A WONDERFUL SIGHT. 105 



these stations, only seventeen miles from Yakutsk, as a 

 small building of only one room, with a cow-shed attached. 

 When the travelers arrived there were about twenty peoplo 

 in the room, and also the carcass of a horse which had been 

 killed for food, and brought into the room to thaw out. 



The shores of the Siberian tundra witnessed a wonderful 

 sight in 1878, when, for the first time in the history of the 

 world, two steam vessels ploughed their way from Europe 

 around Cape Chelyuskin. A brief account of the naviga- 

 tion of the Lena by one of these vessels will be of interest, 

 when taken in connection with events which transpired along 

 the river three years afterward. 



When Nordenskiold made his famous Northeast Passage, 

 his ship, the Vega, was accompanied as far as the mouth of 

 the Lena by a small steamer of the same name, owned by 

 Mr. A. Sibiriakoff, and commanded by Captain Johanne- 

 sen. Leaving Tromsoe, Norway, July 21st, 1878, they 

 arrived at the mouth of the Yenisei, August 6th, and on the 

 18th were anchored in a splendid harbor situated between 

 Taimyr Island and the main-land. The ground was free of 

 snow, and covered with a gray-green vegetation consisting of 

 grasses, mosses, and lichens. 



On the 19th the vessels continued their course along the 

 coast of the Chelyuskin Peninsula, through a dense fog, 

 which occasionally lightened up so that the contour of the 

 land could be distinguished. They steamed past an exten- 

 sive field of unbroken ice occupying a bay on the western side 

 of the. peninsula, and at length an ice-free promontory glinted 

 out through the fog in the northeast. In a short time the 

 Vega and Lena were anchored in a little bay, open to the 

 north and ice-free, that cuts the promontory in two. Flags 

 were hoisted and a salute fired. The first object of the voy- 

 age had been attained ; the northernmost point of the old 

 world, variously called Cape Chelyuskin, Cape Severo, and 

 Northeast Cape, had been rounded by vessels for the first 

 time. 



The air had cleared, and the cape lay before them lighted 



