THE MAMMOTH 
205 
“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 versts 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 there in former years, we knew the place. 
But how it had changed ! The Indigirka, here about three versts 
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 recon- 
noitring up the new stream, which had worn its way westwards. 
Afterwards we landed on the new shore, and surveyed the under- 
mining 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 warm 
beams of the sun, that shone for twenty-two out of the twenty-four 
