neighbouring
coast unsuitable on account of the scarcity of forests and
driftwood, he therefore sailed back to the westward until after a
great many mishaps he came again at last on the 23rd/12th September
to the house which he had built the year before on the Kolyma.

He proposed immediately to make a renewed attempt the following
spring to reach his goal. But now his stores were exhausted, and the
wearied crew refused to accompany him. In order to obtain funds for
a new voyage he travelled to Moscow, and by means of the assistance
he succeeded in procuring there, he commenced in 1766 a voyage from
which neither he nor any of his followers returned. COXE mentions
several things which tell in favour of his having actually rounded
Cape Deschnev and reached the Anadyr. But Wrangel believes that he
perished in the neighbourhood of Cape Schelagskoj. For in 1823 the
inhabitants of that cape showed Wrangel's companion Matiuschkin a
little ruinous house, built east of the river Werkon on the coast of
the Polar Sea. For many years back the Chukches travelling past had
found there human bones gnawed by beasts of prey, and various
household articles, which indicated that shipwrecked men had
wintered there, and Wrangel accordingly supposes that it was there
that Schalaurov perished a sacrifice to the determination with which
he prosecuted his self-imposed task of sailing round the
north-eastern promontory of Asia.[330]

In order to ascertain whether any truth lay at the bottom of the
view, generally adopted in Siberia, that the continent of America
extended along the north coast of Asia to the neighbourhood of the
islands situated there, CHICHERIN, Governor of Siberia, in the
winter of 1763 sent a sergeant, ANDREJEV with dog-sledges on an ice
journey towards the north. He succeeded in reaching some islands of
considerable extent, which Wrangel, who always shows himself very
sceptical with respect to the existence of new lands and islands in
the Polar Sea, considers to have been the Bear Islands. Now it
appears to be pretty certain that Andrejev visited a south-westerly
continuation of the land named on recent maps "Wrangel Land," which
in that case, like the corresponding part of America, forms a
collection of many large and small islands. Andrejev found
everywhere numerous proofs that the islands which he visited had
been formerly inhabited. Among other things he saw a large hut built
of wood without the help of iron tools.