rsion over the ice in 1771. Starting from the
Kolyma they arrived on the last of the Bear Islands on March 9th. There
they remained six days on account of bad weather, and then started for
Tchaun Bay. Three days they continued in a due east direction, and
having gone forty-eight versts, turned off to the Baranov rocks, from
which they were fifty versts distant, and where they arrived on the
18th. Having rested there and killed a white bear, they continued their
journey along the coast in an easterly direction, but on the 28th, their
provisions running short, they were forced to return. On April 6th they
arrived again at Nijni-Kolymsk, after driving about 433 versts."

All this was not very encouraging, especially the fact, recorded by Von
Wrangell, that a traveller named Hedenstrom once made an attempt to
reach Shelagskoi about the same time of year as ourselves, but "found
the ice already so thin that he was obliged to renounce the plan. He
even found it difficult to retrace his own track to the Kolyma, where,
however, he arrived in safety and spent the following summer."

This was the sole information which I was able to extract from a score
of volumes dealing with Arctic exploration, and, briefly, it came to
this: Von Wrangell had once travelled in winter, with dogs, from
Nijni-Kolymsk to Koliutchin Bay (about two-thirds of the distance to
Bering Straits). Berry and Gilder had traversed the entire distance,
from the Straits to the Kolyma River, under similar conditions; and why,
therefore, should we not do likewise? There was a "but," however, and a
formidable one. These three travellers had made the coast journey in the
depth of winter (with a good three months of solid ice before them),
while we were about to attempt it in the declining spring.

On the first day, when travelling about two miles out to sea not far
from the mouth of the Kolyma River, Harding, with an exclamation of
surprise, drew my attention to a group of men apparently gathered
together on the brink of a cliff. But a moment's reflection showed me
that, viewed from this distance, these figures, if human beings, must
have been giants of fifty feet high. The resemblance, however, was so
startling that we steered inshore for a closer inspection, and my
glasses then revealed the rocky pinnacles which nature has so weirdly
fashioned in the shape of man. The effect in this desolate and ice-bound
wilderness was uncanny in the extreme. Von Wrangell noticed