IX.] 
THE VEGA BESET. 
461 
February. Now, however, the case was quite different. The 
fragile ice-sheet, which on the 28th September bound together 
the ground-ices and hindered our progress, increased daily in 
strength under the influence of severer and severer cold until it 
was melted by the summer heat of the following year. Long 
after we were beset, however, there was still open water on the 
coast four or five kilometres from our winter haven, and after our 
return home I was informed that, on the day on which we 
were frozen in, an American whaler was anchored at that 
place. 
Whether our sailing along the north coast of Asia to Kolyut- 
schin Bay was a fortunate accident or not, the future will show. 
I for my part believe that it was a fortunate accident, which will 
often happen. Certain it is, in any case, that when we had come 
so far as to this point, our being frozen in was a quite accidental 
misfortune brought about by an unusual state of the ice in the 
autumn of 1878 in the North Behring Sea. 
