526 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



complete knowledge of the islands which were said to be situated 

 in the Polar Sea, and one must be surprised at the extreme 

 difficulties which were encountered in attempting^ the solution 

 of this apparently very simple geographical problem. The 

 reason indeed was that the Siberian seamen never ventured 

 to leave the immediate neighbourhood of the coast, a precaution 

 which besides is very easily explained when the bad construction 

 of their craft is considered. Along the shore of the Polar Sea 

 on the other hand, a very active communication appears to have 

 taken place between the Lena and the Kolyma, though of those 

 voyages we only know such as in one way or another gave rise 

 to actions before the courts or were characterised by specially 

 remarkable dangers or losses. 



In 1650 Andrej Goreloj was sent by sea from Yakutsk 

 to impose tribute on the tribes that lived at the sources of 

 the Indigirka, and on the Moma, a tributary of the Indigirka. 

 He passed Svjatoinos successfully, and reached the mouth of 

 the Kroma, but was there beset by ice, with which he drifted 

 out to sea. After drifting about ten days he was compelled 

 to abandon the vessel, which was soon after nipped, and 

 go on foot over the ice to land. On the '— November he 

 came to the simovie Ujandino, where famine prevailed during 

 the winter, because the vessels, that should have hrought 'pro- 

 visions to the 2^1'^ce, had either been lost or been compelled to 

 turn; a statement which proves that at that time a regular 

 navigation took place between certain parts of the coast of the 

 Polar Sea. 



The same year, the Cossack, Timofej Buldakov travelled 

 by sea from the Lena to the Kolyma to take over the command 

 of the neisfhbouring resjion. He reached the Kroma success- 

 fully, but was beset there and drifted out to sea. He then 

 determined to endeavour to get to land over the ice. But this 

 was no easy matter. The ice, which already was three feet 

 thick, went suddenly into a thousand pieces, while the vessel 

 drove before a furious gale farther and farther from the shore. 

 This was repeated several times. When the sea at last froze 

 over, the vessel was abandoned, and the party finally succeeded, 

 worn out as they were by hunger, scurvy, work, and cold, in 

 reaching land at the mouth of the Indigirka. The narrative of 

 Buldakov's voyage is, besides, exceedingly remarkable, because a 

 meeting is there spoken of with twelve " kotsches," filled with 

 Cossacks, traders, and hunters, bound partly from the Lena to 

 the rivers lying to the eastward, partly from the Kolyma and 

 Indigirka to the Lena, a circumstance which shows how active 

 the communication then was in the part of the Siberian Polai^ 

 Sea in question. This is further confirmed by a narrative of 

 NiKiFOR Malgin. While Knes Ivan Petrovitsch Barja.tin- 



