna was scanty for a high northern land, and of wild mammalia we saw only musk-rats. Even the dredgings in the harbour yielded, on account of the unfavourable nature of the bottom, only an inconsiderable number of animals and algae.
On the 26th July, at three o'clock in the afternoon, we weighed anchor and steamed back in splendid weather and with for the most part a favourable wind to the sh.o.r.e of the Old World. In order to determine the salinity and temperature at different depths, soundings were made and samples of water taken every four hours during the pa.s.sage across the straits. Trawling was besides carried on three times in the twenty-four hours, commonly with an extraordinarily abundant yield, among other things of large sh.e.l.ls, as, for instance, the beautiful _Fusus deformis_, Reeve, with its twist to the left, and some large species of crabs. One of the latter (_Chionoecetes opilio_, Kroyer) the dredge sometimes brought up in hundreds. We cooked and ate them and found them excellent, though not very rich in flesh. The taste was somewhat sooty.
Lieutenant Bove constructed the diagram reproduced at page 244, which is based on the soundings and other observations made during the pa.s.sage, from which we see how shallow is the sound which in the northernmost part of the Pacific separates the Old World from the New. An elevation of the land less than that which has taken place since the glacial period at the well-known Chapel Hills at Uddevalla would evidently be sufficient to unite the two worlds with each other by a broad bridge, and a corresponding depression would have been enough to separate them if, as is probable, they were at one time continuous. The diagram shows besides that the deepest channel is quite close to the coast of the Chukch Peninsula, and that that channel contains a ma.s.s of cold water, which is separated by a ridge from the warmer water on the American side.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Sh.e.l.l FROM BEHRING'S STRAITS. _Fusus deformis_, Reeve. ]
If we examine a map of Siberia we shall find, as I have already pointed out, that its coasts at most places are straight, and are thus neither indented with deep fjords surrounded with high mountains like the west coast of Norway, nor protected by an archipelago of islands like the greater part of the coasts of Scandinavia and Finland. Certain parts of the Chukch Peninsula, especially its south-eastern portion, form the only exception to this rule. Several small fjords here cut into the coasts, which consist of stratified granitic rocks, and in the offing two large and several small rocky islands form an archipelago, separated from the mainland by the deep Senjavin Sound. The wish to give our naturalists an opportunity of once more prosecuting their examination of the natural history of the Chukch Peninsula, and the desire to study one of the few parts of the Siberian coast which in all probability were formerly covered with inland ice, led me to choose this place for the second anchorage of the _Vega_ on the Asiatic side south of Behring's Straits. The _Vega_ accordingly anch.o.r.ed here on the forenoon of the 28th July, but not, as was at first intended, in Glasenapp Harbour, because it was still occupied unbroken ice, but in the mouth of the most northerly of the fjords, Konyam Bay.
[Ill.u.s.tration: DIAGRAM, Showing the Temperature and Depth of the water at Behring's Straits between Port Clarence and Senjavin Sound. By G.
BOVE. ]
This portion of the Chukch Peninsula had been visited before us by the corvette _Senjavin_, commanded by Captain, afterwards Admiral, Fr. Lutke, and by an English Franklin Expedition on board the _Plover_, commanded by Captain Moore. Lutke stayed here with his companions, the naturalists MERTENS, POSTELS, and KITTLITZ, some days in August 1828, during which the harbour was surveyed and various observations in ethnography and the natural sciences made.
Moore wintered at this place in 1848-49. I have already stated that we have his companion, Lieut. W.H. Hooper, to thank for very valuable information relating to the tribes which live in the neighbourhood. The region appears to have been then inhabited by a rather dense population. Now there lived at the bay where we had anch.o.r.ed only three reindeer-Chukch families, and the neighbouring islands must at the time have been uninhabited, or perhaps the arrival of the _Vega_ may not have been observed, for no natives came on board, which otherwise would probably have been the case.
The sh.o.r.e at the south-east part of Konyam Bay, in which the _Vega_ now lay at anchor for a couple of days, consists of a rather desolate bog, in which a large number of cranes were breeding.