ires._ Paris, 1854.
Pp. 177 and 223. ]

[Footnote 268: Heckel and Kner, _Die Suesswasserfische Oesterreichs_,
p. 295. ]

[Footnote 269: Even pretty far south, in Scandinavia, there occur
places with frozen earth which seldom thaws. Thus in Egyptinkorpi
mosses in Nurmi and Pjeli parishes in Finland pinewoods are found
growing over layers or "tufts" of frozen sand, but also, in other
places in Eastern Finland, we find layers containing stumps, roots,
&c., of different generations of trees, alternating with layers of
frozen mould, according to a communication from the agronomic Axel
Asplund. A contribution to the knowledge of the way, or one of the
ways, in which such formations arise, we obtain from the known fact
that mines with an opening to the air, so far south as the middle of
Sweden, are filled in a few years with a coherent mass of ice if the
opening is allowed to remain open. If it is shut the ice melts
again, but for this decades are required. ]

[Footnote 270: Middendorff already states that the bottom of the sea
of Okotsk is frozen (_Sibirische Reise_, Bd. 4, 1, p. 502). ]

CHAPTER XII.

The history, physique, disposition, and manners of the Chukches.

The north coast of Siberia is now, with the exception of its
westernmost and easternmost parts, literally a desert. In the west
there projects between the mouth of the Ob and the southern portion
of the Kara Sea the peninsula of Yalmal, which by its remote
position, its grassy plains, and rivers abounding in fish, appears
to form the earthly paradise of the Samoyed of the present day. Some
hundred families belonging to this race wander about here with their
numerous reindeer herds. During winter they withdraw to the interior
of the country or southwards, and the coast is said then to be
uninhabited. This is the case both summer and winter, not only with
Beli Ostrov and the farthest portion of the peninsula between the Ob
and the Yenisej (Mattesol), but also with the long stretch of coast
between the mouth of the Yenisej and Chaun Bay. During the voyage of
the _Vega_ in 1878 we did not see a single native. No trace of man
could be discovered at the places where we landed, and though for a
long time we sailed quite near land, we saw from the sea only a
single house on the shore, viz, the before-mentioned wooden hut on
the east side of Chelyuskin peninsula. Russian _simovies_ and native
encampments are indeed still found on the rivers some distan