82 CRUISE OP STEAMER CORWIN IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. 



"mammoth" being a Yakut word, signifying an animal that burrows under the ground. The 

 Innuits, of Alaska, still have the same belief. They told us wonderful tales of these animals 

 having been seen digging with their enormous tusks in the beds of the rivers. These marvelous 

 tales of the natives recounted the experience of some one else, the man who actually saw the 

 wonderful sights either being dead or at a great distance. Although the stories told us were 

 preposterous, even from au Innuit point of view, they were evidently believed by the narrators. 

 Richardson says mammoth teeih are numerous in the crevices of the sandy banks of the river 

 Kuskokvim. The natives have a tradition that the great animals to which the tusks belonged 

 came in old times from the east, but that they were destroyed by a shaman of the river Kroich- 

 back. Some, however, say that the herd was merely driven into the earth, and that it came up 

 one night of the year. The cause of the extermination of these animals was probably a period of 

 greater cold, causing vast accumulations of snow and ice. Although the present climate of the 

 north is well adapted to the support of this kind of animal life, but a slight change would be 

 required to render it absolutely impossible for herbivorous animals to exist there. A few degrees 

 lower temperature throughout the year would soon form a permanent coating of snow and ice 

 over all the Arctic regions, through which it would be impossible for any animal life to penetrate. 

 The willows, alders, and birches of the far north are dwarfed and stunted, and, as during the 

 winter months they are constantly flattened down by the weight of suow, they attain a height of 

 but a few feet, and often during the heavy snow-storms of winter are entirely covered. The 

 climatic change whicli exterminated these animals may have come on gradually or it may have 

 been a complete and sudden change. The wide range of their distribution argues against the 

 latter supposition. It is probable that the change was gradual, and that while many perished in 

 their native tundras, many retreated south before the long winter of the Glacial period, which 

 followed, until, owing to the ever-changing climatic condition, they, many centuries ago, ceased 

 to exist. In Europe and America they were coeval with early man, and on tusks found in caves 

 in France good likenesses of the mammoth are fouud cut with flint or some hard substance. In 

 Missouri a stone arrow-head was found under the shoulder-blade of a mammoth, now in the 

 British Museum. In Wisconsin was found an ancient drawing of another species of fossil ele- 

 phant, supposed to have been drawn from life by man. Australia is the only continent upon 

 which the remains are not found. Nearly thirty different varieties of elephants, now extinct, 

 have been found in different parts of the world. In 1799 a party of Tungoose fishermen discov- 

 ered, near the mouth of the Lena, the body of a mammoth in such a perfect state of preservation 

 that they cut pieces from the flesh to feed their dogs upon. Parts of the skin and long hair of 

 this animal are now in the Imperial Academy of Science at St. Petersburg, the Paris Academy 

 of Science, and the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Many of the carcasses of both the 

 mammoth and rhinoceros have been found from time to time by the Tungoose and Yakuts. 



Nordenskjold speaks of the discovery, in 1877, on a tributary of the Lena, of a well-preserved 

 carcass of a hairy rhinoceros of a different species from those heretofore discovered, and from which 

 it was concluded that this animal belonged to a high northern species, adapted to a cold climate, 

 and living in or occasionally wandering to the region where the carcass was found. Speaking of 

 the possibility of these large animals finding sufficient pasture in the regions in question, Nordensk- 

 jold says : 



It ought not to be overlooked that in sheltered places overflowed by the spring inundation, there are found, .still far 

 north of the limit of trees, luxuriant bushy, thickets, whose newly-expanded, juicy leaves, burned up by no tropical 

 sun, perhaps torn) a special luxury for grass-eating animals, and that even the bleakest stretches of land in the high 

 north are fertile in comparison with many regions where at least the camel can find nourishment, for instance, the 

 east coast of the Red Sea. 



On the New Siberian Islands and on the islands discovered by the Jeaunette fossil remains of 

 extinct animals abound. At Cape Waukerem, coast of Siberia, a piece of tusk, in a fine state of 

 preservation, was brought on board by a Tchuktchi and bought by some of our people for a few 

 hands of tobacco. 



September 9 we got under way in the morning and started over to the north side of the bay, 

 for the purpose of examining the cliffs there, but had not proceeded more than half way before we 

 found the vessel aground. Although we were proceeding very slowly, with two leads constantly 



