contrary, is deep, and about eighteen kilometres from its
mouth flows through another lake, from the eastern shore of which
rugged and shattered mountains rise to a height which I estimate at
800 to 1000 metres; but it is quite possible that their height is
twice as great, for in making such estimates one is liable to fall
into error. South of the river and the harbour the land rises
abruptly from the river bank, which is from ten to twenty metres
high. On the north side, on the other hand, the bank is for the most
part low, but farther into the interior the ground rises rapidly to
rounded hills from 300 to 400 metres high. Only in the valleys and
at other places where very large masses of snow had collected during
the winter, were snow-drifts still to be seen. On the other hand, we
saw no glaciers, though we might have expected to find them on the
sides of the high mountains which bound the inner lake on the east.
It was also clear that during the recent ages no widely extended
ice-sheet was to be found here, for in the many excursions we made
in different directions, among others up the river to the lake just
mentioned, we saw nowhere any moraines, erratic blocks, striated
rock-surfaces, or other traces of a past ice-age. Many signs, on the
other hand, indicate that during a not very remote geological period
glaciers covered considerable areas of the opposite Asiatic shore,
and contributed to excavate the fjords there--Kolyutschin Bay, St.
Lawrence Bay, Metschigme Bay, Konyam Bay, &c.

When we approached the American side we could see that the shore
cliffs were formed of stratified rocks. I therefore hoped to be
able, at last, to make a rich collection of fossils, something that
I had no opportunity of doing during the preceding part of the
voyage. But I found, on reaching them, that the stratified rocks
only consisted of crystalline schists without any traces of animal
or vegetable remains. Nor did we find on the shore any whale-bones
or any of the remarkable mammoth-bearing ice-strata which were
discovered in the bay situated immediately north of Behring's
Straits, which was named after Dr. Eschscholz, medical officer
during Kotzebue's famous voyage.[346]

Immediately after the anchor fell we were visited by several very
large skin boats and a large number of _kayaks_. The latter were
larger than the Greenlanders', being commonly intended for two
persons, who sat back to back in the middle of the craft. We even