The year following (1649) Staduchin sailed again, for seven days, eastward from the Kolyma to the neighbourhood of Chutskojnos, in an open sea, so far as we can gather from the defective account. Deschnev's own opinion of the possibility of navigating this sea may be seen from the fact, that, after his own vessel was lost, he had timber collected at the Anadir for the purpose of building new ones. With these he intended to send to Yakoutsk the tribute of furs which he had received from the natives. He was, however, obliged to desist from his project by an easily understood want of materials for the building of the new vessels; he remarks also in connection with this that the sea round Chutskojnos is not free of ice every year.
A number of voyages from the Siberian rivers northward, were also made after the founding of Nischni Kolymsk, by Michael Staduchin in 1644 in consequence of the reports which were current among the natives at the coast, of the existence of large inhabited islands, rich in walrus tusks and mammoth bones, in the Siberian Polar Sea. Often disputed, but persistently taken up by the hunting races, these reports have finally been verified by the discovery of the islands of New Siberia, of Wrangel's Land, and of the part of North America east of Behring's Straits, whose natural state gave occasion to the golden glamour of tradition with which the belief of the common people incorrectly adorned the bleak, treeless islands in the Polar Sea.
All these attempts to force a passage in the open sea from the Siberian coasts northwards, failed, for the single reason, that an open sea with a fresh breeze was as destructive to the craft which were at the disposal of the adventurous, but ill-equipped Siberian polar explorer as an ice-filled sea; indeed, more dangerous, for in the latter case the crew, if the vessel was nipped, generally saved themselves on the ice, and had only to contend with hunger, snow, cold, and other difficulties to which the most of them had been accustomed from their childhood; but in the open sea the ill-built, weak vessel, caulked with moss mixed with clay, and held together with willows, leaked already with a moderate sea, and with a heavier, was helplessly lost, if a harbour could not be reached in time of need.