on the north immediately after
Russia, the Mordvini and Bileri, _i.e._ the Great Bulgarians, the
Bascarti, _i.e._ the Great Hungarians, then the Parositi and
_Samogedi_, who are said to have the faces of dogs" (_Relation des
Mongols_, p. 351. Ramusio, ii., leaf 239). ]

CHAPTER III.

From the Animal World of Novaya Zemlya--The Fulmar Petrel--
The Rotge or Little Auk--Bruennich's Guillemot--The Black
Guillemot--The Arctic Puffin--The Gulls--Richardson's Skua--
the Tern--Ducks and Geese--The Swan--Waders--The Snow
Bunting--The Ptarmigan--The Snowy Owl--The Reindeer--The
Polar Bear--The Mountain Fox--The Lemming--Insects--
The Walrus--The Seal--Whales.

If we do not take into account the few Samoyeds who of recent years
have settled on Novaya Zemlya or wander about during summer on the
plains of Vaygats Island, all the lands which in the old world have
formed the field of research of the Polar explorer--Spitzbergen,
Franz-Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Vaygats Island, the Taimur
Peninsula, the New Siberian Islands, and perhaps Wrangel's Land
also--are uninhabited. The pictures of life and variety, which the
native, with his peculiar manners and customs, commonly offers to
the foreigner in distant foreign lands, are not to be met with here.
But, instead, the animal life, which he finds there in summer--for
during winter almost all beings who live above the surface of the
sea disappear from the highest North--is more vigorous and perhaps
even more abundant, or, to speak more correctly, less concealed by
the luxuriance of vegetation than in the south.

It is not, however, the larger mammalia--whales, walruses, seals,
bears and reindeer--that attract attention in the first place, but
the innumerable flocks of birds that swarm around the Polar
traveller during the long summer day of the North.

Long before one enters the region of the Polar Sea proper, the
vessel is surrounded by flocks of large grey birds which fly, or
rather hover without moving their wings, close to the surface of the
sea, rising and sinking with the swelling of the billows, eagerly
searching for some eatable object on the surface of the water, or
swim in the wake of the vessel in order to snap up any scraps that
may be thrown overboard. It is the Arctic _stormfogel_[60] (Fulmar,
"Mallemuck," "Hafhaest," _Procellaria glacialis_, L.). The fulmar is
bold and voracious, and smells villanously, on which account it is
only