onsider, as I
have said already, that the doubts of the trustworthiness of
Deschnev, Chelyuskin, Andrejev, Hedenstroem, Sannikov, &c., are
completely unfounded, and it is highly desirable that all journals
of Russian explorers in the Polar Sea yet in existence be published
as soon as possible, and not in a mutilated shape, but in a complete
and unaltered form. ]

CHAPTER XIV.

Passage through Behring's Straits--Arrival at Nunamo--
Scarce species of seal--Rich vegetation--Passage to America--
State of the ice--Port Clarence--The Eskimo--Return to Asia--
Konyam Bay--Natural conditions there--The ice breaks up in
the interior of Konyam Bay--St. Lawrence Island--Preceding
visits to the Island--Departure to Behring Island.

After we had passed the easternmost promontory of Asia, the course
was shaped first to St. Lawrence Bay, a not inconsiderable fjord,
which indents the Chukch peninsula, a little south of the smallest
part of Behring's Straits. It was my intention to anchor in this
fjord as long as possible, in order to give the naturalists of the
_Vega_ expedition an opportunity of making acquaintance with the
natural conditions of a part of Chukch Land which is more favoured
by nature than the bare stretch of coast completely open to the
winds of the Polar Sea, which we hitherto had visited. I would
willingly have stayed first for some hours at Diomede Island, the
market-place famed among the Polar tribes, situated in the narrowest
part of the Straits, nearly half-way between Asia and America, and
probably before the time of Columbus a station for traffic between
the Old and the New Worlds. But such a delay would have been
attended with too great difficulty and loss of time in consequence
of the dense fog which prevailed here on the boundary between the
warm sea free from drift-ice and the cold sea filled with drift-ice.

[Illustration: SEAL FROM THE BEHRING SEA. _Histriophoca fasciata_,
Zimm. ]

Even the high mountains on the Asiatic shore were still wrapped in a
thick mist, from which only single mountain-summits now and then
appeared. Next the vessel large fields of drift-ice were visible, on
which here and there flocks of a beautifully marked species of seal
(_Histriophoca fasciata_, Zimm) had settled. Between the pieces of
ice sea-birds swarmed, mostly belonging to other species than those
which are met with in the European Polar seas. The ice was
fortunately so broken up that