beauty to the landscape, which
was the most monotonous and the most desolate I have seen in the
High North.

As on the island off which we lay at anchor on the 11th August, the
ground was everywhere burst asunder into more or less regular
six-sided figures, the interior of which was usually bare of
vegetation, while stunted flowering-plants, lichens and mosses, rose
out of the cracks. At some few places, however, the ground was
covered with a carpet of mosses, lichens, grasses and allied plants,
resembling that which I previously found at Actinia Bay. Yet the
flowering-plants were less numerous here, and the mosses more
stunted and bearing fruit less abundantly. The lichen flora was
also, according to Dr. Almquist's examination, monotonous, though
very luxuriant. The plants were most abundant on the farthest
extremity of the Cape. It almost appeared as if many of the plants
of the Taimur country had attempted to migrate hence farther to the
north, but meeting the sea, had stood still, unable to go farther
and unwilling to turn. For here Dr. Kjellman found on a very limited
area nearly all the plants of the region. The species which were
distinctive of the vegetation here were the following: _Saxifraga
oppositifolia_ L., _Papaver nudicaule_ L., _Draba alpina_ L.,
_Cerastium alpinum_ L., _Stellaria Edwardsii_ R. BR., _Alsine
macrocarpa_ FENZL., _Aira coespitosa_ L., _Catabrosa algida_ (SOL.)
FR., and _Alopecurus alpinus_ SM. The following plants occurred less
frequently: _Eritrichium villosum_ BUNGE, _Saxifraga nivalis_ L.,
_S cernua_ L., _S. rivularis_ L., _S. stellaris_ L., _S. caspitesa_
L., _S. flagellaris_ WILLD., _S. serpyllifolia_ PURSH., _Cardamine
bellidifolia_ L., _Cochlearia fenestrata_ R. BR., _Oxyria digyna_
(L.) HILL., _Salix polaris_ WG, _Poa flexuosa_ WG., and _Lucula
hyperborea_ R. BR. There were thus found in all only twenty-three
species of inconsiderable flowering-plants, among them eight species
belonging to the Saxifrage family, a sulphur-yellow poppy, commonly
cultivated in our gardens, and the exceedingly beautiful,
forget-me-not-like Eritrichium. That the vegetation here on the
northernmost point of Asia has to contend with a severe climate is
shown, among other things, as Dr. Kjellman has pointed out, by most
of the flowering-plants there having a special tendency to form
exceedingly compact half-globular tufts.

[Illustration: DRABA ALPINA L. FROM CAPE CHELYUSKIN. Natural size. ]

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