84. KAMCHATKA SABLES
As the sable had gradually led the Russian fur-hunters to Kamchatka, so the still more valuable sea-otter gave the chief impulse to the discovery of the Aleutic chain and the opposite continent of America. When Atlassow and his band arrived at Kamchatka by the end of the seventeenth century, they found the sea-otter abounding on its coasts; but the fur-hunters chased it so eagerly that, before the middle of the eighteenth century, they had entirely extirpated it in that country. On Bering’s second voyage of discovery (1741–42), it was again found in considerable numbers. Tschirigow is said to have brought back 900 skins, and on Bering’s Island 700 sea-otters—whose skins, according to present prices, would be worth about £20,000—were killed almost without trouble. These facts, of course, encouraged the merchants of Jakutsk and Irkutsk to undertake new expeditions.
Generally, several of them formed an association, which fitted out some hardly seaworthy vessel at Ochotsk, where also the captain and the crew, consisting of fur-hunters and other adventurers, were hired. The expenses of such an expedition amounted to the considerable sum of about 30,000 roubles, as pack-horses had to transport a great part of the necessary outfit all the distance from Jakutsk, and the vessel generally remained four or five years on the voyage. Passing through one of the Kurile Straits, these expeditions sailed at first along the east coast of Kamchatka, bartering sables and sea-otters for reindeer skins and other articles; and as the precious furs became more rare, ventured out farther into the Eastern Ocean. Thus Michael Nowodsikoff discovered the Western Aleuts in 1745; Paikoff the Fox Islands in 1759; Adrian Tolstych almost all the islands of the central group, which still bear his name, in 1760; Stephen Glottoff the island of Kadiak in 1763, and Krenitzin the peninsula of Aljaska in 1768. When we consider the scanty resources of these Russian navigators, the bad condition of their miserable barks, their own imperfect nautical knowledge, and the inhospitable nature of the seas which they traversed, we can not but admire their intrepidity.
In the Polar Sea there are neither sables nor otters, and thus the islands lying to the north of Siberia might have remained unknown till the present day, if the search after mammoth-teeth had not, in a similar manner, led to their discovery.
In March, 1770, while a merchant of the name of Lächow was busy collecting fossil ivory about Cape Sviatoinoss, he saw a large herd of deer coming over the ice from the north. Resolute and courageous, he at once resolved to follow their tracks, and after a sledge-journey of seventy versts, he came to an island, and twenty versts farther reached a second island, at which, owing to the roughness of the ice, his excursion terminated. He saw enough, however, of the richness of the two islands in mammoth-teeth, to show him that another visit would be a valuable speculation; and on making his report to the Russian Government, he obtained an exclusive privilege to dig for mammoth-bones on the islands which he had discovered, and to which his name had been given. In the summer of 1773 he consequently returned, and ascertained the existence of a third island, much larger than the others, mountainous, and having its coasts covered with drift-wood. He then went back to the first island, wintered there, and returned to Ustjansk in spring with a valuable cargo of mammoth-tusks.
There hardly exists a more remarkable article of commerce than these remains of an extinct animal. In North Siberia, along the Obi, the Jenissei, the Lena, and their tributaries, from lat. 58° to 70°, or along the shores of the Polar Ocean as far as the American side of Bering Strait, the remains of a species of elephant are found imbedded in the frozen soil, or become exposed, by the annual thawing and crumbling of the river-banks. Dozens of tusks are frequently found together, but the most astonishing deposit of mammoth-bones occurs in the Lächow Islands, where, in some localities, they are accumulated in such quantities as to form the chief substance of the soil. Year after year the tusk-hunters work every summer at the cliffs, without producing any sensible diminution of the stock. The solidly-frozen matrix in which the bones lie thaws to a certain extent annually, allowing the tusks to drop out or to be quarried. In 1821, 20,000 lbs. of the fossil ivory were procured from the island of New Siberia.
The ice in which the mammoth remains are imbedded sometimes preserves their entire bodies, in spite of the countless ages which must have elapsed since they walked on earth. In 1799 the carcass of a mammoth was discovered so fresh that the dogs ate the flesh for two summers. The skeleton is preserved at St. Petersburg, and specimens of the woolly hair—proving that the climate of Siberia, though then no doubt much milder than at present, still required the protection of a warm and shaggy coat—were presented to the chief museums of Europe.
The remains of a rhinoceros, very similar to the Indian species, are likewise found in great numbers along the shores, or on the steep and sandy river-banks of Northern Siberia, along with those of fossil species of the horse, the musk-ox, and the bison, which have now totally forsaken the Arctic wilds.
The Archipelago of New Siberia, situated to the north of the Lächow Islands, was discovered by Sirowatsky in 1806, and since then scientifically explored by Hedenström in 1808, and Anjou in 1823. These islands are remarkable no less for the numerous bones of horses, buffaloes, oxen, and sheep scattered over their desolate shores, than for the vast quantities of fossil-wood imbedded in their soil. The hills, which rise to a considerable altitude, consist of horizontal beds of sandstone, alternating with bituminous beams or trunks of trees. On ascending them, fossilized charcoal is everywhere met with, incrusted with an ash-colored matter, which is so hard that it can scarcely be scraped off with a knife. On the summit there is a long row of beams resembling the former, but fixed perpendicularly in the sandstone. The ends, which project from seven to ten inches, are for the most part broken, and the whole has the appearance of a ruinous dike. Thus a robust forest vegetation once flourished where now only hardy lichens can be seen; and many herbivorous animals feasted on grasses where now the reindeer finds but a scanty supply of moss, and the polar bear is the sole lord of the dreary waste.