taining tusks of ivory in
quantities so great as to suggest the burying-places of antiquity. From
Olaf Jansen's account, they have come from the great prolific animal
life that abounds in the fields and forests and on the banks of numerous
rivers of the Inner World. The materials were caught in the ocean
currents, or were carried on ice-floes, and have accumulated like
driftwood on the Siberian coast. This has been going on for ages, and
hence these mysterious bone-yards.

On this subject William F. Warren, in his book already cited, pages 297
and 298, says: "The Arctic rocks tell of a lost Atlantis more wonderful
than Plato's. The fossil ivory beds of Siberia excel everything of
the kind in the world. From the days of Pliny, at least, they have
constantly been undergoing exploitation, and still they are the chief
headquarters of supply. The remains of mammoths are so abundant that, as
Gratacap says, 'the northern islands of Siberia seem built up of crowded
bones.' Another scientific writer, speaking of the islands of New
Siberia, northward of the mouth of the River Lena, uses this language:
'Large quantities of ivory are dug out of the ground every year. Indeed,
some of the islands are believed to be nothing but an accumulation of
drift-timber and the bodies of mammoths and other antediluvian animals
frozen together.' From this we may infer that, during the years that
have elapsed since the Russian conquest of Siberia, useful tusks from
more than twenty thousand mammoths have been collected."

But now for the story of Olaf Jansen. I give it in detail, as set down
by himself in manuscript, and woven into the tale, just as he placed
them, are certain quotations from recent works on Arctic exploration,
showing how carefully the old Norseman compared with his own experiences
those of other voyagers to the frozen North. Thus wrote the disciple of
Odin and Thor:

PART TWO. OLAF JANSEN'S STORY

MY name is Olaf Jansen. I am a Norwegian, although I was born in the
little seafaring Russian town of Uleaborg, on the eastern coast of the
Gulf of Bothnia, the northern arm of the Baltic Sea.

My parents were on a fishing cruise in the Gulf of Bothnia, and put
into this Russian town of Uleaborg at the time of my birth, being the
twenty-seventh day of October, 1811.

My father, Jens Jansen, was born at Rodwig on the Scandinavian coast,
near the Lofoden Islands, but after marrying made his home at Stockholm,
because my mo