Lieutenant Hovgaard was therefore sent with the steam launch to take soundings. He returned with the report that the water off the headland was sufficiently deep. At the same time, accompanied by several of the naturalists, I made an excursion on land. In the course of this excursion the hunter Johnsen was sent to the top of the range of heights which occupied the interior of the promontory, in order to get a view of the state of the ice farther to the east. Johnsen too returned with the very comforting news that a very broad open channel extended beyond the headland along the coast to the south-east. I was wandering about along with my comrades on the slopes near the beach in order, so far as the falling darkness permitted, to examine its natural conditions, when Johnsen came down; he informed us that from the top of the height one could hear bustle and noise and see fires at an encampment on the other side of the headland. He supposed that the natives were celebrating some festival. I had a strong inclination to go thither in order, as I thought, "to take farewell of the Chukches," for I was quite certain that on some of the following days we should sail into the Pacific. But it was already late in the evening and dark, and we were not yet sufficiently acquainted with the disposition of the Chukches to go by night, without any serious occasion, in small numbers and provided only with the weapons of the chase, to an encampment with which we were not acquainted. It was not until afterwards that we learned that such a visit was not attended with any danger. Instead of going to the encampment, as the vessel in any case could not weigh anchor this evening, we remained some hours longer on the beach and lighted there an immense log fire of drift-wood, round which we were soon all collected, chatting merrily about the remaining part of the voyage in seas where not cold but heat would trouble us, and where our progress at least would not be obstructed by ice, continual fog, and unknown shallows. None of us then had any idea that, instead of the heat of the tropics, we would for the next ten months be experiencing a winter at the pole of cold, frozen in on an unprotected road, under almost continual snow-storms, and with a temperature which often sank below the freezing-point of mercury.