XIII.] DMITRI LAPTEV'S SECOND VOYAGE. 545 



eastwards. He went to sea on the ^^^- At first lie had to 



ovih July. 



contend with serious obstacles from ice, and when at last he 

 reached o^jen water he thought himself compelled to turn on 

 account of the advanced season of the year. On the -^^^^^ he 



.-' TJnd Aug. 



came again to the Bychov mouth-arm of the Lena, up which he 

 found it difficult to make his way on account of the many 

 unknown shoals. On the yth September the river was frozen 

 over. He wintered a little distance from the mouth ; and now 

 again scurvy made its aj^pearance, but was cured by constant 

 exercise in the open air and by a decoction of cedar cones. In 

 a re23ort sent from this jjlace, Dmitri Laptev declared that it was 

 quite impossible to round the two projecting promontories 

 between the Lena and the Indigirka, Capes Borchaja and 

 Svjatoinos, because, according to the unanimous statement of 

 several Yakuts living in the region, the ice there never melts or 

 even loosens from the beach. With Behring's permission he 

 travelled to St. Petersburg to lay the necessary information 

 before the Board of Admiralty. The Board determined that 

 another attempt should be made by sea, and, if that was 

 unsuccessful, that the coast should be surveyed by means of 

 land journeys. 



It is now easy to see what was the cause of the unfortunate 

 issue of these two attempts to sail to the eastward. The explorers 

 had vessels which were unsuitable for cruising, they turned too 

 early in the season, and in consequence of their unwillingness to 

 go far from land they sailed into the great bays east of the Lena, 

 from which no large river carries away the masses of ice that 

 have been formed there during the winter, or that have been 

 drifted thither from the sea. Dmitri Laptev and his companions 

 besides appear to have had a certain dislike to the commission 

 intrusted to them, and, differing from Deschnev, they thus 

 wanted the first condition of success — the fixed conviction of 

 the possibility of attaining their object. 



By order of the Board of Admiralty Dmitri Laptev at all 

 events began his second voyage, and now falsified his own 

 prediction, by rounding the two capes which he believed to be 

 always surrounded by unbroken ice. After he had passed them 

 his vessel was frozen in on the yih September. Laptev had no 

 idea at what point of the coast he was, or how far he was from 

 land. He remained in this unpleasant state for eleven days, at 

 the close of which one of the mates who had been sent out from 

 the vessel in a boat on the '-^^^ returned on foot over the ice 

 and reported that they were not far from the mouth of the 

 Indigirka. Several Yakuts had settled on the neighbouring 

 coasf, where was also a Russian simovie. Laptev and his men 

 wintered there, and examined the surrounding country. The 

 surveyor KiNDAKOV was sent out to map the coast to the Kolyma. 



