108 THE LENA DELTA 



white than those on the continent. A sandbank on 

 the western side was most productive of all, and the 

 fur-hunters maintain that when the sea recedes after a 

 long continuance of easterly winds, a fresh supply of 

 mammoth bones is always found to have been washed 

 from this bank, proceeding apparently from some vast 

 store at the bottom of the sea." Besides these multi- 

 tudinous remains of the mammoth Hedenstrom found 

 numerous remains of rhinoceros, the horn of which 

 was then thought to be a bird's claw three feet long. 



To clear up the wide discrepancies in the maps the 

 Emperor Alexander, in 1820, equipped two expeditions 

 to proceed by land to the northern coast of Siberia 

 and properly survey it, the work to be carried as far 

 east as Cape Chelagskoi, whence a sledge party was to 

 start for the north in search of the inhabited country re- 

 ported to exist in the Polar Sea in that direction. One 

 of these expeditions, under Lieutenant P. F. Anjou, 

 was to commence its operations from the mouth of 

 the Yana ; the other, under Lieutenant Ferdinand 

 Vrangel' (or, as he is generally known amongst us, 

 Wrangell or Von Wrangell), was to start from the 

 mouth of the Kolyma, his chief assistant being Mid- 

 shipman Matiuschkin. Both parties did good survey 

 work, but neither made any striking discovery. Anjou 

 reached 76 36' to the north of Kotelnoi ; Wrangell 

 reached 72 2' (north-east of the Bear Islands, one 

 hundred and seventy-four miles out on the sea from 

 the great Baranoff rock), beyond which progress was 

 impossible owing to the thinness of the ice, which was 

 covered with salt water. 



Wrangell had many perilous experiences. In his 



