d to be of immense practical importance for the
whole of Siberia. The voyage was also regarded in that light by
leading men in the great empire of the East, and our return journey
from Yenisejsk by Krasnojarsk, Tomsk, Omsk, Yekaterinburg,
Nischni-Novgorod, Moscow and St. Petersburg, became therefore a
journey from _fete_ to _fete_. But a number of voices were
simultaneously raised, which asserted that the success of the
_Proeven_ depended on an accidental combination of fortunate
circumstances, which would not soon occur again. In order to show
that this was not the case, and that I might myself bring the first
goods by sea to Siberia, I undertook my second voyage to the Yenisej
in 1876, in which I penetrated with the steamer _Ymer_, not only to
the mouth of the river, but also up the river to the neighbourhood
of Yakovieva in 71 deg. N.L. Hence I returned the same year by sea
to Europe.[186] In the gulf of Yenisej a large island was
discovered, which I named after Mr. Alexander Sibiriakoff, who
defrayed the principal expenses of the expedition. Before starting
on this voyage, I visited the Philadelphia Exhibition, and it may
perhaps deserve to be mentioned, that leaving New York on the 1st
July by one of the ordinary steamers, and going on board my own
vessel in Norway, I reached the mouth of the Yenisej on the 15th
August, that is to say, in forty-six days.

The same year Captain Wiggins also undertook a voyage to the
Yenisej, in which he penetrated with a steamer up the river beyond
the labyrinth of islands lying between 70 deg. and 71 deg. N.L.
The vessel wintered there, but was lost the following spring at the
breaking up of the ice.[187]

The voyages of the _Proeven_ and the _Ymer_ led to several purely
commercial voyages to the Yenisej and the Ob, of which however I can
here with the greatest brevity mention only the following:

[Illustration: JOSEPH WIGGINS ]

The Swedish steamer _Fraser_, commanded by the German Captain
DALLMANN, after having been fitted out at Gothenburg on
Sibiriakoff's account, sailed in 1877 with a cargo from Bremen to
the Yenisej and back. The vessel left Hammerfest on the 9th August,
arrived at Goltschicha on the 21st August, commenced the return
voyage on the 14th September, and on the 24th of the same month was
back at Hammerfest.

The steamer _Louise_ commanded by Captain DAHL, with a cargo of
iron, olive oil, and sugar, the same year made the first voyage from
England to Tobol