mss142-vasilevShishmarev-i4-044

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bank is a small islet on which lay a few seals, who, at our
approach, plunged with noise and squalling into the water.
The captain first wanted to get to this islet to take the mid-
day height, but taking into consideration that this would re-
quire our waiting for about two hours, and therefore, would
lose precious time during such beautiful weather for further
exploration of the river, decided to take the alttitude farther
up the river. We went farther, constantly measuring the depth,
which we found to be from three to seven sazhens or less over
a sandy bottom. The banks were swampy, overgrown with reeds,
and so oozy that we could not find a suitable place to get out
to take the height. Finally we found a few logs lying together
in the reeds on the northern shore, landed on them, and set
up the artificial horizon, but in vain. The mercury kept mov-
ing all the time so that we were forced to abandon our plan
and be satisfied with determining the latitude of the river
from the traversed distance and from angles at given points.

From here, the captain ordered us to turn back, first,
because the depth started to decrease considerably, and sec-
ond, seeing the endlessness of these swampy and low banks we
could not hope in a few days to reach the end of them as this
would exhaust the men too much. Also, we did not have enough
provisions. Toward five o'clock, we came back to our last
sleeping place, and arranged ourselves to spend another night
there where it was quiet and warm. We did not find our friends,
the Indians, here any more, they having withdrawn to the northern