190 FARTHEST NORTH 



alons the land against a strongr current. There seemed 

 to be no end to this land. Its discrepancy with every 

 known map grew more and more remarkable, and I was 

 in no slight dilemma. We had for long been far to 

 the north of the most northern island indicated by 

 Nordenskiold.* My diary this day tells of great uncer- 

 tainty. " This land (or these islands, or whatever it is) 

 goes confoundedly far north. If it is a group of islands 

 they are tolerably large ones. It has often the appearance 

 of connected land, with fjords and points; but the weather 

 is too thick for us to get a proper view. . . . Can this that 

 we are now coasting along be the Taimur's Island of the 

 Russian maps (or more precisely, Lapteff's map), and is 

 it separated from the mainland by the broad strait 

 indicated by him, while Nordenskiold's Taimur Island 

 is what Lapteff has mapped as a projecting tongue of 

 land .^ This supposition would explain everything, and 

 our observations would also fit in with it. Is it possible 

 that Nordenskibld found this strait, and took it for Taimur 

 Strait, while in reality it was a new one; and that he 

 saw Almquist's Islands, but had no suspicion that Taimur 

 Island lay to the outside of them.'^ The difficulty about 

 this explanation is that the Russian maps mark no islands 

 round Taimur Island. It is inconceivable that any one 



* It is true that in his account of the voyage he expressly states that 

 the continued very thick fog "prevented us from doing more than map- 

 ping out most vaguely the islands among and past which the Vega sought 

 her way." 



