18 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
coast, from the enormous masses of warm water, which the rivers 
Obi, Irtisch, and Yenisej, running up through the steppes of High 
Asia, here pour into the ocean, after having received water from 
a river territory, everywhere strongly heated during the month 
of August, and more extensive than that of all the rivers put 
together, which fall into the Mediterranean and the Black 
Seas. 
Between Port Dickson and White Island, there runs therefore 
a strong fresh-water current, at first in a northerly direction. 
The influence which the rotation of the earth exercises, in these 
high latitudes, on streams which run approximately in the 
direction of the meridian, is, however, very considerable, and 
gives to those coming from the south an easterly bend. In 
consequence of this, the river water of the Obi and Yenisej 
must he confined as in a proper river channel, at first along 
the coast of the Tajmur country, until the current is allowed 
beyond Cape Chelyuskin to flow unhindered towards the 
north-east or east. Near the mouths of the large rivers I 
have, during calm weather in this current, in about 74° 
N. L., observed the temperature rising off the Yenisej to 
-f9'4° C. (17th August, 1875), and off the Obi to-1-8° C. 
(10th August of the same year). As is usually the case, this 
current coming from the south produces both a cold under¬ 
current, which in stormy weather readily mixes with the surface 
water and cools it, and on the surface a northerly cold ice- 
bestrewn counter-current, which, in consequence of the earth’s 
rotation, takes a bend to the west, and which evidently runs 
from the opening between Cape Chelyuskin and the northern 
extremity of Novaya Zemlya, towards the east side of this 
island, and perhaps may be the cause why the large masses of 
drift ice are pressed during summer against the east coast of 
Novaya Zemlya. According to my own experience and the 
uniform testimony of the walrus-hunters, this ice melts away 
almost completely during autumn. 
In order to judge of the distance at which the current coming 
from the Obi and the Yenisej can drive away the drift ice, we 
ought to remember that even a very weak current exerts an 
influence on the position of the ice, and that, for instance, the 
current from the Plata Biver, whose volume of water, however, 
is not perhaps so great as that of the Obi and Yenisej, is still 
clearly perceptible at a distance of 1,500 kilometres from the 
river mouth, that is to say, about three times as far as from 
Port Dickson to Cape Chelyuskin. The only bay which can be 
compared to the Kara Sea in respect of the area, which is 
