Note 3 — Chapter II · Preparations and Equipment

As it might be of the utmost importance in several contingencies to have good sledge-dogs, I applied to my friend, Baron Edward von Toll, of St. Petersburg, and asked him whether it was possible to procure serviceable animals from Siberia.3 With great courtesy Von Toll replied that he thought he himself could arrange this for me, as he was just on the point of undertaking his second scientific expedition to Siberia and the New Siberian Islands. He proposed to send the dogs to Khabarova, on Yugor Strait. On his journey through Tiumen in January, 1893, by the help of an English merchant named Wardroper, who resided there, he engaged Alexander Ivanovitch Trontheim to undertake the purchase of thirty Ostiak dogs and their conveyance to Yugor Strait. But Von Toll was not content with this. Mr. Nikolai Kelch having offered to bear the expense, my friend procured the East Siberian dogs, which are acknowledged to be better draught dogs than those of West Siberia (Ostiak dogs), and Johan Torgersen, a Norwegian, undertook to deliver them at the mouth of the Olenek, where it was arranged that we should touch.