at all
events with difficulty enough in consequence of the unsuitableness
of the vessel, he arrived at Matotschkin Sound, which he carefully
surveyed and took soundings in. From a high mountain at its eastern
mouth he saw on the 10th Sept./30th Aug. the Kara Sea completely
free of ice--and the way to the Yenisej thus open; but his vessel
was useless for further sailing. He therefore determined to winter
at a bay named Tjulnaja Guba, near the eastern entrance to
Matotschkin Sound. To this place he removed a house which some
hunters had built on the sound farther to the west, and erected
another house, the materials of which he had brought from home,
on a headland jutting out into the sound a little more to the east.
The latter I visited in 1876. The walls were then still standing,
but the flat roof, loaded with earth and stones, had fallen in,
as is often the case with deserted wooden houses in the Polar regions.
The house was small, and had consisted of a lobby and a room with an
immense fireplace, and sleeping places fixed to the walls.

[Illustration: VIEW FROM MATOTSCHKIN SCHAR. (After a drawing by Hj
Theel. 1875.) ]

On the 1st Oct./20th Sept., Matotschkin Sound was frozen over, and
some days after the Kara Sea was covered with ice as far as the eye
could reach. Storms from the north-east, west, and north-west, with
drifting snow of such violence prevailed during the course of the
winter that one could scarcely go ten fathoms from the house. In its
neighbourhood a man was overtaken by such a storm of drifting snow
while hunting a reindeer. When he did not return after two days'
absence it was determined to note him in the journal as having
"perished without burial."

On the 28/17th April, 1769, there was a storm from the south-west,
with mist, rain, and hail as large as half a bullet. On the 2nd
June/22nd May a dreadful wind raged from the north-west, bringing
from the high mountains a "sharp smoke-like air,"--it was certainly
a _foehn_ wind. The painful, depressing effect of this wind is
generally known from Switzerland and from north-western Greenland.
At the latter place it rushes right down with excessive violence
from the ice-desert of the interior. But far from on that account
bringing cold with it, the temperature suddenly rises above the
freezing-point, the snow disappears as if by magic through melting
and evaporation, and men and animals feel themselves suffering from
the sudden change in the weather.