broken down in body and soul.
Prontschischev and Lassinius succumbed to hardships and sufferings
during their voyages in the Polar Sea. Owzyn was degraded, among
other things, because he used to be too intimate at Obdorsk with
exiles formerly of distinction. A few years before the voyage of the
_Vega_, Chelyuskin's trustworthiness was still doubted. All the
accounts of discoveries of islands and land in the Polar Sea by
persons connected with Siberia, have till the most recent times,
been considered more or less fictitious, yet they are clearly in the
main true. ]

[Footnote 322: Wrangel, i. p. 46. ]

[Footnote 323: According to Wrangel (i., note at p. 38 and 48),
probably after a quotation from Prontschischev's journal. The Lena
must be a splendid river, for it has since made the same powerful
impression, as on the seamen of the Great Northern Expedition, on
all others who have traversed its forest-crowned river channel. ]

[Footnote 324: These all perished "for want of fodder." This,
however, is improbable. For, in 1878, we saw numerous traces of
these animals as far to the northward as Cape Chelyuskin, and very
fat reindeer were shot both in 1861 and 1873, on the Seven Islands,
the northernmost of all the islands of the Old World, where
vegetation is much poorer than in the regions now in question. ]

[Footnote 325: Wrangel, i. pp. 48 and 72. Of the journey round the
northernmost point of Asia, Wrangel says--"Von der Tajmur-Muendung
bis an das Kap des heiligen Faddej konnte die Kueste nicht beschifft
werden, und die Aufnahme, die der Steuermann Tschemokssin
(Chelyuskin) auf dem Eise in Narten vornahm, ist so oberflaechlich
und unbestimmt, dass die eigentliche Lage des nordoestlichen oder
Tajmur-Kaps, welches die noerdlichste Spitse Asiens ausmacht, noch
gar nicht ausgemittelt ist." ]

[Footnote 326: Wrangel, i, p. 62. I have sketched the voyages
between the White Sea and the Kolyma, principally after Engelhardt's
German translation of Wrangel's Travels. It is, unfortunately, in
many respects defective and confused, especially with respect to the
sketch of Chariton Laptev and his followers, sledge journeys,
undertaken in order to survey the coast between the Chatanga and the
Pjaesina. Mueller mentions these journeys only in passing. Wrangel
gives as sources for his sketch (i. note at p. 38) _Memoirs of the
Russian Admiralty_, also the original journals of the journeys.
Chelyuskin he calls Chemokssin. ]

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