156 Mr. Henry Seebohm. 



there were no signs of its approach except the arrival of these 

 birds, now and then late in May, there appeared a flock of 

 white geese and swans. Most of these birds had migrated too 

 early, and the great bulk of them came back again. By the 

 1st June the river had slightly risen, and there were on each 

 side great masses of ice on the river, perhaps 12 to 20 feet of 

 thin ice where the river had risen and frozen over again. On 

 the 1st June, as they came out of their cabin, they suddenly 

 saw at the angle of the bank where the two rivers joined a 

 little chain of ice mountains. Going down to the spot, they 

 found that on the great river a large field of ice had broken 

 loose. Half of it had found its way down the little narrow 

 strip of thin ice, and the other had rushed against the precipice 

 and knocked itself into little mountains. He found the river 

 was covered with three feet of transparent ice, as clear as glass 

 and almost as blue as the sky. On the top of that was about 

 four feet of ice as white as milk, apparently the flooded snow 

 which had afterwards frozen. The moment this was discovered 

 the sailors took alarm, and many of them removed their goods 

 and chattels from the vessel, and though Captain Wiggins 

 discouraged alarm, he was anxious enough to put a watch on 

 board, so that they might be advised of anything unusual that 

 occurred. At one o'clock in the morning the watchman called 

 down and said he thought the best thing for them to do was 

 to get up, that the river was rising rapidly, the ice was 

 beginning to break up, and to march up stream. On going 

 on deck they found that there had evidently been a tremendous 

 thaw somewhere on the ice, and that the large blocks had 

 flown into the river so rapidly that it was beginning to flow up 

 all its tributaries. They found, however, that the ice was 

 breaking up into very small pieces. One piece of ice came 

 against the ship with such violence as to cause some alarm. 

 But presently the whole had passed, and they had clear water 

 to the Yen-e-say. They then found the ice in the great river 

 had broken up and was coming up stream. There was only 

 one thing to do, and that was to slip their anchor and run 

 with it, and the ship was driven up the Koo-ray-i-ka about a mile. 

 At the end of something like 36 hours they found that the 

 result of what had taken place was a leakage, and there was a 

 stream of water running into the hold of the ship. They were 

 thus obliged to desert her. They scrambled on to the shore 

 over the ice blocks, but the next day there was a subsidence in 

 the rivers, and the stream had turned the other way. They 

 found their ship safe, and were able to get on to her again and 

 to stop the leak. When the river again rose they were able to 

 guide her into the little creek which the captain had originally 

 intended to take her into. There they ran the ship ashore in 



