[Illustration: DRABA ALPINA L. FROM CAPE CHELYUSKIN. Natural size. ]
[Illustration: THE BEETLE LIVING FARTHEST TO THE NORTH. Micralymma Dicksoni MAKL. Magnified twelve times. ]
The only insects which occurred here in any large number were poduræ, 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.