All these circumstances confer on this group of islands an uncommon interest in a scientific and geographical respect, and therefore no long time can elapse until a scientific expedition be sent to these regions. Just for this reason I now desired, as a preparation for a future voyage, to wander about here for a couple of days, partly on foot, partly by boat. [Illustration: STOLBOVOJ ISLAND. After a drawing by O. Nordquist. ] The air was calm, but for the most part clouded, the temperature as high as +4 deg., the sea clear of ice, the salinity of the water 1.8 per cent, with a temperature of +2 deg. to +3 deg.. At first we made rapid progress, but after having in the afternoon of the 28th August sighted the westernmost islands, Semenoffskoj and Stolbovoj, the sea became so shallow that for long stretches we were compelled to sail in six to seven metres water. Some very rotten ice, or rather ice sludge, was also met with, which compelled us to make tedious _detours_, and prevented the _Vega_ from going at full speed. The animal life was among the scantiest I had seen during my many travels in the Polar Seas. A few seals were visible. Of birds we saw some terns and gulls, and even far out at sea a pretty large number of phalaropes--the most common kind of bird on the coast of the Asiatic Polar Sea, at least in autumn. Stolbovoj Island was, especially on the north side, high with precipitous shore-cliffs which afforded splendid breeding-places for looms, black guillemots and gulls. At all such cliffs there breed on Spitzbergen millions of sea fowl, which are met with out on the surrounding sea in great flocks searching for their food. Here not a single loom was seen, and even the number of the gulls was small, which indeed in some degree was to be accounted for by the late season of the year, but also by the circumstance that no colony of birds had settled on the rocky shores of the island. The sea bottom consisted at certain places of hard packed sand, or rather, as I shall endeavour to show farther on, of _frozen_ sand, from which the trawl net brought up no animals. At other places there was found a clay, exceedingly rich in _Idothea entomon_ and _Sabinei_ and an extraordinary mass of bryozoa, resembling collections of the eggs of mollusca.