Such winds besides occur
everywhere in the Polar regions in the neighbourhood of high
mountains, and it is probably on their account that a stay in the
hill-enclosed kettle-valleys is in Greenland considered to be very
unhealthy and to lead to attacks of scurvy among the inhabitants.

The crew remained during the winter whole days, indeed whole weeks
in succession, in their confined dwellings, carefully made tight,
without taking any regular exercise in the open air. We can easily
understand from this that they could not escape scurvy, by which
most of them appear to have been attacked, and of which seven died,
among them Tschirakin. It is surprising that any one of them could
survive with such a mode of life during the dark Polar night. The
brewing of _quass_, the daily baking of bread, and perhaps even the
vapour-baths, mainly contributed to this.

On the 29/18th July the ice on Matotschkin Schar broke up, and on
the 13th/2nd August the sound was completely free of ice. An attempt
was now made to continue the voyage across the Kara Sea, and an
endeavour was made for this purpose to put the vessel, defective
from the first, and now still further damaged by ice, in repair,
by stopping the leaks, as far as possible, with a mixture of clay and
decayed seaweed. "Floating coffins" have often been used in Arctic
voyages, and many times with greater success than the stateliest
man-of-war. This time, however, Rossmuislov, after having sailed
some few miles eastward from Matotschkin Sound, in order to avoid
certain loss, had to return to his winter quarters, where he
fortunately fell in with a Russian hunter, with whom he commenced
his return to Archangel. No precious metals were found, nor "any
pearl-mussels," but Tschirakin confided to Rossmuislov the secret
that at a certain place on the south coast he had found a block of
stone of such extraordinary beauty that in the light of day it shone
with the most splendid fire. After Tschirakin's death Rossmuislov
sought for the stone, but without success, and he therefore broke
out in violent reproaches of his deceased comrade. I can, however,
free him from the blame of deception; for, during my voyage in 1875,
I found in several of the blocks of schist in the region small veins
of quartz, crossing the mass of stone. The walls of these veins were
covered with hundreds of sharply-developed rock crystals with
mirror-bright faces. Tschirakin's precious stone was doubtless
nothing e