and,
after loading 6,100 barrels of oil and 37,000 lbs. of bone
from our whalers, she sailed for New Bedford direct,
touching at Honolulu to land her bone, to come here _via_
San Francisco, and he joined our whaler bark, _Rainbow_,
at St. Lawrence Bay, and went on a tour of observation and
pleasure, visiting Point Barrow and going as far east as
Lion Reefs, near Camden Bay, and then returning to Point
Barrow, and going over to Herald Island, and while there
visiting our different whalers, seeing one "bow-head"
caught and cut in, and September 25th he came down in the
schooner _W.M. Meyer_ to San Francisco, arriving there
October 22nd. By a comparison of dates we find he passed
near Cape Serdze September 29th, or one day after you
anchored near Kolyutschin Bay."

The 29th September according to the American day-reckoning
corresponds to the 30th according to that of the old world, which
was still followed on board the _Vega_. The schooner _W.M.
Meyer_ thus lay at Serdze Kamen two days after we anchored in our
winter haven. The distance between the two places is only about 70
kilometres.

The winter haven was situated in 67 deg. 4' 49" north latitude,
and 173 deg. 23' 2" longitude west from Greenwich, 1.4 kilometres
from land. The distance from East Cape was 120', and from Point Hope
near Cape Lisburn on the American side, 180'.

The neighbouring land formed a plain rising gradually from the sea,
slightly undulating and crossed by river valleys, which indeed when
the _Vega_ was frozen in was covered with hoarfrost and frozen, but
still clear of snow, so that our botanists could form an idea of the
flora of the region, previously quite unknown. Next the shore were
found close beds of Elymus, alternating with carpets of _Halianthus
peploides_, and further up a poor, even, gravelly soil, covered with
water in spring, on which grew only a slate-like lichen, _Gyrophora
proboscidea_, and a few flowering plants, of which _Armeria sibirica_
was the most common. Within the beach were extensive salt and
fresh-water lagoons, separated by low land, whose banks were covered
with a pretty luxuriant carpet, formed of mosses, grasses, and
Carices. But first on the neighbouring high land, where the
weathered gneiss strata yielded a more fertile soil than the sterile
sand thrown up out of the sea, did the vegetation assume a more
variegated stamp. No trace of trees[251] was inde