THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MAMMOTH. 357 



approach to iinding- a live mammoth in Alaska; and a small piece of 

 fat, obtained by Mr. Dall, is the nearest the United States National 

 Museum has come to securing a stuffed mammoth. 



As to why the mammoth became extinct, we himo absolutely 

 nothing-, although various theories, some much more ingenious than 

 plausible, have been advanced to account for their extermination — they 

 perished of starvation; they were overtaken by floods on their sup- 

 posed migrations and drowned in detachments; they fell through the 

 ice, equall}^ in detachments, and were swept out to sea. But all we 

 can safely say is that long ages ago the last one perished off the face 

 of the earth. Strange it is, too, that these mighty beasts, whose bulk 

 was ample to protect them against four-footed foes and whose woolly 

 coat was proof against the cold, should have utterly vanished. They 

 ranged from England eastward to New York, almost around the world; 

 from the Alps to the Arctic Ocean; and in such numbers that to-day 

 their tusks are articles of commerce, and fossil ivory has its price cur- 

 rent as well as wheat. That many were swept out to sea by the flooded 

 rivers of Siberia is certain, for some of the low islands off the coast 

 are said to be formed of sand, ice, and bones of the mammoth, and 

 thence, for hundreds of years, have come the tusks which are sold in 

 the market beside those of the African and Indian elephants. 



That man was contemporary with the mammoth in Southern Europe 

 is fairly certain, for not only are the remains of the mammoth and 

 man's flint weapons found together, but in a few instances some pri- 

 meval Landseer graved on slate, ivory, or reindeer antler a sketch}^ 

 outline of the beast, somewhat impressionistic perhaps, but still like 

 the work of a true artist, preserving the salient features. We see the 

 curved tusks, the snaky trunk, and the shaggy coat that we know 

 belonged to the mammoth, and we may feel assured that if early man 

 did not conquer the clumsy creature with fire and flint, he yet gazed 

 upon him from the safe vantage point of some lof tj" tree or inaccessible 

 rock, and then went home to tell his wife and neighbors how the 

 animal escaped because his bow missed fire. That man and mammoth 

 lived together in North America is uncertain; so far there is no evi- 

 dence to show that they did, although the absence of such evidence is 

 no proof that they did not. That any live mammoth has for centuries 

 been seen on the Alaskan tundras is utterly improbable, and on Mr. 

 C. H. Townsend seems to rest the responsibility of having, though quite 

 unintentionally, introduced the Alaskan live mannnoth into the columns 

 of the daily press. It befell in this wise: Among the varied duties of 

 our revenue marine is that of patrolling and exploring the shores of 

 arctic Alaska and the waters of the adjoining sea, and it is not so 

 many years ago that the cutter Corwin^ if memory serves aright, held 

 the record of farthest north on the Pacific side. On one of these 



