Peter Parley's Wonders of the Earth, Sea, and Sky

Excerpt: 'In the year 1799, a Tungusian fisherman observed a strange shapeless mass projecting from an ice-bank, near the mouth of a river in the north of Siberia, the nature of which he did not understand, and which was so high in the bank « 36 » as to be beyond his reach. He next year observed the same object, which was then rather more disengaged from among the ice; but was still unable to conc...