VOYAGE THROUGH THE KARA SEA 195 



dead-water, and made hardly any way, in spite of the 

 engine going full pressure. It was such slow work that 

 I thou2:ht I would row ahead to shoot seal. In the mean- 

 time the Fram advanced slowly to the edge of the ice 

 with her machinery still going at full speed. 



For the moment we had simply to give up all thoughts 

 of getting on. It was most likely, indeed, that only a few 

 miles of solid ice lay between us and the probably open 

 Taimur Sea ; but to break through this ice was an impos- 

 sibility. It was too thick, and there were no openings in 

 it. Nordenskiold had steamed through here earlier in 

 the year (August 18, 1878) without the slightest hinder- 

 ance,* and here, perhaps, our hopes, for this year at any 

 rate, were to be wrecked. It was not possible that the ice 

 should melt before winter set in in earnest. The only 

 thing to save us would be a proper storm from the south- 

 west. Our other slight hope lay in the possibility that 

 Nordenskibld's Taimur Sound farther south might be 

 open, and that we might manage to get the Fram through 

 there, in spite of Nordenskiold having said distinctly "that 

 it is too shallow to allow of the passage of vessels of any 

 size." 



After having been out in the kayak and boat and shot 



* In his account of his voyage Nordenskiold writes as follows of the 

 condition of this channel : " We were met by only small quantities of that 

 sort of ice which has a layer of fresh-water ice on the top of the salt, and 

 we noticed that it was all melting fjord or river ice. I hardly think that 

 we came all day on a single piece of ice big enough to have cut up a seal 

 upon." 



