Voyage through the Kara Sea. 197 



water ; now a ball to the second, and it did the same. 

 Henriksen was ready with the harpoons, and secured 

 them both. One more was shot, but we had no more 

 harpoons, and had to strike a seal-hook into it to hold 

 it up. The hook slipped, however, and the animal 

 sank before we could save it. Whilst we were towing 

 our booty to an ice-floe, we were still, for part of the 

 time at least, surrounded by walruses ; but there was no 

 use in shooting any more, for we had no means of carry- 

 ing them off. The Frctw presently came up and took 

 our two on board, and we were soon going ahead along 

 the coast. We saw many walruses in this part. We shot 

 two others in the afternoon, and could have got many 

 more if we had had time to spare. It was in this same 

 neighbourhood that Nordenskiold also saw one or two 



O 



small herds. 



We now continued our course, against a strong current, 

 southwards along the coast, past the mouth of the 

 Chatanga. This eastern part of the Taimur Peninsula 

 is a comparatively high, mountainous region, but with a 

 lower level stretch between the mountains and the sea 

 apparently the same kind of low land we had seen along 

 the coast almost the whole way. As the sea seemed to 

 be tolerably open and free from ice, we made several 

 attempts to shorten our course by leaving the coast and 

 striking across for the mouth of the Olenek ; but every 

 time thick ice drove us back to our channel by the 

 land. 



