2S8 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



North-east voyagers had aimed at was thus at hist accomplished, 

 and that in a way that promised to be of immense practical 

 importance for the whole of Siberia. The voyage was also 

 regarded in that light by leading men in the great empire of 

 the East, and our return journey from Yenisejsk by Krasnojarsk, 

 Tomsk, Omsk, Yekaterineburg, Nischni-Novgorod, Moscow'and 

 St. Petersburg, became therefore a journey from fete to fete,. 

 But a number of voices were simultaneously raised, which 

 asserted that the success of the Procvcn depended on an 

 accidental combination of fortunate circumstances, which would 

 not soon occur again. In order to show that this was not the 

 case, and that I might myself bring the first goods by sea to 

 Siberia, I undertook my second voyage to the Yenisej in 1876, 

 in which I penetrated with the steamer Tmer, not only to the 

 rao\;th of the river, but also up the river to the neighbourhood 

 of Yakovieva in 71° N.L. Hence I returned the same year by 

 sea to Europe.^ In the gulf of Yenisej a large island was 

 discovered, which I named after Mr. Alexander Sibiriakoff, who 

 defrayed the principal expenses of the expedition. Before 

 starting on this voyage, I visited the Philadelphia Exhibition, 

 and it may perhaps deserve to be mentioned, that leaving 

 New York on the 1st July by one of the ordinary steamers, 

 and going on board my own vessel in Norway, I reached 

 the mouth of the Yenisej on the 1.5th August, that is to say, 

 in forty-six days. 



The same year Captain Wiggins also undertook a voyage to 

 the Yenisej, in which he penetrated with a steamer up the 

 river beyond the labyrinth of islands lying between 70° and 

 71° N.L. The vessel wintered there, but was lost the following 

 spring at the breaking up of the ice.^ 



The voyages of the Proeven and the Ymcr led to several 

 purely commercial voyages to the Yenisej and the Ob, of which 

 however I can here with the greatest brevity mention only 

 the following : 



The Swedish steamer Frascr, commanded by the German 

 Captain Dallmann, after having been fitted out at Gothenburg 

 on Sibiriakoff 's account, sailed in 1877 with a cargo from Bremen 



^ The dates of the Ymer'a voyage are as follows: — Left the coast of 

 Norway on the 26th July ; stay at Matotschkin Sound, through which I, 

 on this occasion, steamed into the Kara Sea from the .30th July to the 

 5th August; arrival at the Yenisej on the 15th August; arrival at the 

 anchorage at Goltschicha on the 16th August ; commenced the return 

 voyage on the 1st September, in the course of it passed Matotschkin Schar 

 on the 7tli September. 



- Of Captain Wiggins' voyage I know only that his original destination 

 was the Ob, but that on account of currents and shoals which he 

 encountered at the mouth of this river, he altered his plan, and reached 

 the Yenisej in the beginning of September. 



