356 THE TKUTH ABOUT THE MAMMOTH. 



the Deluge; but usually they figured as the bones of giants, the most 

 famous of them being known as Teutobochus, king of the Cimbri, a 

 lusty warrior said to have had a height of 19 feet. Somewhat smaller, 

 but still of respectable height, li feet, was '^Littell Johne," of Scot- 

 land, whereof Hector Boece wrote, concluding in a moralizing tone, 

 "Be quilk (which) it appears how extravegant and squaire pepill grew 

 in oure regioun afore they were effeminat with lust and intemperance 

 of mouth." More than this, these bones have been venerated in 

 Greece and Rome as the remains of pagan heroes, and later on wor- 

 shiped as relics of Christian saints. Did not the church of Valencia 

 possess an elephant tooth which did dut}^ as that of St. Christopher, 

 and, so late as 1789, was not a thigh bone, figuring as the arm bone of 

 a saint, carried in procession through the streets in order to bring 

 rain ? 



Out of Europe eastward into Asia the mammoth took his way, and 

 having peopled that vast region, took advantage of a land connection 

 then existing between Asia and North America and walked over into 

 Alaska, in company with the forerunners of the bison and the ancestors 

 of the mountain sheep and Alaskan brown bear. Still eastward and 

 southward he went, until he came to the Atlantic coast, the latitude of 

 southern New York roughly marking the southern boundary of the 

 broad domain over which the mammoth roamed undisturbed.^ Not 

 that of necessit}^ all this vast area was occupied at one time, but this 

 was the range of the mammoth during Pleistocene time, for over all 

 this region his bones and teeth are found in greater or less abundance 

 and in varying conditions of preservation. In regions like parts of 

 Siberia and Alaska, where the bones are entombed in a wet and cold, 

 often icy soil, the bones and tusks are almost as perfectly preserved 

 as though they had been deposited but a score of years ago, while 

 remains so situated that they have been subjected to varying condi- 

 tions of dryness and moisture are always in a fragmentary state. As 

 previously noted, several more or less entire carcasses of the mam- 

 moth have been discovered in Siberia, only to be lost; and while no 

 entire animal has so far been found in Alaska, some da}' one may yet 

 come to light. That there is some possibility of this is shown by 

 the discovery, recorded by Mr. Dall, of the partial skeleton of a 

 mammoth in the bank of the Yukon with some of the fat still present, 

 and although this had been partially converted into adipocere, it was 

 fresh enough to be used by the natives for greasing, not their boots, 

 but their boats. And up to the present time this is the nearest 



^This must be taken as a very general statement, as the distinction between and 

 habitats of ElepMsprimi genius and Elephas colnmbi, the southern mammoth, are not 

 satisfactorily determined; moreover, the two species overlap through a wide area of 

 the West and Northwest. 



