IN SIGHT OF LAND 
205 
in places by Lieut. Hooper of the U. S. S. Corwin, 
and the description of the salient points here given 
is from the report of the Corwin” This was not 
exactly what could be called up-to-date informa¬ 
tion. In the Kar Ink's library had been a copy of 
Nordenskiold’s “Voyage of the Vega ” but it was 
in German, a language which I am unable to read. 
The pictures indicated that woods extended in 
places down to the shore and that reindeer lived in 
the woods. What I particularly wanted to know, 
however, was in what condition the Siberian natives 
now were, what food they had to eat, and whether 
they were afflicted with tuberculosis, to which so 
many primitive races have succumbed after contact 
with the beneficent influences of civilization, for 
more than thirty years had elapsed since Norden- 
ski'old’s journey and in that length of time radical 
changes in numbers or habitation might have come 
to the whole population. 
Late in the afternoon we got through the rough 
ice and for the remaining mile or so to the shore 
had good going. At five o’clock in the afternoon 
we landed on the Siberian coast. It was the fourth 
of April and we had been seventeen days on the 
march. The distance we had actually gone in mak¬ 
ing the journey was not less than two hundred 
miles. 
