he found an
extensive opening, recently covered with thin, blue, newly frozen
ice. A fresh northerly breeze blew at the time, and by it the
drift-ice fields were forced together with such speed, that Johnsen
supposed that in a couple of hours the whole lead would be
completely closed.

[Illustration: REFLECTION-HALO. Seen simultaneously with the
Retraction-halo delineated on the preceding page, in the part of
the sky opposite the sun. ]

In such openings in Greenland white whales and other small whales are
often enclosed by hundreds, the natives thus having an opportunity of
making in a few hours a catch which would be sufficient for their
support during the whole winter, indeed for years, if the idea of
_saving_ ever entered into the imagination of the savage. But here in a
region where the pursuit of the whale is more productive than in any
other sea, no such occurrence has happened. During the whole of our stay
on the coast of the Chukch country we did not see a single whale. On the
other hand, masses of whales' bones were found thrown up on the beach.
At first I did not bestow much attention upon them, thinking they were
the bones of whales that had been killed during the recent whale-fishing
period. I soon found however that this could not have been the case. For
the bones had evidently been washed out of the sandy dune running along
the beach, which had been deposited at a time when the present coast lay
ten to twenty metres below the surface of the sea, thus hundreds or
thousands of years ago, undoubtedly before the time when the north coast
of Asia was first inhabited by man. The dune sand is, as recently
exposed profiles show, quite free from other kitchen-midden remains than
those which occur upon its surface. The whales' bones in question were
thus _subfossil_. Their number was so great, that in the systematic
examination of the beach in the immediate neighbourhood of the vessel,
which I undertook during spring with the assistance of Dr. Kjellman and
half a dozen of the sailors, thirty neck-bones and innumerable other
bones of the whale were found in a stretch of from four to five
kilometres. Of course masses of bones are still concealed in the sand;
and a large number of lower jaw-bones, ribs, shoulder-blades, and
vertebrae had been used for runner-shoes, tent-frames, spades, picks and
other implements. A portion, after being exposed for several years to
the action of the air, had undergone decay. The bone