24 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
for our expedition, has, however, by Mr. Sibiriakoff’s care, been 
received from inhabitants of North Siberia, who earn their living 
by collecting mammoths’ tusks on the group of islands in 
question. By these accounts the sea between the north coast 
of Asia and the islands of New Siberia, is every year pretty free 
of ice. 
Avery remarkable discovery was made in 1811 by a member 
of Hedenstrom’s expedition, the Yakoutsk townsman Sannikov ; 
for he found, on the west coast of the island Katelnoj, remains 
of a roughly-timbered winter habitation, in the neighbourhood 
of the wreck of a vessel, differing completely in build from those 
which are common in Siberia. Partly from this, partly from a 
number of tools which lay scattered on the beach, Sannikov 
drew the conclusion, that a hunter from Spitzbergen or Novaya 
Zemlya had been driven thither by the wind, and had lived there 
for a season with his crew. Unfortunately the inscription on 
a monumental cross in the neighbourhood of the hut was not 
translated. 
During the great northern expeditions,^ several attempts were 
also made to force a passage eastwards from the Lena. The first 
was under the command of Lieutenant Lassinius in 1735. He 
left the most easterly mouth-arm of the Lena on the 21st of 
August, and sailed 120 versts eastward, and there encountered 
drift ice which compelled him to seek a harbour at the coast. 
Here the winter was passed, with the unfortunate result, that 
the chief himself, and most of the fifty-two men belonging 
to the expedition, perished of scurvy. 
The following year, 1736, there was sent out, in the same 
direction, a new expedition under Lieutenant Dmitri Laptev. 
With the vessel of Lassinius he attempted, in the middle of 
August, to sail eastward, but he soon fell in with a great deal of 
drift ice. So soon as the end of the month—^the time when navi¬ 
gation ought properly to begin—he turned towards the Lena on 
account of ice. 
In 1739 Laptev undertook his third voyage. He penetrated 
to the mouth of the Indigirka, which was frozen over on 
the 21st September, and wintered there. The following year 
the voyage was continued somewhat beyond the mouth of the 
yield any other direct contribution to our knowledge of the state of the 
ice in summer and autumn. 
^ This is a common name for the many Fussian expeditions which, 
during the years 1734-1743, were sent into the North Polar Sea from the 
Dwina, Obi, Ycniscj, Lena, and Kamschatka. 
