194 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
time to take possession of tlie ship and renew the attempt to sail 
eastwards. He went to sea on the At first he had to 
contend with serious obstacles from ice, and when at last he 
reached open water he thought himself compelled to turn on 
account of the advanced season of the year. On the he 
came again to the Bychov mouth-arm of the Lena, up which he 
found it difficult to make his way on account of the many 
unknown shoals. On the ^/th September the river was frozen 
over. He wintered a little distance from the mouth; and now 
again scurvy made its aj)pearance, but was cured by constant 
exercise in the open air and by a decoction of cedar cones. In 
a report sent from this place, Dmitri Laptev declared that it was 
quite impossible to round the two projecting promontories 
between the Lena and the Indigirka, Capes Borchaja and 
Svjatoinos, because, according to the unanimous statement of 
several Yakuts living in the region, the ice there never melts or 
even loosens from the beach. With Behring’s permission he 
travelled to St. Petersburg to lay the necessary information 
before the Board of Admiralty. The Board determined that 
another attempt should be made by sea, and, if that was 
unsuccessful, that the coast should be ^ surveyed by means of 
land journeys. 
It is now easy to see what was the cause of the unfortunate 
issue of these two attempts to sail to the eastward. The explorers 
had vessels which were unsuitable for cruising, they turned too 
early in the season, and in consequence of their unwillingness to 
go far from land they sailed into the great bays east of the Lena, 
from which no large river carries away the masses of ice that 
have been formed there during the winter, or that have been 
drifted thither from the sea. Dmitri Laptev and his companions 
besides appear to have had a certain dislike to the commission 
intrusted to them, and, differing from Deschnev, they thus 
wanted the first condition of success—the fixed conviction of 
the possibility of attaining their object. 
