THE NATIONS OF THE COAST 115 



places these strata of ice that never melts have been 

 found to be three hundred feet thick ice that has 

 remained in block since the mammoths got into cold 

 storage in it ages ago, for otherwise they would not 

 have lasted intact in skin and flesh as many have done, 

 like the very first discovered in a complete state, that 

 chipped out by Adams in 1807. 



In such a climate, whose winter terrors are only too 

 prominent, all along the north of Siberia live the 

 ancient peoples driven towards the sea by those 

 mighty movements from the land of the Turk and 

 Mongol which, north and south, east and west, 

 flooded Europe and Asia with invaders Ostiaks and 

 Samoyeds west of Chelyuskin ; Yakuts, Chukches, 

 and others to the east of it, the descriptions of whose 

 unpleasant manners and customs appear to be written 

 with a view to showing how curiously local are the 

 laws of health. One may well ask, as Wrangell did, 

 why they should remain in so dreary a region and 

 take life so contentedly. And the answer may be 

 that they might go further north and fare worse, as 

 their predecessors in the eastern section would seem 

 to have done. Once, according to the legend, there 

 were more hearths of the Omoki on the shores of the 

 Kolyma than there are stars in the clear sky, and these 

 Omoki, or some other departed race, appear to have 

 left as their traces the remains of the timber forts and 

 the tumuli that are found on the coast, especially near 

 the Indiyirka, and the huts of earth and stones and 

 bones found all along from Chelagskoi to the straits, 

 similar remains of a departed people now existing in 

 the Parry Islands, over a thousand miles away. 



