From Lieutenant Hovgaard's report on this excursion, a map is given here of Beli Ostrov and the neighbouring coast of Yalmal, in which I have named the sound between the island and the mainland after MALYGIN, one of the gallant Russian seamen who first sailed through it nearly a century and a half ago.
Yalmal has been visited by Europeans so seldom, and their observations are scattered in printed papers so inaccessible, that it may perhaps not be out of place here to collect the most important facts which are known regarding this peninsula, along with the necessary bibliographical references.
First as to its name, it is sometimes also written "Yelmert Land,"[97] but this is quite incorrect.
"Yalmal" is of Samoyed origin, and has, according to a private communication from the well-known philologist Dr. E.D. EUROPÆUS, the distinctive meaning "land's-end." YELMERT again was a boatswain with the Dutch whale-fisher VLAMINGH, who in 1664 sailed round the northern extremity of Novaya Zemlya to Barents' winter haven, and thence farther to the south-east. Vlamingh himself at his turning-point saw no land, though all signs showed that land ought to be found in the neighbourhood; but several of the crew thought they saw land, and the report of this to a Dutch mapmaker, DICK REMBRANTSZ. VAN NIEROP, led to the introduction of the supposed land into a great many maps, commonly as a large island in the Kara Sea. This island was named Yelmert Land. The similarity between the names Yelmert Land and Yalmal, and the doubt as to the existence of the Yelmert Island first shown on the maps, have led to the transfer of the name Yelmert Land to the peninsula which separates the Gulf of Obi from the Kara Sea. It is to be remarked, however, that the name Yalmal is not found in the older accounts of voyages from the European waters to the Obi. The first time I met with it was in the narrative of Skuratov's journey in 1737, as the designation of the most north-easterly promontory of the peninsula which now bears that name.
Yalmal's grassy plains offer the Samoyeds during summer reindeer pastures which are highly valued, and the land is said to have a very numerous population in comparison with other regions along the shores of the Polar Sea, the greater portion, however, drawing southward towards winter with their large herds of reindeer. But the land is, notwithstanding this, among the most imperfectly known parts of the great Russian empire. Some information regarding it we may obtain from sketches of the following journeys: