with
moisture. The reason of this is easy to see, if we consider that
Behring's Straits form a gate surrounded by pretty high mountains
between the warm atmospheric area of the Pacific and the cold one of
the Arctic Ocean. The winds must be arranged here approximately
after the same laws as the draught in the door-opening between a
warm and a cold room, that is to say, the cold current of air must
go below from the cold room to the warm, the warm above from the
warm room to the cold. The mountain heights which, according to the
statement of the natives, are to be found in the interior of the
Chukch peninsula besides conduce to the heat and dryness of the
southerly and south-easterly winds. For they confer on the sea winds
that pass over their summits the properties of the _foehn_ winds. Our
coldest winds have come from S.W. to W., that is to say, from the
Old World's pole of cold, situated in the region of Werchojansk. On
the existence of two currents of air, which at a certain height
above the surface of the earth contend for the mastery, depends also
the surprising rapidity with which the vault of heaven in the region
of Behring's Straits becomes suddenly clouded over and again
completely clear. Already the famous Behring's Straits' navigator,
RODGERS, now Admiral in the American Navy, had noticed this
circumstance, and likened it very strikingly to the drawing up and
dropping of the curtain of a theatre.

In our notes on the weather a difference was always made between
_snoeyra_ (fall of snow in wind) and _yrsnoe_ (snow-storm without
snow-fall). The fall of snow was not very great, but as there was in
the course of the winter no thaw of such continuance that the snow
was at any time covered with a coherent melted crust, a considerable
portion of the snow that fell remained so loose that with the least
puff of wind it was whirled backwards and forwards. In a storm or
strong breeze the snow was carried to higher strata of the
atmosphere, which was speedily filled with so close and fine
snow-dust, that objects at the distance of a few metres could no
longer be distinguished. There was no possibility in such weather of
keeping the way open, and the man that lost his way was helplessly
lost, if he could not, like the Chukch snowed up in a drift, await
the ceasing of the storm. But even when the wind was slight and the
sky clear there ran a stream of snow some centimetres in height
along the ground in the direction of th