Narrative of an Expedition to the Polar Sea in the Years 1820, 1821, 1822 and 1823Harper & Brothers, 1842 - 302 pages |
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animals appeared arrived banks bears boat bones breeze Cape North Cape Schelagskoj coast cold consists continued Cossacks covered cross direction distance district dogs driftwood east expedition fathoms feet fire fish fresh frozen greater Baranow Rock ground halted hills horses hummocks hunters huts Indigirka inhabitants Irkuzk island Jakuti Jakuzk Jana journey Jukahiri kind Kirensk Kolyma Kosmin Kyber lakes land larch latitude Lena light longitude by reckoning Matiuschkin meridian altitude morning mountains mouth night Nishne Kolymsk noon northern obliged Onkilon open water Ostrownoje ourselves party passed Petersburgh Pillar Island Polar Sea pood proceeded provision-sledges provisions quantity reached reindeer river roubles Russian schamans shelter shore Siberia side skin sledges snow sometimes soon Sredne Kolymsk stone-foxes stream Sucharnoje summer temperature tent thick tion train oil travelling trees tribe Tschuktschi Tundra usually valley weather wersts farther whole wild leeks wind winter
Popular passages
Page 258 - With a painful feeling of the impossibility of overcoming the obstacles which nature opposed to us, our last hope vanished of discovering the land, which we yet believed to exist.
Page 262 - ... shattered into fragments. At that dreadful moment, when escape seemed impossible, the impulse of selfpreservation implanted in every living being saved us. Instinctively we all sprang at once on the sledges, and urged the dogs to their full speed. They flew across the yielding fragments to the field on which we had been stranded, and safely reached a part of it of firmer character, on which were several hummocks, and where the dogs immediately ceased running, conscious, apparently, that the danger...
Page iv - Straits ; the general direction of the coast is the same in both continents, the latitude is nearly the same, and each has its attendant group of islands to the north, — the Asiatic continent, those usually known as the New Siberian Islands, — and the American, those called by Sir Edward Parry the North Georgian Group, and since fitly named from their discoverer, the Parry Islands. The resemblance includes the islands also, both in general character and in latitude.
Page 63 - According to his account, these bones or tusks, are less large and heavy the further we advance towards the north, so that it is a rare occurrence on the islands to meet with a tusk of more than three pood in weight, whereas on the continent, they are said often to weigh as much as twelve pood. In quantity, however, these bones increase wonderfully to the northward, and, as Sannikow expresses himself, the whole soil of the first of the Ldchow Islands appears to consist of them.
Page 123 - I have seen them operate, they have left with me a long-continued and gloomy impression. The wild look, the blood-shot eyes, the labouring breast, and convulsive utterance, the seemingly involuntary distortion of the face and the whole body, the streaming hair, even the hollow sound of the drum, all contributed to the effect ; and I can well understand that the whole should appear to the uncivilised spectator as the work of evil spirits.
Page 50 - Tungusi, and Jukahiri, but has really made them acquainted with the leading truths of Christianity ; and the fruits of his doctrine, his example, and his counsels, are visible in their great moral improvement. Such is the zeal of this truly venerable man for the extension of the Gospel among the inhabitants of these snowy wastes, that neither his great age, nor the severity of the climate, nor the countless other difficulties of the country...
Page 258 - We climbed one of the loftiest ice hills," says Wrangell, "affording an extensive view toward the north, and from thence we beheld the wide, immeasurable ocean spread out before our gaze. It was a fearful and magnificent spectacle, though to us a melancholy one. Fragments of ice of enormous size were floating on the surface of the agitated ocean, and were dashed by the waves with awful violence against the edge of the field on the farthest side of the channel before us. These collisions were so tremendous...
Page 173 - On ascending these hills, fossilised charcoal is everywhere met with, covered apparently with ashes, but on closer examination, this ash is also found to be a petrifaction, and so hard that it can scarcely be scraped off with a knife. On the summit another curiosity is found, namely, a long row of beams, resembling the former, but fixed perpendicularly in the sandstone. The ends, which project from seven to ten inches, are for the greater part broken. The whole has the appearance of a ruinous dyke.
Page iv - DISCOVERY, in which our own country has taken so prominent a part;—in each, and in all of these respects, it has a claim on the attention and interest of British readers. The facts and circumstances made known by an expedition which was engaged during three years in geographical researches, extending over fifty degrees of longitude of the coasts of the Polar Sea, must in many instances bear, by a close analogy, on reasonings connected with the yet unexplored portion of the Arctic Circle; and they...
Page vi - Wrangell and von Anjou, for the prosecution of their researches, was formed on the presumption of the continuance to the north, (in the winter and spring at least,) of the natural bridge of ice, by which the...