290 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
on the fgth September. In the immediate neighbourhood they 
found an encampment, whose inhabitants (Samoyeds) gave the 
shipwrecked men a friendly reception, and entertained them 
with the luxuries of the reindeer lierd—raw and cooked reindeer 
flesh, reindeer tongues, reindeer marrow—raw fish and goose- 
fat. After the meal was finished the exhausted wanderers lay 
down to sleep in the Samoyed tents on the soft reindeer skins ; 
“ all sorrows and difficulties were forgotten ; we felt a boundless 
enjoyment, as if we had come to paradise.” Thence they 
travelled in reindeer sledges to Obdorsk, everywhere received in 
a friendly and hospitable manner by the wild tribes on the way, 
although the hospitality sometimes became troublesome, as for 
instance Avhen an Ostyak compelled von Krusenstern to drink 
tea six times a day, and six cups each time, and offered him 
as a special luxury an extract of tobacco in brandy.^ 
Krusentern’s adventurous journey across the Kara Sea is one 
of the many proofs that a Polar navigator ought above every¬ 
thing to avoid being beset. The very circumstance that the 
ice-field, in which he became fixed in the neighbourhood of 
Yffigor Schar, could drift across to the east coast of the Kara 
Sea, shows that it was for the most part open, and that a 
steamer or a good sailing-vessel that year, and probably also 
the preceding, might very readily have reached the mouth of 
the Ob or the Yenisej, The narrative of von Krusenstern’s 
journey is besides the first complete sketch we have of a passage 
from west to east over the Kara Sea. Little idea could any one 
then have that within a single decade a number of vessels 
should sail free and unhindered along this route. 
Soon after the two voyages I have described above, and 
before they became genercxlly known in the geographical litera¬ 
ture of Western Europe, a new era began in the navigation of 
the Kara Sea, which was brought about by the Norwegian 
1 Paul YOU Krusenstern, Skiznen aus sienemSeemanusIehen. Seinen Freunden 
(jeiciihnet. Hirseliberg in Silesia, without date. 
