178 Chapter V. 



south, to see if we could not come upon some other 

 strait or passage. It was not an easy matter, finding 

 our way by the map. We had not seen Hovgaard's 

 Islands, marked as lying' north of the entrance to 

 Taimur Strait; yet the weather was so beautifully clear, 

 that it seemed unlikely they could have escaped us, 

 if they lay where Nordenskiold's sketch-map places them. 

 On the other hand, we saw several islands in the offing. 

 These, however, lay so far out that it is not probable that 

 Nordenskiold saw them, as the weather was thick when 

 he was here ; and, besides, it is impossible that islands 

 lying many miles out at sea could have been mapped 

 as close to land, with only a narrow sound separating 

 them from it. Farther south we found a narrow open 

 strait or fjord, which we steamed into, in order if possible 

 to get some better idea of the lie of the land. I sat up 

 in the crow's-nest, hoping for a general clearing up of 

 matters ; but the prospect of this seemed to recede 

 farther and farther. What we now had to the north of 

 us, and what I had taken to be a projection of the main- 

 land, proved to be an island ; but the fjord wound on 

 farther inland. Now it got narrower presently it 

 widened out again. The mystery thickened. Could 

 this be Taimur Strait after all ? A dead calm on the 

 sea. Fog everywhere over the land. It was well nigh 

 impossible to distinguish the smooth surface of the water 

 from the ice, and the ice from the snow-covered land. 

 Everything is so strangely still and dead. The sea rises 



