Most of the vessels that wish to sail into the Kara Sea through Yugor Schar require to anchor here some days to wait for favourable winds and state of the ice. There are no good harbours in the neighbourhood of the sound, but available anchorages occur, some in the bay at Chabarova, at the western entrance of the sound; some, according to the old Dutch maps, on the eastern side of the sound, between Mestni Island (Staten Eiland) and the mainland. I have, however, no experience of my own of the latter anchorages, nor have I heard that the Norwegian walrus-hunters have anchored there. Perhaps by this time they are become too shallow. When we sailed through Yugor Schar in 1878, the sound was completely free of ice. The weather was glorious, but the wind was so light that the sails did little service. In consequence of this we did not go very rapidly forward, especially as I wished to keep the three vessels together, and the sailing ship _Express_, not to be left behind, had to be towed by the _Fraser_. Time was lost besides in dredging and taking specimens of water. The dredgings gave at some places, for instance off Chabarova, a rich yield, especially of isopods and sponges. The samples of water showed that already at a limited depth from the surface it had a considerable salinity, and that therefore no notable portion of the mass of fresh water, which the rivers Kara, Obi, Tas, and Yenisej and others pour into the Kara Sea, flows through this sound into the Atlantic Ocean. In the afternoon of the 1st August we passed through the sound and steamed into the sea lying to the east of it, which had been the object of so many speculations, expectations, and conclusions of so many cautious governments, merchants eager for gain, and learned cosmographers, from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which even to the geographer and man of science of the present has been a _mare incognitum_ down to the most recent date. It is just this sea that formed the turning-point of all the foregoing north-east voyages, from Burrough's to Wood's and Vlamingh's, and it may therefore not be out of place here, before I proceed further with the sketch of our journey, to give some account of its surroundings and hydrography.