fair was held. This fair was frequented by merchants who brought tea, silks, and spices down the Obb and the Yen-e-say' to barter with the Russian merchants, who returned to Archangel the same season.

In the "struggle for existence," which commenced on the opening out of the port of Archangel to British commerce, according to the inevitable law of the "survival of the fittest," this Russian maritime enterprise languished and finally died, and thenceforth the inhabitants of the banks of Dvina received their silks and their tea viâ the Thames instead of the Obb and the Yen-e-say'; and ever since the commercial world seems to have taken it for granted that the Kara Sea was unnavigable, and that the Kara gates were closed by impenetrable bars of ice.

During the last few years considerable efforts have been made, principally by Professor Nordenskiöld of Stockholm and Captain Wiggins of Sunderland to reopen this ancient route, and to re-establish a trade with Siberia viâ the Kara Sea. In 1874 Captain Wiggins chartered the well-known Arctic steam yacht the Diana, and passing through the Kara gates, explored the entrance to the Obb and the Yen-e-say', and returned to England in safety. In 1875 Professor Nordenskiöld chartered a walrus sloop at Hammerfest, and entering the Kara Sea through the Matoshkin scar, landed in the gulf of the Yen-e-say'. The walrus sloop returned to Europe in safety, leaving the Professor to make his way up the river in a boat as far as Yen-e-saisk', whence he returned to Stockholm by the overland route.

In 1876 both these gentlemen attempted to take a cargo

to Siberia viâ the Kara Sea. Professor Nordenskiöld was the first to arrive, and fortunately failing to find a channel up the Yen-e-say' deep enough for his steamer, he landed his goods at a little village called Kor'-e-o-poff'-sky, about a hundred miles up the Yen-e-say', and returned to Europe without any mishap. As will hereafter appear, Captain Wiggins was less fortunate. He left Sunderland on the 8th of July in the Thames, Arctic steam yacht (120 tons), and entered the Kara Sea on the 3rd of August. The ice prevented him from sailing direct to the mouths of the great rivers, so he spent some time in surveying the coast and the By'-der-at'-skerry Gulf, and did not reach the mouth of the Obb until the 7th of September. Here he lay at anchor some time in the hope that a favourable wind might enable him to ascend the Obb against the strong current; but the weather proving tempestuous and the wind contrary, he abandoned the attempt, and ran for the Yen-e-say'. He commenced the ascent of that river on the 23rd of September, and after a tedious voyage, struggling against contrary winds and shallow water, he finally laid his vessel up on the Arctic Circle, half a mile up the Koo-ray'-i-ka, on the 17th of October, 1200 miles from the mouth of the Yen-e-say'. The following morning the ship was frozen up in winter quarters. A room in a peasant's house on the banks of the river, looking down on to the ship, was rigged up for the crew, and as soon as the ice on the river was thick enough to make sledging safe, Captain Wiggins returned to England by the overland route.

In 1875 Harvie-Brown and I visited the delta of the

Petchora in North-East Russia, and brought home an unusually interesting collection of birds, eggs, and ethnological curiosities from the tundras of Siberia-in-Europe. In 1876 Drs. Finsch and Brehm made an expedition to the Obb, extending still further east our recent zoological and ethnological knowledge of these interesting regions. Hearing that Captain Wiggins was in England, and likely to rejoin his ship, with the intention of returning in her to Europe through the Kara Sea, I lost no time in putting myself in communication with him. I was anxious to carry our ornithological and ethnological researches a step further to the eastward, so as to join on with those of Middendorf, Schrenck, and Radde in East Siberia. I made the acquaintance of Captain Wiggins on the 23rd of February, and came to the conclusion that an opportunity of travelling with a gentleman who had already made the journey, and consequently knew the ropes,' might never occur again. Captain Wiggins told me that it was his intention to start from London on the return journey in three days. I finally arranged with him to give me five days to make the necessary preparations for accompanying him. I wrote to Count Schouvaloff, who had given my companion and myself excellent letters of introduction on our Petchora journey, asking him to be kind enough to send to my rooms in London similar letters for my proposed Yen-e-say' expedition, and I am happy in now having an opportunity of publicly expressing my warmest thanks to his Excellency for his kindness in furnishing me, at a moment's notice, with letters of introduction to General Timarscheff, the Minister of the

Interior at St. Petersburg, which proved of the greatest service to me on my long and adventurous journey.

The details of this journey, how we travelled nearly six thousand miles to the ship, and how we lost her, and had to travel home again by land, form the subject of the present volume. The reader may, however, feel some interest in

following the narrative of the attempts to explore the NorthEast Passage, beyond the loss of the ill-starred Thames.

The success of Captain Wiggins in reaching the Yen-esay' in 1876 encouraged two steamers to make the attempt in the following year, the year of our disasters. The Louise succeeded in ascending the Obb and the Ir-tish as far as Tobolsk, where she wintered, returning with a cargo in safety the following autumn. The Frazer reached Golcheek'-a on the Yen-e-say', where a cargo of wheat ought to have met her, but in consequence of the cowardice or the blunders not to say the dishonesty-of the persons in charge, the cargo never arrived, and the steamer was forced to return empty.

Notwithstanding his misfortunes, Captain Wiggins stuck bravely to his enterprise, and 1878 saw him again in the Obb with a steamer, the Warkworth, drawing 12 feet of water. The navigation of the lagoon of the Obb is attended with considerable difficulty. Sand banks are very numerous. The regular tide is very unimportant, and the normal condition of the river in autumn is a slow but steady fall from the high level of the summer flood to the low level of winter. Abnormal conditions of great importance to navigation, however, continually occur. A strong south wind accelerates the fall of the river, whilst a violent north wind backs up the water and causes the river to rise many feet. When the Warkworth arrived at the last great sand-bank, called the bar, she was stopped for want of water. A large praam laden with wheat awaited her at Sin-cheek'-a, a small port on the south-east of the gulf, 40 miles beyond Na-deem',