Note 7 — Chapter XXIV · THE LENA.

It has been suggested that the abundant supplies of ivory which were at the command of the ancient Greek sculptors came by way of the Black Sea from the Siberian deposits. So far back as the time of Captain Billings, Martin Sauer, his secretary, tells us of one of the Arctic islands near the Siberian mainland, that “it is a mixture of sand and ice, so that when the thaw sets in and its banks begin to fall, many mammoth bones are found, and that all the isle is formed of the bones, of this extraordinary animal.” This account is to some extent corroborated by Figuier, who tells us that New Siberia and the Isle of Liakov are for the most part only an agglomeration of sand, ice, and elephants’ teeth; and at every tempest the sea casts ashore new quantities of mammoths’ tusks. Réclus speaks of an annual find of 15 tons of mammoth ivory, representing about 200 mammoths; and, about 1840, Middendorf estimated the number of mammoths discovered up to that time at 20,000.