126 THE LENA DELTA 



which the last page was but a chronicle of death after 

 death. 



This chapter must conclude with another tragedy. 

 In 1885 Dr. Bunge and Baron Toll made some im- 

 portant investigations in the neighbourhood of the 

 mouth of the Yana ; and next year Bunge among the 

 fossils of Liakhoff Island found not only mammoth 

 and rhinoceros, but horse, musk-ox and deer, and two 

 new species of ox. To these Toll, after discovering 

 that there were flourishing trees on Kotelnoi in the 

 time of the mammoth nearly two hundred miles 

 north of their present limit added frozen carcases 

 of musk-ox and rhinoceros, and bones of antelope 

 and tiger. 



In 1902 Toll, pushing his geological researches 

 further north, reached Bennett Island, where he 

 collected bones of the mammoth and other recent 

 mammals, while the main mass of the plateau he 

 identified as of Cambrian age. These discoveries he 

 included in the record announcing his intention of 

 leaving for Kotelnoi, which was found in 1904 by the 

 expedition sent to his relief, for he was never seen 

 alive again. 



