340 Mr. Ranking on the Remains of Elephants 



quarters, that he was accompanied by numbers of those 

 animals. 



The Tohol. Between the sources of the Ischim and the 

 Tobol, Oguz, the Caesar of the East, resided. Many ruins 

 and stone sculptures are existing in those deserts. This great 

 conqueror subdued Cathay, and the countries called India 

 extra Gangem, about eight centuries before Christ. Wars 

 against China were frequent in those ages ; and, in the note 

 on the Amoor, we have seen that the Emperor of China was 

 an ally of the Scythians against the Persians, and fought upon 

 an elephant. — (Wars and Sports, ch. iii. and v.) 



The Ohy. The Tobol flows into the Oby at Tobolsk, and 

 the Irtish joins the Oby in lat. 61°. The Oby reaches the 

 Arctic Sea in lat. 66°. 



A.D. 1242, Sheibani, grandson of Genghis Khan, founded 

 Genghidin, on the west side of Tobolsk; and the capital was, 

 after some years, established at Siber, eastward of Tobolsk. 

 Siber was the capital of western Siberia, till that immense 

 region was discovered by the Russians, long after the death of 

 Columbus ; and Siber was conquered, and the Mogul power 

 abolished, in the year 1586. All India beyond the Ganges 

 was conquered by Kublai, cousin of Sheibani, in 1272. Re- 

 mains of elephants have been found in many places in this 

 neighbourhood — some of them very little decayed. 



Although some of the rivers above named may not be of a 

 depth or description to admit of the dead body of an elephant 

 being conveyed to the ocean, it must nevertheless be considered 

 that many of the rivers enumerated are every year much swollen 

 by the melting of the snow, and that heavy weights may float 

 to their mouths upon the ice which breaks up in the spring =*. 

 We must take into consideration the number of elephants that 

 may have been lost on the Japanese expedition, and the cer- 



♦ The reader may judge of the commotions in the elements in these 

 regions, by the fact of whales (one of them eighty-four feet long), described 

 also by scientific writers as mammothSy being found above eight hundred 

 miles inland from the Arctic Sea. — Strahlenberg, p. 404. 



