176 Mr. H. Seebohm on the Ornithology of Siberia. 



the delta may be said to begin, is generally reckoned at 

 another eight hundred miles, for which distance the river 

 will average at least four miles in width. To this we must 

 add a couple of hundred miles of delta, and another couple 

 of hundred miles of lagoon, each of which will average twenty 

 miles in width, if not more. 



When we reached the ship we found the crew well and 

 hearty. They had been amply provided with lime-juice and 

 dried vegetables ; and no symptoms of scurvy presented them- 

 selves. On the other hand, we afterwards learned that the 

 crew of a Uussian schooner, which had wintered four degrees 

 further north without having been supplied with these well- 

 known preventives, had suffered so severely from scurvy that 

 only the mate survived the winter. 



Our winter-quarters were very picturesque. The ' Thames ' 

 was moored close to the north shore of the Koo-ray'-i-ka, at 

 the entrance of a little gully, into which it was the captain's 

 intention to take his ship as soon as the water rose high 

 enough to admit of his doing so, and where he hoped to 

 wait in safety the passing away of the ice. On one side of 

 the ship was the steep bank of the river, about a hundred feet 

 in height, and covered with snow, except here and there, 

 where it was too perpendicular for the snow to lie. On the 

 top of the bank was the house of a Russian peasant and 

 merchant, with stores and farm-buildings adjacent, and a 

 bath-house, occupied by an old man who earned a living by 

 making casks. One of the rooms in this house was occupied 

 by the crew of the ' Thames ;' and after they had returned to 

 the ship I and my servant took possession and made it our 

 headquarters for bird-skinning &c. As we stood at the door 

 of this house, on the brow of the hill, we looked down onto 

 the "crow's-nest^^ of the 'Thames.^ To the left the Koo- 

 ray'-i-ka, a mile wide, stretched away some four or five miles, 

 until a sudden bend concealed it from view; whilst to the 

 right the eye wandered across the snow-fields of the Yen- 

 e-say', and by the help of a binocular the little village of Koo- 

 ray'-i-ka might be discerned about four miles off, on the 

 opposite bank of the great river. The land was undulating 



