412 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
on earth does the temperature show extremes so widely sepa¬ 
rated as here. Although the trees in winter often split with 
tremendous noise, and the ground is rent with the cold, the 
wood is luxuriant and extends to the neighbourhood of the Polar 
Sea, where besides, the winter is much milder than farther in 
the interior. With respect to the possibility of these large 
animals finding sufficient pasture in the regions in question, it 
ought not to be overlooked that in sheltered places overflowed 
by the spring inundations there are found, still far north of the 
limit of trees, luxuriant bushy thickets, whose newly-expanded 
juicy leaves, burned up by no tropical sun, perhaps form a 
special luxury for grass-eating animals, and that emn the hleahest 
stretches of land in the high north are fertile in comparison with 
many regions lohere at least the camel can find nourishment, for 
instance the east coast of the Bed Sea. 
The nearer we come to the coast of the Polar Sea, the more 
common are the remains of the mammoth, especially at places 
where there have been great landslips at the river hanks when 
the ice breaks up in spring. Nowhere, however, are they found 
in such numbers as on the New Siberian Islands. Here Heden- 
strom in the space of a verst saw ten tusks sticking out of the 
ground, and from a single sandbank on the west side of Liach- 
off’s Island the ivory collectors had, when this traveller visited 
the spot, for eighty years made their best tusk harvest. That 
new finds may be made there year by year depends on the bones 
and tusks being washed by the waves out of the sandbeds on 
the shore, so that after an east wind which has lasted some time 
they may be collected at low water on the banks then laid 
dry. The tusks which are found on the coast of the Polar 
Sea are said to be smaller than those that are found farther 
south, a circumstance which possibly may be explained by 
supposing that, while the mammoth wandered about on the 
plains of Siberia, animals of different ages pastured in com¬ 
pany, and that the younger of them, as being more agile and 
