happened that the easily moved disposition of the savage led them to do
this. Certain it is that in many of us the sadness of separation mingled
with the feelings of tempestuous joy which now rushed through the breast
of every _Vega_ man.

The _Vega_ met no more ice-obstacles on her course to the Pacific.
Serdze Kamen was passed at 1:30 A.M. of the 19th, but the fog was so
dense that we could not clearly distinguish the contours of the
land. Above the bank of mist at the horizon we could only see that
this cape, so famous in the history of the navigation of the
Siberian Polar Sea, is occupied by high mountains, split up, like
those east of the Bear Islands, into ruin-like gigantic walls or
columns. The sea was mirror-bright and nearly clear of ice, a walrus
or two stuck up his head strangely magnified by the fog in our
neighbourhood, seals swam round us in large numbers, and flocks of
birds, which probably breed on the steep cliffs of Serdze Kamen,
swarmed round the vessel. The trawl net repeatedly brought up from
the sea bottom a very abundant yield of worms, molluscs, crustacea,
&c. A zoologist would here have had a rich working field.

The fog continued, so that on the other side of Serdze Kamen we lost
all sight of land, until on the morning of the 20th dark heights
again began to peep out. These were the mountain summits of the
easternmost promontory of Asia, East Cape, an unsuitable name, for
which I have substituted on the map that of Cape Deschnev after the
gallant Cossack who for the first time 230 years ago circumnavigated
it.

By 11 A.M. we were in the middle of the sound which unites the North
Polar Sea with the Pacific, and from this point the _Vega_ greeted
the old and new worlds by a display of flags and the firing of a
Swedish salute.

[Illustration: A.L. PALANDER. ]

Thus finally was reached the goal towards which so many nations had
struggled, all along from the time when Sir Hugh Willoughby, with
the firing of salutes from cannon and with hurrahs from the
festive-clad seamen, in the presence of an innumerable crowd of
jubilant men certain of success, ushered in the long series of
North-East voyages. But, as I have before related, then hopes were
grimly disappointed. Sir Hugh and all his men perished as pioneers
of England's navigation and of voyages to the ice-encumbered sea
which bounds Europe and Asia on the north. Innumerable other marine
expeditions have since then trodden the same path, al