ehring's Straits. The _Vega_ accordingly
anchored here on the forenoon of the 28th July, but not, as was at
first intended, in Glasenapp Harbour, because it was still occupied
unbroken ice, but in the mouth of the most northerly of the fjords,
Konyam Bay.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM, Showing the Temperature and Depth of the water
at Behring's Straits between Port Clarence and Senjavin Sound. By G.
BOVE. ]

This portion of the Chukch Peninsula had been visited before us by
the corvette _Senjavin_, commanded by Captain, afterwards Admiral,
Fr. Luetke, and by an English Franklin Expedition on board the
_Plover_, commanded by Captain Moore. Luetke stayed here with his
companions, the naturalists MERTENS, POSTELS, and KITTLITZ, some
days in August 1828, during which the harbour was surveyed and
various observations in ethnography and the natural sciences made.
Moore wintered at this place in 1848-49. I have already stated that
we have his companion, Lieut. W.H. Hooper, to thank for very
valuable information relating to the tribes which live in the
neighbourhood. The region appears to have been then inhabited by a
rather dense population. Now there lived at the bay where we had
anchored only three reindeer-Chukch families, and the neighbouring
islands must at the time have been uninhabited, or perhaps the
arrival of the _Vega_ may not have been observed, for no natives
came on board, which otherwise would probably have been the case.

The shore at the south-east part of Konyam Bay, in which the _Vega_
now lay at anchor for a couple of days, consists of a rather
desolate bog, in which a large number of cranes were breeding.
Farther into the country several mountain summits rise to a height
of nearly 600 metres. The collections of the zoologists and
botanists on this shore were very scanty, but on the north side of
the bay, to which excursions were made with the steam-launch, grassy
slopes were met with, with pretty high bushy thickets and a great
variety of flowers, which enriched Dr. Kjellman's collection of the
higher plants from the north coast of Asia with about seventy
species. Here were found too the first land mollusca (Succinea,
Limax, Helix, Pupa, &c.) on the Chukch Peninsula.[351]

We also visited the dwellings of the reindeer-Chukch families. They
resembled the Chukch tents we had seen before, and the mode of life
of the inhabitants differed little from that of the coast-Chukches,
with whom we passed the winter. T