The logs were as it were
gnawed with teeth (hewed with stone axes), and bound together with
thongs[331]. Its position and construction indicated that the house
had been built for defence, it had thus been found impossible in the
desolate legions of the Polar Sea to avoid the discord and the
strife which prevail in more southerly lands. To the east and
north-east Andrejev thought he saw a distant land, he is also
clearly the true European discoverer of Wrangel Land, provided we do
not consider that even he had a predecessor in the Cossack, FEODOR
TATARINOV, who according to the concluding words of Andrejev's
journal appears to have previously visited the same islands. It is
highly desirable that this journal, if still in existence, be
published _in a completely unaltered form_. How important this is
appears from the following paragraph in the instructions given to
Billings--"One Sergeant Andrejev saw from the last of the Bear
Islands a large island to which they (Andrejev and his companions)
travelled in dog-sledges. But they turned when they had gone twenty
versts from the coast, because they saw fresh traces of a large
number of men, who had travelled in sledges drawn by reindeer."[332]

In order to visit the large land in the north-east seen by Andrejev,
there was sent out in the years 1769, 1770, and 1771 another
expedition, consisting of the three surveyors, LEONTIEV, LUSSOV, and
PUSCHKAREV, with dog-sledges over the ice to the north-east, but
they succeeded neither in reaching the land in question, nor even
ascertaining with certainty whether it actually existed or not. Among
the natives, however, the belief in it was maintained very
persistently, and they even knew how to give names to the tribes
inhabiting it.

The New Siberian Islands, which previously had often been seen by
travellers along the coast, were visited the first time in 1770 by
LJACHOFF, who besides Ljachoff's island lying nearest the coast,
also discovered the islands Maloj and Kotelnoj. On this account he
obtained an exclusive right to collect mammoth tusks there, a branch
of industry which since that time appears to have been earned on in
these remote regions with no inconsiderable profit. The importance
of the discovery led the government some years after to send thither
a land surveyor, CHVOINOV,[333] by whom the islands were surveyed,
and some further information obtained regarding the remarkable
natural conditions in that region. According