the common
_Phoca hispida_, but along with them we found several skins of
_Histriophoca fasciata_, Zimm., and I even succeeded, though with
great difficulty, in inducing the Chukches to part with the skin and
skull of this uncommon species, distinguished by its peculiar
marking. The natives appeared to set a special value on its skin,
and parted with it unwillingly. We had ourselves, as I have already
stated, seen during our passage from Behring's Straits a number of
these seals on the ice-floes drifting south, but the limited time at
our disposal did not permit us to hunt them.

[Illustration: DRABA ALPINA L., FROM ST. LAWRENCE BAY. Natural size. ]

When we left Pitlekaj, vegetation there was still far from having
reached its full development, but at Nunamo the strand-bank was gay
with an exceedingly rich magnificence of colour. On an area of a few
acres Dr. Kjellman collected here more than a hundred species of
flowering plants, among which were a considerable number that he had
not before seen on the Chukch Peninsula. Space does not permit me to
give another list of plants, but in order that the reader may have
an idea of the great difference in the mode of growth which the same
species may exhibit under the influence of different climatal
conditions, I give here a drawing of the Alpine whitlow grass
(_Draba alpina_, L.) from St. Lawrence Bay. It would not, perhaps,
be easy to recognise in this drawing the species delineated on page
341 of vol. i,; the globular form which the plant assumed on the
shore of Cape Chelyuskin exposed to the winds of the Polar Sea, has
here, in a region protected from them, completely disappeared.

At the rocky headlands there were still, however, considerable
snowdrifts, and from the heights we could see that considerable
masses of ice were still drifting along the Asiatic side of
Behring's Straits. During an excursion to the top of one of the
neighbouring mountains, Dr. Stuxberg found the corpse of a native
laid out on a stone-setting of the form common among the Chukches.
Alongside the dead man lay a broken percussion gun, spear, arrows,
tinder-box, pipe, snow-shade, ice-sieve, and various other things
which the departed was considered to be in want of in the part of
the Elysian fields set apart for Chukches. The corpse had lain on
the place at least since the preceding summer, but the pipe was one
of the clay pipes that I had caused to be distributed among the
natives. It had thus