XIII.] 
LAPTEV’S FJRST VOYAGE. 
191 
76° 47' N. L. A signal tower was built on the extremity of the 
cape, and the land-measurer Chekin was sent to examine the 
neighbouring territory, and Chelyuskin to search for the mouth 
of the river Taimur. Chekin could carry out no geodetic work 
on account of mist. Chelyuskin again reported that the whole 
bay and the sea in the offing were, as far as the eye could reach, 
covered with unbroken ice. This induced Laptev to turn. After 
many difficulties among the ice, he came, on the to the 
confluence of the river Bludnaya with the Chatanga. Here the 
winter was passed among a tribe of Tunguses living on the spot, 
who oAvned no reindeer, and were therefore settled. They used 
dogs as draught animals, and appear to have carried on a mode 
of life resembling that of the coast Chukches. 
In spring Chekin was sent to map the coast between the 
Taimur and the Pjasina. With thirty dog-sledges and accompanied 
by a nomad Tunguse with eighteen reindeer,^ he travelled over 
Icmd to the Taimur river, followed its course to the sea, and then 
the coast towards the Avest of a distance of 100 versts. Scarcity 
of provisions and food for his dogs compelled him to turn. 
Laptev himself, convinced as he was of the imjDossibility of 
rounding the north point of Asia, now wished to carry back his 
vessel and the most of his stores to the Lena. After having with 
great danger and difficulty sailed down the river to the Polar Sea, 
reaching it on the the vessel on the ?-Th was beset and 
nipped between pieces of ice, according to a statement on a 
Russian map published in 1876 by the Hydrographical Depart¬ 
ment in St. Petersburg, on the east coast of the Taimur Peninsula 
in 75° 30' N.L. Six days after there was a strong frost, so that 
thin ice Avas formed between the blocks of drift-ice. Some 
^ These all perished “for want of fodder.” This, however, is impro¬ 
bable. For, in 1878, we saw numerous traces of these animals as far to 
the northward as Cape Chelyuskin, and very fat reindeer were shot both in 
1861 and 1873, on the SeA'en Islands, the northernmost of all the islands of 
the Old World, where Amgetation is much poorer than in the regions now 
in question. 
