52 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 
out a boat to sound in every direction. Not a bit of it. 
Not a ghost of a channel could we find: luck was 
clearly against us. 
The wind shifted to N.NW., and a vile, drying, freez- 
ing fog came on: so all day we could not move. 
But we made the best of it. Powys kept up our 
spirits with the banjo, and we sang, skinned, and ate 
many figs. 
June 19th.—The changes in the air temperature in 
the shade were instructive. When the fogs came on 
the thermometer fell through 10°, the surface water 
temperature varying only from 33° to 30° as the ice was 
near or farther off. 
This miserable fog lasted all night, and only cleared at 
ten o’clock this morning. Then we went ashore to 
see something of the place and to get fresh water. 
We had tough work to get in. Again there was a 
bar—a bad bar. But over it was running the river very 
fiercely all in flood, and the water where it-met the sea 
—for the tide was then making—curled and rolled 
and broke in a very ticklish manner. But we had 
good men at the oars, and biding our time ran in at 
last on the crest of a big wave, and found ourselves in a 
channel no more than six feet deep. 
I had taken my collecting gun, so while the man was 
filling the barrel Powys and I walked about. We had 
landed on the eastern side. We could see no sign 
