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of the coast off the mouth of the Lena and Indigirka, was de- 
spatched up the latter stream in 1846, in command of a small 
iron steam cutter. He writes the following account to a friend 
in Germany * : — 
‘‘In 1846 there was unusually warm weather in the north of 
Siberia. Already in May unusual rains poured over the moors 
and bogs, storms shook the earth, and the streams carried not 
only ice to the sea, but also large tracts of land thawed by the 
masses of warm water fed by the southern rains. . . . We 
steamed on the first favourable day up the Indigirka ; but there 
were no thoughts of land, we saw around us only a sea of dirty 
brown water, and knew the river only by the rushing and roaring 
of the stream. The river rolled against us trees, moss, and large 
masses of peat, so that it was only with great trouble and 
danger that we could proceed. At the end of the second day, 
we were only about forty worsts up the stream ; some one had 
to stand with the sounding rod in hand continually, and the 
boat received so many shocks that it shuddered to the keel. A 
wooden vessel would have been smashed. Around us we saw 
nothing but the flooded land. For eight days we met with the 
like hindrances until at last we reached the place where our Jakuti 
were to have met us. Further up was a place called Ujandina, 
whence the people were to have come to us, but they were not 
there, prevented evidently by the floods. As we had been here 
in former years, we knew the place. But how it had changed ! 
The Indigirka, here about three wersts wide, had torn up the 
land and worn itself a fresh channel, and when the waters sank 
we saw, to our astonishment, that the old river bed had become 
merely that of an insignificant stream. This allowed me to cut 
through the soft earth, and we went reconnoitring up the new 
stream, which had worn its way westwards. Afterwards we 
landed on the new shore, and surveyed the undermining and 
destructive operation of the wild waters, that carried away, with 
extraordinary rapidity, masses of soft peat and loam. It 
was then that we made a wonderful discovery. The land on 
which we were treading was moorland, covered thickly with 
young plants. Many lovely flowers rejoiced the eye in the 
W'arm beams of the sun, that shone for twenty-two out of the 
twenty-four hours. The stream rolled over, and tore up the 
soft wet ground like chaff, so that it was dangerous to go near 
the brink. While we were all quiet, we suddenly heard under 
our feet a sudden gurgling and stirring, which betrayed the 
working of the disturbed water. Suddenly our jager, ever on the 
look-out, called loudly, and pointed to a singular and unshapely 
* Dr. A. von Middendorff’s Siberiscke Reise. Band iv. Tkeil ii. Erste 
Lieferung: Die Thierwelt Siberiens, p. 1082. St. Petersburgb. 4to. 1867. 
