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THROUGH SIBERIA
quite deep ; at eleven o’clock the sounding gave 105
fathoms, but then it became shallower again.
Tuesday, August 12. It took us several hours to
reach the edge of the ice, which we did in the early
morning. Again we had to stand to the south along
it, and sometimes to go through the ice.
Our course took us farther and farther south.
Meanwhile we had sighted the land on the south side
of the Kara Sea, and in the morning we were scarcely
more than 6 or 8 miles from it, the Captain thought.
Finally he found there was nothing for it but to
try to go through the ice to the eastward, as it extended
right up to the land on the south. After they had
forced a narrow way among some big floes, the ice
began to be slacker. And when I came out, at about
nine in the morning, we were in fairly open water and
could bear to the north-east. The weather had become
overcast and thick, with fog now and again. We had
come into shallow water ; the lead only gave 11
fathoms.
At last, in the forenoon, at about eleven, we could
see low land through the mist to the east. This was
Yamal, the same low sandy country that I had seen
for the first time through the same mist twenty years
before. It somewhat resembles Jæderen or Lister in
Norway, though the shore is a good deal higher, perhaps
more like the west coast of Jutland.
The whole of Yamal is a single great plain, made
up of sand, clay, gravel and pebbles. Along the shore
it falls in a steep slope, that may be 60 to 90 feet high,
but inland it is one low, undulating plain, covered
with grass and moss, with osier thickets here and there,
and with a multitude of lakes great and small, and
shallow rivers and brooks. There is excellent pasture
for reindeer on these wide prairies, and the Samoyedes
24
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