[Illustration: VIEW AT CAPE CHELYUSKIN DURING THE STAY OF THE EXPEDITION. (After a drawing by A. Hovgaard.) ] The north point of Asia forms a low promontory, which a bay divides into two, the eastern arm projecting a little farther to the north than the western. A ridge of hills with gently sloping sides runs into the land from the eastern point, and appears within sight of the western to reach a height of 300 metres. Like the plains lying below, the summits of this range were nearly free of snow. Only on the hill-sides or in deep furrows excavated by the streams of melted snow, and in dales in the plains, were large white snow-fields to be seen. A low ice-foot still remained at most places along the shore. But no glacier rolled its bluish-white ice-masses down the mountain sides, and no inland lakes, no perpendicular cliffs, no high mountain summits, gave any natural beauty to the landscape, which was the most monotonous and the most desolate I have seen in the High North. As on the island off which we lay at anchor on the 11th August, the ground was everywhere burst asunder into more or less regular six-sided figures, the interior of which was usually bare of vegetation, while stunted flowering-plants, lichens and mosses, rose out of the cracks. At some few places, however, the ground was covered with a carpet of mosses, lichens, grasses and allied plants, resembling that which I previously found at Actinia Bay. Yet the flowering-plants were less numerous here, and the mosses more stunted and bearing fruit less abundantly. The lichen flora was also, according to Dr. Almquist's examination, monotonous, though very luxuriant. The plants were most abundant on the farthest extremity of the Cape. It almost appeared as if many of the plants of the Taimur country had attempted to migrate hence farther to the north, but meeting the sea, had stood still, unable to go farther and unwilling to turn. For here Dr. Kjellman found on a very limited area nearly all the plants of the region. The species which were distinctive of the vegetation here were the following: _Saxifraga oppositifolia_ L., _Papaver nudicaule_ L., _Draba alpina_ L., _Cerastium alpinum_ L., _Stellaria Edwardsii_ R. BR., _Alsine macrocarpa_ FENZL., _Aira coespitosa_ L., _Catabrosa algida_ (SOL.) FR., and _Alopecurus alpinus_ SM. The following plants occurred less frequently: _Eritrichium villosum_ BUNGE, _Saxifraga nivalis_ L., _S cernua_ L., _S. rivularis_ L., _S. stellaris_ L., _S. caspitesa_ L., _S. flagellaris_ WILLD., _S. serpyllifolia_ PURSH., _Cardamine bellidifolia_ L., _Cochlearia fenestrata_ R. BR., _Oxyria digyna_ (L.) HILL., _Salix polaris_ WG, _Poa flexuosa_ WG., and _Lucula hyperborea_ R. BR. There were thus found in all only twenty-three species of inconsiderable flowering-plants, among them eight species belonging to the Saxifrage family, a sulphur-yellow poppy, commonly cultivated in our gardens, and the exceedingly beautiful, forget-me-not-like Eritrichium.