The same year Captain Wiggins also undertook a voyage to the Yenisej, in which he penetrated with a steamer up the river beyond the labyrinth of islands lying between 70° and 71° N.L. The vessel wintered there, but was lost the following spring at the breaking up of the ice.[187]
The voyages of the _Proeven_ and the _Ymer_ led to several purely commercial voyages to the Yenisej and the Ob, of which however I can here with the greatest brevity mention only the following:
The Swedish steamer _Fraser_, commanded by the German Captain DALLMANN, after having been fitted out at Gothenburg on Sibiriakoff's account, sailed in 1877 with a cargo from Bremen to the Yenisej and back. The vessel left Hammerfest on the 9th August, arrived at Goltschicha on the 21st August, commenced the return voyage on the 14th September, and on the 24th of the same month was back at Hammerfest.
The steamer _Louise_ commanded by Captain DAHL, with a cargo of iron, olive oil, and sugar, the same year made the first voyage from England to Tobolsk, starting from Hull on the 18th July and arriving at Tobolsk on the 20th September.[188]
Captain SCHWANENBERG sailed in a half-decked sloop, the _Utrennaja Saria_, from the Yenisej to Europe. To what has been already said of this voyage, I may here add a few words more.
[Illustration: DAVID IVANOVITSCH SCHWANENBERG. Born in Courland in 1831. ]
During the inundation in the spring of 1877, which compelled the mate Nummelin to betake himself for eight days to the roof of the fragile dwelling in which he had passed the winter, the Yenisejsk-built vessel, the _Aurora_ (or _Sewernoe Sianie_) was lost. Schwanenberg, who soon afterwards came to the neighbourhood, succeeded in purchasing from an Englishman, Mr. SEEBOHM, another little vessel, which was also built at Yenisejsk by Mr. Boiling for the purpose of transporting thither the goods which I had carried in the _Ymer_ to Korepovskoj, a _simovie_ on the bank of the Yenisej in 71° 19' N.L. The goods however had been taken up the river by a steamer, on which account the vessel was sold by Boiling to Mr. Seebohm, who made an excursion in it to the lower courses of the Yenisej for ornithological researches. He named the vessel the _Ibis_. When Mr. Seebohm no longer required it, there was at first a proposal that it should be taken over by Captain Wiggins, who, as has been already stated, had the year before come to the Yenisej with a small steamer, which wintered at the islands in the river, and had now stranded during the breaking up of the ice. He wished to carry his men on the _Ibis_ either home or to the Ob, but the English seamen declared that they would not for all the world's honour and riches sail in that vessel. Schwanenberg had thus an opportunity of purchasing the vessel, whose name he altered to the _Utrennaja Saria_ (the _Dawn_), and to the surprise of all experienced seamen he actually made a successful passage to Norway. The vessel was then towed along the coast to Gothenburg, and through the Göta Canal to Stockholm, and finally crossed the Baltic to St. Petersburg.
