stone-masses. Between these there are
extensive plains, which, according to a statement by the land surveyor
CHVOINOFF, who by order of the Czar visited the island in 1775, are
formed of ice and sand, in which lie imbedded enormous masses of the
bones and tusks of the mammoth, mixed with the horns and skulls of some
kind of ox and with rhinoceros' horns. Bones of the whale and walrus are
not mentioned as occurring there, but "long small screw-formed bones,"
by which are probably meant the tusks of the narwhal.[233]

All was now clear of snow, with the exception of a few of the deeper
clefts between the mountains. No traces of glaciers were visible,
not even such small collections of ice as are to be found everywhere
on Spitzbergen where the land rises a few hundred feet above the
surface of the sea. Nor, to judge by the appearance of the hills,
have there been any glaciers in former times, and this is certainly
the case on the mainland. The northernmost part of Asia in that case
has never been covered by such an ice-sheet as is assumed by the
supporters of a general ice age embracing the whole globe.

The large island right opposite to Svjatoinos was discovered in 1770
by LJACHOFF, whose name the island now bears. In 1788 Billings'
private secretary, MARTIN SAUER, met with Ljachoff at Yakutsk, but
he was then old and infirm, on which account, when Sauer requested
information regarding the islands in the Polar Sea, he referred him
to one of his companions, ZAITAI PROTODIAKONOFF. He informed him
that the discovery was occasioned by an enormous herd of reindeer
which Ljachoff, in the month of April 1770, saw going from
Svjatoinos towards the south, and whose track came over the ice from
the north. On the correct supposition that the reindeer came from
some land lying to the north, Ljachoff followed the track in a
dog-sledge, and thus discovered the two most southerly of the New
Siberian Islands, a discovery which was rewarded by the Czarina
Catherine II. with the exclusive right to hunt and collect ivory on
them.[234]

[Illustration: LJACHOFF'S ISLAND. After a drawing by O. Nordquist. ]

Ljachoff states the breadth of the sound between the mainland and
the nearest large island at 70 versts or 40'. On Wrangel's map again
the breadth is not quite 30'. On the mainland side it is bounded by
a rocky headland projecting far into the sea, which often formed the
turning point in attempts to penetrate eastwards from the mouth