Voyage through the Kara Sea. 171 



saw Almquist's Islands, but had no suspicion that Taimur 

 Island lay to the outside of them ? The difficulty about 

 this explanation is that the Russian maps mark no islands 

 round Taimur Island. It is inconceivable that anyone 

 should have travelled all about here in sledges without 

 seeing all these small islands that lie scattered around.* 



"In the afternoon, the water-gauge of the boiler got 

 choked up ; we had to stop to have it repaired, and 

 therefore made fast to the edge of the ice. We spent 

 the time in taking in drinking water. We found a pool 

 on the ice, so small that we thought it would only do to 



o 



begin with; but it evidently had a "subterranean'' 

 communication with other fresh water ponds on the floe. 

 To our astonishment it proved inexhaustible, however 

 much we scooped. In the evening we stood in to the head 

 of an ice bay, which opened out opposite the most northern 

 island we then had in sight. There was no passage 

 beyond. The broken drift-ice lay packed so close in on 

 the unbroken land-ice, that it was impossible to tell 

 where the one ended and the other began. We could see 



Later, when I had investigated the state of matters outside 

 Nordenskiold's Taimur Island, it seemed to me that the same remark 

 applied here with even better reason, as no sledge expedition could go 

 round the coast of this island, without seeing Almquist's Islands, which 

 lie so near, for instance, to Cape Lapteff, that they ought to be seen 

 even in very thick weather. It would be less excusable to omit 

 marking these islands, which are much larger, than to omit the small 

 ones lying off the coast of the large island (or as I now consider it, 

 group of large islands) \ve were at present skirting. 



