eet, which on the 28th September
bound together the ground-ices and hindered our progress, increased
daily in strength under the influence of severer and severer cold
until it was melted by the summer heat of the following year. Long
after we were beset, however, there was still open water on the
coast four or five kilometres from our winter haven, and after our
return home I was informed that, on the day on which we were frozen
in, an American whaler was anchored at that place.

Whether our sailing along the north coast of Asia to Kolyutschin Bay
was a fortunate accident or not, the future will show. I for my part
believe that it was a fortunate accident, which will often happen.
Certain it is, in any case, that when we had come so far as to this
point, our being frozen in was a quite accidental misfortune brought
about by an unusual state of the ice in the autumn of 1878 in the
North Behring Sea.

[Footnote 214: Further information on this point is given by A.J.
Malmgren in a paper on the occurrence and extent of mammoth-finds,
and on the conditions of this animal's existence in former times
(_Finska Vet.-Soc. Foerhandl_ 1874-5). ]

[Footnote 215: Compare Ph. Avril, _Voyage en divers etats d'Europe
et d'Asie entrepris pour decouvrir un nouveau chemin a la Chine_,
etc., Paris, 1692, p. 209. Henry H. Howorth, "The Mammoth in
Siberia" (_Geolog. Mag._ 1880, p. 408). ]

[Footnote 216: As will be stated in detail further on, there were
found during the _Vega_ expedition very remarkable sub-fossil animal
remains, not of the mammoth, however, but of various different
species of the whale. ]

[Footnote 217: The word _mummies_ is used by Von Middendorff to
designate carcases of ancient animals found in the frozen soil of
Siberia. ]

[Footnote 218: The calculation is probably rather too low than too
high. The steamer alone, in which I travelled up the Yenisej in
1875, carried over a hundred tusks, of which however the most were
blackened, and many were so decayed that I cannot comprehend how the
great expense of transport from the _tundra_ of the Yenisej could be
covered by the value of this article. According to the statement of
the ivory dealers the whole parcel, good and bad together, was paid
for at a common average price. ]

[Footnote 219: Notices of yet other _finds_ of mammoth carcases
occur, according to Middendorff (_Sib. Reise_, IV. i. p. 274) in the
scarce and to me inaccessible first edition of Witsen's _