xiii.] LAPTEV'S FIRST VOYAGE. 543 



dogs as draught animals, and appear to have carried on a mode 

 of life resembling that of the coast Chukches. 



In spring Chekin was sent to map the coast between the 

 Taimur and the Pjiisina. With thirty dog-sledges and accompanied 

 by a nomad Tunguse with eighteen reindeer/ he travelled over 

 land to the Taimur river, followed its course to the sea, and then 

 the coast towards the west of a distance of 100 versts. Scarcity 

 of provisions and food for his dogs compelled him to turn. 

 Laptev himself, convinced as he was of the impossibility of 

 rounding the north point of Asia, now wished to carry back his 

 vessel and the most of his stores to the Lena. After having with 

 great danger and difficulty sailed down the river to the Polar Sea, 

 reaching it on the ^°!^4^,- the vessel on the pXh was beset and 



O 30th July. IS 



nipped between pieces of ice, according to a statement on a 

 Russian map published in 1876 by the Hydrographical Depart- 

 ment in St. Petersburg, on the east coast of the Taimur Peninsula 

 in 75° 30' N.L. Six days after there was a strong frost, so that 

 thin ice was formed between the blocks of drift-ice. Some 

 foolhardy fellows went over the weakly frozen together pieces of 

 ice to land. Three days after Laptev himself and the rest of the 

 men could leave the vessel. Several streams, still unfrozen, lying 

 between them and their old winter station, however, prevented 

 them from going further. They endeavoured to get protection 

 from the cold by digging pits in the frozen earth and lying down 

 in them by turns one after the other. The men were sent daily 

 to the vessel to fetch as much as possible of the provisions left 

 behind, but on the 20iF^|^ ^^^ ice again broke up, and carried the 

 abandoned vessel out to sea. 



By the „f f """V the streams at last had frozen so much that the 



'' 2l5t Sept. 



return journey could be begun to the former year's wdnter 

 station distant more than 500 kilometres. The journey through 

 the desolate tundra, perhaps never before trodden by the foot 

 of man, was attended with extreme difficulties, and it was 

 twenty-five days before Laptev and his men could again rest 

 in a warmed hut and get hot food. Twelve men perished 

 of cold and exhaustion. Laptev now determined to remain here 

 during the winter and to go the following spring over the tundra 

 to the Yenisej, where he hoped to find depots with provisions and 

 ammunition. Nor did he now remain inactive. For he did not 

 wish to return until the surveys were complete. For want of 

 vessels these were to be made by land. Such of the men as 



^ These all perished "for want of: fodder." This, however, is impro- 

 bable. For, in 1878, we saw numerous traces of these animals as far to 

 the northward as Cape Chelyuskin, and very fat reindeer were shot both in 

 1861 and 1873, on the Seven Islands, the northernmost of all the islands of 

 the Old World, where vegetation is much poorer than in the regions now 

 in question. 



