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PLATE 16: WE ENCOUNTER A TEAM OF RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS WHO CLAIM TO HAVE UNEARTHED A MAMMOTH.
Despite the cold, we are in fine spirits. We have been snowed on, blown about by the wind, attacked by ice, suffered through Arctic hysteria - but we have crossed the highest of the mountain ranges and will soon be descending into the sheltered lowlands that lie within the circular river. I can feel the first real tinglings of spring; the air has a slight wetness to it that I have not felt in months, and there is much game abroad. Being on the march again seems to have brought a complete 360 in our personal relations. Bindon and Westcott are becoming inseparable, and I have shed much of my prejudice towards Balog.
This afternoon we encounter a team of five Russians engaged in excavating a mammoth a hundred miles to the north near a tributary of the Indigirka; they have taken a side trip down here in search of further specimens. Our interest aroused, they produce a sample for us, the tail of a great beast excavated near Tomsk several years earlier. After the obligatory exchange of jocularities and sloukas, Balog presses us to move on, but it is no use; Bindon and Westcott, lured by the promise of more vodka, have already agreed to spend the night at the Russian’s camp, located in a gorge several miles hence. This will be the first “civilized” company we have had in eight months! Balog sulks in the background, maintaining a very uncharacteristic silence.