. . . wintered just forty years before, and reached the Straits of Waigat, the prospective Gibraltar of Dutch aspirations. The conditions of the ice were favorable.

On the first of August of the year 1594 the two ships entered the Kara Sea, which they called the New North Sea. Then following the coast, they entered Kara Bay. After a few days Jan Huygen discovered the small Kara River, the present frontier between Russia and Siberia. He mistook it for the Obi River, and thought that he had gone sufficiently eastward to be certain [Pg 37] of the practicability of the new route which he had set out to discover. The ice had all melted. As far as he could see there was open water. He cruised about in this region for several weeks, discovered a number of little islands, and sprinkled the names of all his friends and his employers upon capes and rivers and mountains. Finally, contented with what had been accomplished, he returned home. On the sixteenth of September . . . Read More