252 SIBERIA AND SEA-TRADE 



interest in following the narrative of the attempts to 

 explore the North-East Passage after the loss of the ill- 

 starred Thames. 



The success of Captain Wiggins in reaching the 

 Yenesei in 1876 encouraged two steamers to make the 

 attempt in the following year, the year of our disasters. 

 The Louise succeeded in ascending the Ob and the 

 Irtish as far as Tobolsk, where she wintered, returning 

 with a cargo in safety the following autumn. The Eraser 

 reached Golchika on the Yenesei, where a cargo of 

 wheat ought to have met her, but in consequence of the 

 cowardice or the blunders — not to say the di.shonesty — 

 of the persons in charge, the cargo never arrived, and 

 the steamer was forced to return empty. 



Notwithstanding his misfortunes. Captain Wiggins 

 stuck bravely to his enterprise, and 1878 saw him again 

 in the Ob with a steamer, the Warkworth, drawing twelve 

 feet of water. The navigation of the lagoon of the Ob 

 is attended with considerable difficulty. Sand-banks are 

 very numerous. The regular tide is very unimportant, 

 and the normal condition of the river in autumn is a slow 

 but steady fall from the high level of the summer flood 

 to the low level of winter. Abnormal conditions of great 

 importance to navigation, however, continually occur. 

 A strong south wind accelerates the fall of the river, 

 whilst a violent north wind backs up the water and 

 causes the river to rise many feet. When the Warkworth 

 arrived at the last great sandbank forming the bar, she was 

 stopped for want of water. A large praam laden with wheat 

 awaited her at Sinchika, a small port on the south-east of 

 the gulf, forty miles beyond Nadim, the most northerly 

 fishing station of the Ob. Captain Wiggins lost some 

 time in searching for a channel, but fortunately before it 

 was too late a cold north wind set in, backed up the 



