176 Mr. H. Seebohm on the Ornithology of Biberia. 
the delta may be said to begin^ is generally reckoned at 
another eight hundred miles^ for which distance the river 
will average at least four miles in width. To this we must 
add a couple of hundred miles of delta_, and another couple 
of hundred miles of lagoon^ each of which will average twenty 
miles in width, if not more. 
When we reached the ship we found the crew well and 
hearty. They had been amply provided with lime-juice and 
dried vegetables; and no symptoms of scurvy presented them¬ 
selves. On the other hand, we afterwards learned that the 
crew of a Russian schooner, which had wintered four degrees 
further north without having been supplied with these well- 
known preventives, had suffered so severely from scurvy that 
only the mate survived the winter. 
Qur winter-quarters were very picturesque. The ^ Thames ^ 
was moored close to the north shore of the Koo-ray'-i-ka, at 
the entrance of a little gully, into which it was the captain’s 
intention to take his ship as soon as the water rose high 
enough to admit of his doing so, and where he hoped to 
wait in safety the passing away of the ice. On one side of 
the ship was the steep bank of the river, about a hundred feet 
in height, and covered with snow, except here and there, 
where it was too perpendicular for the snow to lie. On the 
top of the bank was the house of a Russian peasant and 
merchant, with stores and farm-buildings adjacent, and a 
bath-house, occupied by an old man who earned a living by 
making casks. One of the rooms in this house was occupied 
by the crew of the ^ Thames f and after they had returned to 
the ship I and my servant took possession and made it our 
headquarters for bird-skinning &c. As we stood at the door 
of this house, on the brow of the hill, we looked down onto 
the crow’s-nestof the ^Thames.’ To the left the Koo- 
ray'-i-ka, a mile wide, stretched away some four or five miles, 
until a sudden bend concealed it from view; whilst to the 
right the eye wandered across the snow-fields of the Yen- 
e-say', and by the help of a binocular the little village of Koo- 
ray'-i-ka might be discerned about four miles off, on the 
opposite bank of the great river. The land was undulating 
