358 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MAMMOTH. 



northern trips to the Kotzebue Sound region, famous for the abun- 

 dance of its deposits of mammoth bones/ the Corwln carried Mr. 

 Townsend, then naturalist to the United States Fish Commission. At 

 Cape Prince of Wales some natives came on board bringing a few 

 bones and tusks of the mammoth, and upon being questioned as to 

 whether or not any of the animals to which the}^ pertained were living, 

 promptlj^ replied that all were dead, inquiring in turn if the white men 

 had ever seen any, and if they knew how these animals, so vastly larger 

 than a reindeer, looked. 



Fortunately, or unfortunately, there was on board a text-book of 

 geology containing the well-known cut of the St. Petersburg mam- 

 moth, and this was brought forth, greatly to the edification of the 

 natives, who were delighted at recognizing the curved tusks and the 

 bones the}" knew so well. Next the natives wished to know what 

 the outside of the creature looked like, and as Mr. Townsend had 

 been at Ward's establishment in Rochester when the first copy of the 

 Stuttgart restoration was made, he rose to the emergency and made a 

 sketch. This was taken ashore, together with a copy of the cut of the 

 skeleton that was laboriously made by an Innuit sprawled out at full 

 length on the deck. Now, the Innuits, as Mr. Townsend tells us, are 

 great gadabouts, making long sledge journeys in winter and equally 

 long trips by boat in summer, while each season they hold a regular 

 fair on Kotzebue Sound, where a thousand or two natives gather to 

 barter and gossip. On these journey's and at these gatherings the 

 sketches were no doubt passed about, copied, and recopied, until 

 a large number of Innuits had become well acquainted with the 

 appearance of the mammoth, a knowledge that naturally they were 

 well pleased to display to any white visitors. Also, like the Celt, the 

 Alaskan native delights to give a "soft answer," and is always ready 

 to furnish the kind of information desired. Thus in due time the 

 newspaper man learned that the Alaskans could make pictures of the 

 mammoth, and that they had some knowledge of its size and habits; 

 so with inference and logic quite as good as that of the Tungusian 

 peasant, the reporter came to the conclusion . that somewhere in the 

 frozen wilderness the last survivor of the mammoths must still be at 

 large. And so, starting on the Pacific coast, the live mannuoth story 

 wandered from paper to paper, until it had spread throughout the 

 length and breadth of the United States, when it was captured by Mr. 

 Tukeman, who, with much artistic color and some realistic touches, 

 transferred it to McClure's Magazine, and, unfortunately for the 

 •oflicials thereof, to the Smithsonian Institution. 



And now, once for all, it may be said that there is no mounted mam- 

 moth to awe the visitor to the national collections; and yet there seems 



^ Elephant Point, at the mouth of the Buckland River, is so named from the num- 

 bers of mammotli bones which have accumulated there. 



