On the 29/18th July the ice on Matotschkin Schar broke up, and on the 13th/2nd August the sound was completely free of ice. An attempt was now made to continue the voyage across the Kara Sea, and an endeavour was made for this purpose to put the vessel, defective from the first, and now still further damaged by ice, in repair, by stopping the leaks, as far as possible, with a mixture of clay and decayed seaweed. "Floating coffins" have often been used in Arctic voyages, and many times with greater success than the stateliest man-of-war. This time, however, Rossmuislov, after having sailed some few miles eastward from Matotschkin Sound, in order to avoid certain loss, had to return to his winter quarters, where he fortunately fell in with a Russian hunter, with whom he commenced his return to Archangel. No precious metals were found, nor "any pearl-mussels," but Tschirakin confided to Rossmuislov the secret that at a certain place on the south coast he had found a block of stone of such extraordinary beauty that in the light of day it shone with the most splendid fire. After Tschirakin's death Rossmuislov sought for the stone, but without success, and he therefore broke out in violent reproaches of his deceased comrade. I can, however, free him from the blame of deception; for, during my voyage in 1875, I found in several of the blocks of schist in the region small veins of quartz, crossing the mass of stone. The walls of these veins were covered with hundreds of sharply-developed rock crystals with mirror-bright faces. Tschirakin's precious stone was doubtless nothing else than a druse of this shining but valueless mineral.
Once more, nearly fifty years after Rossmuislov's voyage, in the year 1807, a miner, LUDLOW, was sent out to investigate more thoroughly the supposed richness of the island in metals. He returned without having found any ore, but with the first accounts of the geological formation of the country; and we have his companion POSPJELOV to thank for some careful surveys on the west coast of Novaya Zemlya.
The next expedition to the island was equipped and sent out from the naval dockyard at Archangel in 1819 under Lieutenant LASAREV, and had, in comparison with its predecessors, very abundant resources. But Lasarev was clearly unfit for the task he had undertaken, of commanding an Arctic exploratory expedition. In the middle of summer many of his crew were attacked by scurvy. Some few weeks after his departure from Archangel, at a time when pools of excellent drinking-water are to be found on nearly every large piece of drift-ice, and rapid torrents of melted snow empty themselves everywhere along the coast into the sea, he complains of the difficulty of procuring fresh water, &c. The expedition accordingly was altogether fruitless.