From the Arctic Ocean to the Yellow Sea; The Narrative of a Journey, in 1890 and 1891, Across Siberia, Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, and North China (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 'ONE SPECK OF LIFE IN THE ICE-BOUND WASTE. CHAPTER III. THE KARA SEA?continued, Further impressions of the Arctic regions?The awful silence? Average thickness of the ice?On the move once more?A fresh danger?A funny practical joke?The estuary of the River Yenisei?Golchika?A visit from its inhabitants ?From Golchika to Karaoul. The novelty of being blocked in on all sides by fields of ice soon wears off. Even the chance of a shot at a seal now and again fails to enliven one. The silence of the surroundings is too oppressive; all seems dead, and it seems like some hideous dream to row about on these motionless waters, with the ghostly frozen monstrosities floating around. Itreminded one of Dore"s illustrations to Dante's "Inferno." One can realize how awful it must be to be forced to pass a winter in the far North, where continual night is added to the horrors of the deathlike surroundings. The silence of the great forest Stanley tells us of in his book must be almost noisy (if one can use the expression) compared with it; at any rate, he had living nature around him, whereas in the Arctic regions all is gloom and eternal silence, without even vegetation to enliven it. Before leaving the floe to which we had been anchored, out of curiosity I ascertained the thickness of the ice, and to my astonishment I found it averaged seventeen feet, some pieces being even as much as twenty-Jive feet in thickness, and this after several weeks of continuous thaw. It would take too long to describe the wearisome attempts we made during the next few days while trying to break through the immense barrier which lay between us and the mouth of the Yenisei River, and during all this time we experienced every variety of Arctic climate, from hot sunshine to sudden and icy cold fogs. Thi...