on fairly with a head wind and a slight current as day

came on.

At noon the next day there was land on the starboard; high bold cliffs, composed, no doubt, of turf and mud extending ninety degrees on the horizon. All the rest was open water. In the afternoon two herds of Beluga or White Whale passed close to the ship. Towards evening we saw a strip of land at a great distance on the port side of the vessel. At night we made scarcely any progress, being almost becalmed, and the river so broad that the current was scarcely perceptible.

During the next morning the wind freshened a little; the channel narrowed to perhaps six miles, which helped the current, and at noon we cast anchor at Gol-cheek'-a, close to three steamers and sundry barges.

Gol-cheek'-a-Blowing eggs-Drift-wood on the swamp-The Little Stint-Rock Ptarmigan-I secure a passage to Yen-e-saisk'-Fighting over the IbisBuffon's Skuas-Shell mounds-The Captains come to terms-Sandbanks at the mouth of the Gol-cheek'-a-Farewell to the Tundra.

THE village of Gol-cheek'-a is on an island, between the two mouths of the river of the same name; across both its arms stretches a swamp, and beyond the swamps rise the steep banks of the Tundra. In summer Gol-cheek'-a is a busy place; all the processes of catching, salting and storing fish, go on during a long day of twenty-four hours. The sun having ceased to rise and set, the ordinary divisions of time are ignored. If you ask a man what time it is, he will most

probably tell you he has not the slightest idea. Order seems for the nonce forgotten, and people sleep and eat when inclination bids them.

Immediately after casting anchor, we took one of the boats, and paid visits of ceremony to the Russian steamers. Boiling and I had arranged to spend the night on the Tundra ; but we had no sooner returned to the Ibis to dine than the wind, which had been freshening all the afternoon, blew such a gale that it became impossible to land with safety. The gale continued all night, accompanied by heavy showers of rain, nor did it decrease sufficiently during the next day to allow us to venture on shore in a boat. Fortunately I had on board a box of eggs, collected for me by a Sam'-o-yade, the blowing of which kept me employed. Several had been taken from the nest two or three weeks before our arrival, and were becoming rotten. The larger number were those of Gulls and Divers; there were some small eggs which were, without doubt, those of the SnowBunting, and there were twenty or thirty of the Sandpipers, but none that were strange to me. There was a sitting of Red-necked Phalarope, and some eggs which I identified as those of the Little Stint. There were also two sittings of Golden Plover, and one of the Asiatic Golden Plover.

The wind having somewhat subsided during the night, Glinski, Bill, and I started at four o'clock in the morning for the Tundra. We first had to cross the swamps, which we did without difficulty, in no place sinking more than a foot below the surface; at that depth the ground probably

remaining frozen. One corner of the marsh was still bound by a small range of ice mountains, miniature Alps, perhaps thirty feet high at its greatest elevation. This ice would probably survive the summer; it had, of course, been piled up when the floes passed down the river. All over the swamp driftwood lay scattered, old, weather-beaten, mossgrown, and rotten. The marshy ground was then only a few inches above the level of the sea, but immediately after the thaw it had been, we were informed, some feet under water. Birds were abundant. Golden Plover, Arctic Tern, Ruffs, Red-necked Phalarope, Snow-Bunting, Lapland Bunting, and Dunlin, were continually in sight, and I shot a couple of female Little Stints, the first I had seen in the valley of the Yen-e-say'. On the Tundra, the commonest bird was the Asiatic Golden Plover. They were breeding in every spot that we visited. My attempts to watch them on to the nests were vain; from their behaviour I came to the conclusion that they had young. Just as we were leaving the swamp we picked up a young Plover not many days old. Our Golden Plover was very rare, and we only shot one brace. The note of the Asiatic Golden Plover is very similar to that of the Grey Plover. Its commonest note, a plaintive kö. Occasionally the double note klēē- is heard, but oftener the treble note kl-eě kö is uttered. Ringed Plover were plentiful on the barer places on the Tundra. Wagtails seemed entirely to have disappeared; the Redpole and the Red-throated Pipit were still found, but were not abundant. In the small valleys running up into the Tundra we frequently saw Willow-Grouse, and on the high ground

I shot some Rock Ptarmigan.* In some of these valleys the snow was still lying; flowers were very brilliant; but we did not come upon any shrubs more than a foot high. Occasionally Gulls, Divers, and Swans flew past us overhead, but I did not see any Skuas on this part of the Tundra until later. On the 21st of July I moved all my luggage from the Ibis to the steamer belonging to Kittman and Co., where I engaged a passage to Yen-e-saisk'. I secured a small cabin next the paddle-box, just large enough for myself and Glinski to work in. For this I paid twentyfive roubles. My large casks were on the barge, at a freight of sixty kopeks a pood, and we were each charged sixty kopeks a day for our meals, besides having to provide for ourselves tea, coffee, sugar, and spirits. In the afternoon I explored the island. It seemed to be about a square mile in extent, very swampy, and thinly sprinkled with rotten driftwood. I shot Arctic Terns, Red-throated Pipit, Lapland and Snow Buntings, and Temminck's Stint, and saw Red-necked Phalaropes, and a Long-tailed Duck. As I was leaving, a boat passed, towing a couple of Belugas, or White Whales; one was about six feet long, and the other nine or ten feet. Before I left, the men were already beginning to cut off the skin and blubber into strips; the skin seemed to me half an inch, and the blubber about two inches

The Rock Ptarmigan (Lagopus rupestris) was said to be confined to Iceland, Greenland, and throughout Arctic America, until I obtained my specimens on the Yen-e-say', in lat. 71° -the first record of the species on the

mainland of the Palearctic region. Beyond this we have no further particulars of its range. This discovery leads to the supposition that it is a circumpolar bird.