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 _Noord en Oost Tartarye_ (1692, Vol. II. p. 473). ] [Footnote 220: E. Yssbrants Ides, _Dreyjarige Reise nach China_, etc., Frankfort, 1707, p. 55. The first edition was published in Amsterdam, in Dutch, in 1704. ] [Footnote 221: Strahlenberg in _Das Nord- und Ostliche Theil von Europa und Asia_, Stockholm, 1730, p. 393, also gives a large number of statements regarding the fossil Siberian ivory, and mentions that the distinguished Siberian traveller Messerschmidt found a complete skeleton on the river Tom. ] [Footnote 222: Tilesius, _De skeleto mammonteo Sibirico (Mem. de l'Acad. de St. Petersbourg, T.V. pour l'annee 1812_, p. 409). Middendorff, _Sib. Reise_, IV. i. p. 274. Von Olfers, _Die Ueberreste vorweltlicher Riesenthiere in Beziehung zu Ostasia-tischen Sagen und Chinesischen Schriften (Abhandl. der Akad. d. Wissensch. zu Berlin aus dem Jahre 1839_, p 51). ]