here found a Yukaghir sleigh and a stone knife, pointing to a remote period, for the Yukaghirs have long used iron knives, which they procure from the Russians. Kotyelnîy Ostrov is a very large island, with an area estimated by Anjou at at 8,000, and by Hedenström at no less than 24,000 square miles. It is generally connected by a barrier of reefs and extensive sand-banks with the island of Faddeyev (Thaddæus), lying farther east, with an intervening channel 560 feet wide, through which the tides rush to and fro with great velocity. During stormy weather the connecting sand-bank is washed by the waves.
The most recently discovered, or rather rediscovered, land in these waters is the island known as New Siberia, a name frequently applied to the whole group of islands on the north coast between the mouths of the Lena and Indigirka. It was first sighted by the trader Sirovatsky in 1806, and was carefully explored in 1809–10 by Hedenström, Sannikov, and Kojevin. It was again visited in 1820–3 during the Wrangell expedition, and since then hunters have never ceased to pass the winter there in the huts built for the purpose by Sannikov. Like the neighbouring islands, New Siberia is tolerably rich in animal species, thanks to the bridge of ice by which it is yearly connected with the mainland.
