546 
VOYAGE TO THE 
CHAP, afraid to return to the shore, and accompanied the baron to Petrapaulski, 
XVIII. I received him and another seaman, similarly circumstanced, into 
Sept, the ship. 
^ Toward night the wind increased to a gale, and split almost every 
sail that was spread ; the weather was dark and thick, with heavy falls 
of snow ; and suspecting there might be a current setting through the 
strait, we anxiously looked out for the Diomede Islands, which were to 
leeward, and we were not a little surprised to find, on the w'eather clear- 
ing up shortly after daylight the following morning, that there had been 
a current running nearly against the wind, at the rate of upwards of 
a mile an hour, in a N. 41° W. direction. 
From the time we quitted Port Clarence the temperature began 
to rise, and this morning stood four degrees above the freezing point. 
Change of locality was the only apparent cause for this increase, and it 
is very probable that the vicinity of the mountains to Port Clarence 
is the cause of the temperature of that place being lower than it is 
at sea. 
In the morning we saw a great many walruses and whales, and 
observed large flocks of ducks migrating to the southward. The coast 
on both sides was covered with snow, and every thing looked wintry. 
The wind about this time changed to IST. W., and by the evening 
carried us off the entrance of Kotzebue Sound, when we encountered, 
as usual, an easterly wind, and beat up all night with thick misty 
weather. 
In our run to this place we again passed over a shoal, with eight 
and a half and nine fathoms water upon it off Schismareff inlet. After 
beating all night in very thick weather, on the 9th of September we stood 
in for the northern shore of the sound, expecting to make the land well to 
windward of Cape Blossom, where the soundings decrease so gradually 
that a due attention to the lead is the only precaution necessary to pre- 
vent running on shore ; but there had unfortunately been a strong 
current during the night, which had drifted the ship towards Hotham 
Inlet, where the water shoaling from five fathoms to two and a half, 
the ship struck upon the sand while in the act of going about ; and 
soon became fixed by the current running over the shoal. In conse- 
