The Government at St Petersburg was still bent on rounding the extreme northern point of Siberia. Lieutenant Cheriton Laptef was appointed to command a second expedition, with Chelyuskin as his mate. They sailed from Yakutsk in July, 1739, descended the river Lena, and reached Cape St Thaddei in 76° 47′ N., but they were stopped by the ice, and forced to winter at a permanent settlement of Tunguses at the mouth of the Khatanga river. Convinced of the impossibility of rounding the cape, Laptef resolved to return to the Lena, but his vessel was caught in a furious gale, she sprang a leak, and when the wind went down, the crew escaped to the land with much difficulty. The vessel drifted away and probably sank. Laptef and his people were left without resources, and underwent the most dreadful sufferings. Many died of hunger and cold. At length they reached the old wintering-place on the banks of the Khatanga. In April, 1741, Chelyuskin was sent with sledges to trace the coast line and discover its northern point, which is in 77° 30′ N. In this he succeeded, and this extreme northern point of Asia has since been known as Cape Chelyuskin. Laptef explored the Taimyr peninsula, and traced the river from its rise in the Taimyr lake to the sea. The whole party reached the Yenisei, and arrived at Yeniseisk at the end of August. In the period from 1760 to 1766 a fur-trader named Shalaroff made two expeditions and sighted the Liakhov islands, but his vessel was ultimately destroyed by the ice, and he died, with his crew, of cold and misery. He was the first to examine the great inlet called Chaun Bay. [Illustration: Bering’s Voyage from Kamschatka to North America. (_From a chart of 1741 drawn by a member of Bering’s expedition; it contains one of the few original drawings of the extinct sea-cow._)]