ch indeed was pretty high, but did not
by any steep or bold cliffs yield any contribution to such a
picturesque landscape border as is seldom wanting on the portions of
Spitzbergen, Greenland, and the north part of Novaya Zemlya which I
have visited, south Novaya Zemlya has at least at most places bold
picturesque shore-cliffs. If I except the rocky promontory at
Yinretlen, where a cliff inhabited by ravens rises boldly out of the
sea, and some cliffs situated farther in along the beach of
Kolyutschin Bay, the shore in the immediate neighbourhood of our
wintering station consisted everywhere only of a low beach formed of
coarse sand. Upon this sand, which was always frozen, there ran
parallel with the shore a broad bank or dune, 50 to 100 metres
broad, of fine sand, not water-drenched in summer, and accordingly
not bound together by ice in winter. It is upon this dune that the
Chukches erect their tents. Marks of them are therefore met with
nearly everywhere, and the dune accordingly is everywhere bestrewed
with broken implements or refuse from the chase. Indeed it may be
said without exaggeration that the whole north-eastern coast of the
Siberian Polar Sea is bordered with a belt of sweepings and refuse
of various kinds.

The coarse sand which underlies the dune is, as has been stated,
continually frozen, excepting the shallow layer which is thawed in
summer. It is here that the "frost formation" of Siberia begins,
that is to say, the continually frozen layer of earth, which, with
certain interruptions, extends from the Polar Sea far to the south,
not only under the treeless _tundra_, but also under splendid
forests and cultivated corn-fields.[269] To speak correctly, however,
the frozen earth begins a little from the shore _under the sea_.[270]
For on the coast the bottom often consists of hard frozen
sand--"rock-hard sand," as the dredgers were accustomed to report.
The frost formation in Siberia thus embraces not only terrestrial
but also marine deposits, together with pure clear layers of ice,
these last being formed in the mouths of rivers or small lakes by
the ice of the river or lake frozen to the bottom being in spring
covered with a layer of mud sufficiently thick to protect the ice
from melting during summer. The frozen sea-bottom again appears to
have been formed by the sand washed down by the rivers having
carried with it when it sank some adhering water from the warm and
almost fresh surface strata. At t