306 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 



It would take too long to tell of half the captains 

 who sailed into these waters and lost their ships, if not 

 their own lives, there ; but there is, above the rest, one 

 name which is imperishably connected with the conquest 

 of the Kara Sea, and that is the name of Captain 

 Joseph Wiggins. It is usual to call this great English 

 seaman a 2^^oneer. A pioneer he certainly was, in as 

 far as he opened up this north-eastern trade route to 

 British shipping ; but he may also claim the not less 

 honourable title of a link with the past. For he was 

 of the order of Hawkins, Drake, and Frobisher, and the 

 mariners of the Elizabethan age, part explorer and part 

 merchantman, whose voyages have shed a little of the 

 purple of romance over the fustian-grey of commerce. 

 Wiggins began his work in the 'seventies, and for thirty 

 years he tried to establish regular trade with the Ob 

 and the Yenesei. During the 'nineties his example was 

 followed by others, both Russian and English, the most 

 notable among the latter being Mr. Leyborne Popham. 

 But after the action of the Russian Government, who 

 no longer allow goods to enter the river duty free, the 

 sea route to Siberia fell into disfavour for a time, 

 nominally on aecount of the uncertainty of clearing the 

 ice in the Kara Sea. Against this it has been pointed 

 out that in none of his voyages was Wiggins obliged to 

 return because of ice. 



The present promoters of the scheme maintain that 

 there are four entrances to the Kara Sea, and that 

 under no weather conditions can all four be blocked at 

 once, for if the ice is packed in one part of the Novaya 

 Zemlya bight, the rest is sure to be open. Hence the 



