203 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



Stephen Glottoff the island of Kadiak in 1763, and Krenitzin the peninsula of 

 Aljaska in 1768. When we consider the scanty resources of these Russian 

 navigators, the bad condition of their miserable barks, their own imperfect nau- 

 tical knowledge, and the inhospitable nature of the seas which they traversed, 

 we can not but admire their intrepidity. 



In the Polar Sea there are neither sables nor otters, and thus the islands ly- 

 ing to the north of Siberia might have remained unknown till the present day, 

 if the search after mammoth-teeth had not, in a similar manner, led to their dis- 

 covery. 



In March, 1770, while a merchant of the name of Lachow was busy collect- 

 ing fossil ivory about Cape Sviatoinoss, he saw a large herd of deer coming over 

 the ice from the north. Resolute and courageous, he at once resolved to follow 

 their tracks, and after a sledge-journey of seventy versts, he came to an island, 

 and twenty versts farther reached a second island, at which, owing to the rough- 

 ness of the ice, his excursion terminated. He saw enough, however, of the rich- 

 ness of the two islands in mammoth-teeth, to show him that another visit would 

 be a valuable speculation ; and on making his report to the Russian Govern- 

 ment, he obtained an exclusive privilege to dig for mammoth-bones on the isl- 

 ands which he had discovered, and to which his name had been given. In the 

 summer of 1773 he consequently returned, and ascertained the existence of a 

 third island, much larger than the others, mountainous, and having its coasts 

 covered with drift-wood. He then went back to the first island, wintered there, 

 and returned to XTstjansk in spring with a valuable cargo of mammoth-tusks. 



There hardly exists a more remarkable article of commerce than these re- 

 mains of an extinct animal. In North Siberia, along the Obi, the Jenissei, the 

 Lena, and their tributaries, from lat. 58° to 70°, or along the shores of the Polar 

 Ocean as far as the American side of Bering Strait, the remains of a species of 

 elephant are found imbedded in the frozen soil, or become exposed, by the an- 

 nual thawing and crumbling of the river-banks. Dozens of tusks are frequently 

 found together, but the most astonishing deposit of mammoth-bones occurs in 

 the Lachow Islands, where, in some localities, they are accumulated in such 

 quantities as to form the chief substance of the soil. Year after year the tusk- 

 hunters work every summer at the cliffs, without producing any sensible dim- 

 inution of the stock. The solidly-frozen matrix in which the bones lie thaws 

 to a certain extent annually, allowing the tusks to drop out or to be quarried. 

 In 1621, 20,000 lbs. of the fossil ivory were procured from the island of New 

 Siberia. 



The ice in which the mammoth remains are imbedded sometimes preserves 

 their entire bodies, in spite of the countless ages which must have elapsed since 

 they walked on earth. In 1799 the carcass of a mammoth was discovered so 

 fresh that the dogs ate the flesh for two summers. The skeleton is preserved 

 at St. Petersburg, and specimens of the woolly hair — proving that the climate 

 of Siberia, though then no doubt much milder than at present, still required 

 the protection of a warm and shaggy coat— were presented to the chief muse- 

 ums of Europe. 



The remains of a rhinoceros, very similar to the Indian species, are likewise 



