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 to supply them with fuel, they had found amongst the wrecks of vessels some cordage, and a small quantity of oakum, (a kind of hemp used for calking ships) which served them to make wicks for their lamp. When these stores began to fail, their shirts and their drawers (which are worn by almost all Russian peasants) were employed to make good the deficiency. By these means they kept their lamp burning without intermission, from the day they first made it (a work they set about soon after their arrival on the island) until that of their embarkation for their native country.

The necessity of converting the most essential parts of their clothing, such as their shirts and drawers to the use above specified, exposed them the more to the rigour of the climate. They also found themselves in want of shoes, boots, and other articles of dress ; and, as winter was approaching, they were again obliged to have recourse to that ingenuity which necessity suggests, and which seldom fails in the trying hour of distress.

They had skins of rein deer and