WRANGELL. 241 



fissures, which we passed with some trouble by the aid of the boards which we 

 had brought with us. At last the fissures became so numerous and so wide 

 that it Mas hard to say whether the sea beneath us was really still covered by 

 a connected coat of ice, or only by a number of detached floating fragments, 

 having everywhere two or more feat of water between them. A single gust 

 of wind would have been sufficient to drive these fragments against each other, 

 and being already thoroughly saturated with water, they would have sunk in 

 a few minutes, leaving nothing but sea on the spot where we were standing. 

 It was manifestly useless to attempt going, farther ; we hastened to rejoin our 

 companions, and to seek M'ith them a place of greater security. Our most 

 northern latitude was 71° 43' at a distauce of 215 versts in a sti'aight line from 

 the lesser Baranow rock." After rejoining his coraijanions, and while still on 

 the frozen sea, so thick a snow-storm came on that those in the hindmost 

 sledge could not see the leading ones. Unable either to pitch their tent or to 

 light a fire, they were exposed during the night to the whole inry of the storm, 

 with a temperatere of +7°, without tea or soup, and with nothing to quench 

 their thirst or satisfy their hunger but a few mouthfuls of snow, a little rye 

 biscuit, and a half-spoilt fish. On April 28 they arrived at Nishne-Kolymsk, 

 after an absence of thirty-six days, during which they had travelled above 800 

 miles with the same dogs, men and animals having equally suffered from cold, 

 hunger, and fatigue. 



Neither discomfort, however, nor danger prevented AVrangell from under- 

 taking a third excursion in the following springe He had great difticulty in 

 jirocuring the necessary dogs, a disease which raged among them during the 

 Avinter having carried off more than four-fifths of these useful animals. At 

 length his wants Avere supplied by the people of the Indigirka, Avhere the sick- 

 ness had not extended, and on March 14, 1822, he again set out for the borders 

 of the Polar Sea. During this expedition a large extent of coast Avas accu- 

 rately surveyed by Wrangell, Avho sent out his Avorthy assistant Matiuschkin, 

 Avith two companions, in an unloaded sledge, to see if any farther advance 

 could be made to the north. Having accomplished ten versts, Matiuschkin 

 Avas stopped by the breaking up of the ice. Enormous masses, raised by the 

 Avaves into an almost vertical position, Avere driven against each other Avith a 

 dreadful crash, and pressed dowuAvard by the force of the billows to re-appear 

 again on the surface covered Avith the torn-up green mud Avhich here forms the 

 bottom of the sea. It Avould tire the reader Avere I to relate all the miseries of 

 their return voyage; sufiice it to say that, Avorn out with hunger and fatigue, 

 they reached Nishne-Kolyrask on May 5, after an absence of fifty-seven days. 

 Such sufferings and perils might have excused all further attempts to discover 

 the supposed land in the Polar Sea, but nothing daunted by his repeated fail- 

 ures, Wrangell determined on a fourth expedition in 1823, on AA'hich he resolved 

 to start from a more easterly jjoint. On reaching the coast, the obstacles AA'ere 

 found still greater than on his previous visits to that fearful sea. The Aveather 

 Avas tempestuous, the ice thin and broken. It Avas necessary at times to cross 

 wide lanes of Avater on pieces of ice ; at times the thin ice bent beneath the 

 Aveight of the sledges, Avhich Avere then saved only by the sagacity of the dogs, 



16 



