ation: THE BEETLE LIVING FARTHEST TO THE NORTH.
Micralymma Dicksoni MAKL. Magnified twelve times. ]

The only insects which occurred here in any large number were
podurae, but some flies were also seen, and even a beetle, the
before-mentioned Staphylinid. Of birds, there were seen a large
number of sandpipers, an exceedingly numerous flock of barnacle
geese--evidently migrating to more southerly regions, perhaps from
some Polar land lying to the north of Cape Chelyuskin--a loom, some
kittiwakes and ivory gulls, and remains of owls. Mammalia were
represented by the bear already mentioned, and by the reindeer and
the lemming, whose traces and dung were seen on the plains. In the
sea, a walrus, several rough seals (_Phoca hispida_), and two shoals
of white whales were seen.

All rivers were now dried up, but wide, shallow river-beds indicated
that during the snow-melting season there was an abundant flow of
water. The rush of snow rivulets and the cry of birds then certainly
cause an interruption in the desolation and silence which were now
spread over the clay beds of the plains, nearly bare of all
vegetation. Probably, however, a little farther into the country, in
some valley protected from the winds of the Polar Sea, we might find
quite different natural conditions, a more abundant animal life, and
a vegetable world, in summer, as rich in flowers as that which we
meet with in the valleys of Ice Fjord or the "Nameless Bay"
(Besimannaja Bay). We saw no trace of man here. The accounts, which
were current as early as the sixteenth century, relating to the
nature of the north point of Asia, however, make it probable that
the Siberian nomads at one time drove their reindeer herds up
hither. It is even not impossible that Russian hunters from Chatanga
may have prosecuted the chase here, and that Chelyuskin actually was
here, of which we have evidence in the very correct way in which the
Cape, that now rightly bears his name, is laid down on the Russian
maps.[195]

The rocks consist of a clay-slate, with crystals resembling
chiastolite and crystals of sulphide of iron interspersed. At the
Cape itself the clay-slate is crossed by a thick vein of pure white
quartz. Here, according to an old custom of Polar travellers, a
stately cairn was erected.

[Illustration: OPHIURID FROM THE SEA NORTH OF CAPE CHELYUSKIN.
_Ophlacantha bidentata_, RETZ. One and one-third of the natural size. ]

In order to get a good astronomical deter