When one travels up the river from Port Dickson, the broad sound between Sibiriakoff's Island and the mainland is first passed, but the island is so low that it is not visible from the eastern bank of the river and which is usually followed in sailing up or down the river. The mainland, on the other hand, is at first high-lying, and in sailing along the coast it is possible to distinguish various spurs of the range of hills, estimated to be from 150 to 200 metres high, in the interior. These are free of snow in summer. A little south of Port Dickson they run to the river bank, where they form a low rock and rocky island projecting into the river, named after some otherwise unknown Siberian Polar trapper, Yefremov Kamen.
Sibiriakoff's Island has never, so far as we know, been visited by man, not even during the time when numerous simovies were found at the mouth of the Yenesej. For no indication of this island is found in the older maps of Siberia, although these, as appears from the fac-simile reproduced at [page 192], give the names of a number of simovies at the mouth of the Yenisej, now abandoned. Nor is it mentioned in the accounts of the voyages of the great northern expeditions. The western strand of the island, the only one I have seen, completely bore the stamp of the tundra described below. Several reindeer were seen pasturing on the low grassy eminences of the island, giving promise of abundant sport to the hunter who first lands there.
Still at Yefremov Kamen we saw in 1875 three Polar bears who appeared to pasture in all peacefulness among the rocks, and did not allow themselves to be disturbed by the enormous log-fire of driftwood we lighted on the strand to make our coffee. Here were found for the last time during our journey up the river actual marine animals: Appendicularia, Olio, medusæ, large beroids, &c. Large bushy plants were still completely wanting, but the vegetable world already began to assume a stamp differing from the Arctic Ocean flora proper. A short distance south of Yefremov Kamen begins the veritable tundra, a woodless plain, interrupted by no mountain heights, with small lakes scattered over it, and narrow valleys crossing it, which often make an excursion on the apparently level plain exceedingly tiresome.
As is the case with all the other Siberian rivers running from south to north,[210] the western strand of the Yenisej, wherever it is formed of loose, earthy layers, is also quite low and often marshy, while on the other hand the eastern strand consists of a steep bank, ten to twenty metres high, which north of the limit of trees is distributed in a very remarkable way into pyramidal pointed mounds. Numerous shells of crustacea found here, belonging to species which still live in the Polar Sea, show that at least the upper earthy layer of the tundra was deposited in a sea resembling that which now washes the north coast of Siberia.[211]
The tundra itself is in summer completely free of snow, but at a limited depth from the surface the ground is continually frozen. At some places the earthy strata alternate with strata of pure, clear ice. It is in these frozen strata that complete carcases of elephants and rhinoceroses have been found, which have been protected from putrefaction for hundreds of thousands of years. Such finds, however, are uncommon, but on the other hand single bones from this primeval animal world occur
in rich, abundance, and along with them masses of old driftwood, originating from the Mammoth period, known by the Russian natives of Siberia under the distinctive name of "Noah's wood." Besides there are to be seen in the most recent layer of the Yenesej tundra, considerably north of the present limit of actual trees, large tree-stems with their roots fast in the soil, which show that the limit of trees in the Yenesej region, even during our geological period, went further north than now, perhaps as far as, in consequence of favourable local circumstances, it now goes on the Lena.