IX.] 
SAILING AMONG ICE. 
441 
offered to me by a Chukch for a pot. Unfortunately I had 
none that I could dispense with. Here, too, prices have risen. 
When the Russians first came to Kamchatka, they got eight 
sable-skins for a knife, and eighteen for an axe, and yet the 
Kamchadales laughed at the credulous foreigners who were 
so easily deceived. At Yakutsk, when the Russians first 
settled there, a pot was even sold for as many sable-skins as 
it could hold.^ 
During the night before the 10th September, the surface 
of the sea was covered with a very thick sheet of newly-frozen 
ice, which was broken up again in the neighbourhood of the 
vessel by blocks of old ice drifting about. The pack itself 
appeared to have scattered a little. We therefore weighed 
anchor to continue our voyage. At first a d6tour towards the 
west was necessary to get round a field of drift-ice. Here too, 
however, our way was ^barred by a belt of old ice, which was 
bound together so firmly by the ice that had been formed in the 
course of the night, that a couple of hours’ work with axes and 
ice-hatchets was required to open a channel through it. On the 
other side of this belt of ice we came again into pretty open 
water, but the fog, instead, became so dense that we had again 
to lie-to at a ground-ice, lying farther out to the sea but more 
to the west than our former resting-place. On the night before 
the 11th there was a violent motion among the ice. Fortu¬ 
nately the air cleared in the morning, so that we could hold on 
our course among pretty open ice, until on the approach of night 
we were obliged as usual to lie-to at a ground-ice. 
The following day, the 12th September, when we had passed 
Irkaipij, or Cape North, a good way, we fell in with so close ice 
that there was no possibility of penetrating farther. We were 
therefore compelled to return, and were able to make our way 
with great difficulty among the closely packed masses of drift 
1 Krascheninnikpv, Histoire et Description du Kamtschatka, Amsterdam 
1770, II. p. 95. A. Erman, JReise um die Erde, D. 1, B. 2, p. 255. 
