are spots, and _oukhabas_, and our motion was as varied as
a politician's career. Sometimes it was up, then down, then sidewise,
and then all ways at once. We pitched and rolled like a canoe
descending the Lachine rapids, or a whale-boat towed by a
hundred-barrel "bow-head." In many places the snow was blown from the
regular road, and the winter track wound through fields and forests
wherever snow could be found. There was an abundance of rocks, stumps,
and other inequalities to relieve the monotony of this mode of travel.
We went much out of our way to find snow, and I think we sometimes
increased, by a third or a half, the distance between stations. The
road was both horizontally and vertically tortuous.

My companion took every occurrence with the utmost coolness, and
taught me some things in patience I had not known before. He was long
accustomed to Siberian travel, having made several scientific journeys
through Northern Asia. In 1859 the Russian Geographical Society sent
him to visit the Amoor valley and explore the island of Sakhalin. His
journey thither was accomplished in winter, and when he returned he
brought many valuable data touching the geology and the vegetable and
animal life of the island. He told me he spoke the American language,
having learned it among my countrymen at Nicolayevsk, but had never
studied English. His journey to the Arctic Circle was made on behalf
of the Russian Academy of Science, of which he was an active member.

In 1865 the captain of a Yenesei steamer learned that some natives had
discovered the perfectly preserved remains of a mammoth in latitude
67 deg., about a hundred versts west of the river. He announced the fact
to a _savant_, who sent the intelligence to St. Petersburg. Scientific
men deemed the discovery so important that they immediately
commissioned Dr. Schmidt to follow it up. The doctor went to Eastern
Siberia in February, and in the following month proceeded down the
Yenesei to Turuhansk, where he remained four or five weeks waiting for
the season of warmth and light. He was accompanied by Mr. Lopatin, a
Russian geologist, and a staff of three or four assistants. They
carried a photographic apparatus, and one of the sensations of their
voyage was to take photographs at midnight in the light of a blazing
sun.

When the Yenesei was free of ice the explorers, in a barge, descended
from Turuhansk to the landing place nearest the mammoth deposit.
Several Cossacks acc