Tent Life in Siberia

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: CHAPTER III. Brig Olga, At Sea, 200 Miles From Kamtchatka. August 1jtA, 1869. Our voyage is at last drawing to a close, and after seven long weeks of cold, rainy, rough weather our eyes are soon to be gladdened again by the sight of land, and never was it more welcome to weary mariner than it will be to us. Even as I write, the sound of scraping and scrubbing is heard on deck, and proclaims our nearness to land. They are dressing the vessel to go once more into society. We were only 255 miles from the Kamtchatkan seaport of Petropavlovski last night, and if this favorable breeze holds we expect to reach there to-morrow noon. It has fallen almost to a dead calm, however, this morning, so that we may be delayed until Saturday. At Sea, Off The Coast Of Kamtchatka. Friday, August 1SiA, 1865. We have a fine breeze this morning; and the brig, under every stitch of canvas that will draw, is staggering through the seas enveloped in a dense fog, through which even her top-gallant sails show mistily. Should the wind continue and the fog be dissipated we may hope to see land to night. II A.M. I have just come down from the top-gallant yard, where for the last three hours I have been clinging uncomfortably to the backstays, watching for land, and swinging back and forth through the fog in the arc of a great circle as the vessel rolled lazily to the seas. We cannot discern any object at a distance of three ships' lengths, although the sky is evidently cloudless. Great numbers of gulls, boobies, puffin, fish-hawks, and solan-geese surround the ship, and the water is full of drifting medusae. Noon. Half an hour ago the fog began to lift, and at 11.40 the Captain, who had been sweeping the horizon with a glass, shouted cheerily, " Land ho ! Land ho ! Hurrah !" and the ...