MAMMOTHS AND MASTODONS. 245 



shroud of snow would remain wrapped about them through 

 all the mildness of the ensuing summer. The fleecy snow 

 would become granular; it would be neve or firn, as in 

 the glacier sources of the Alps. It would finally become 

 solid ice, compact, clear and sea-green in its limpid 

 depths. It would be a glacier; and so it would travel 

 down the gorges, down the valleys toward the frozen 

 ocean, sweeping buried mammoths bodily in its resistless 

 stream. Thus, in the course of ages, their mummied 

 forms would reach a latitude more northern than that 

 in which they had been inhumed. It may even have 

 been the case that living mammoths lingered in the coun- 

 try which had witnessed the snowy burial of herds of 

 their fellows. Some must have escaped the first great 

 snow-deluge, and there must have been a return of sunny 

 days, during which they could seek to resuscitate their 

 famished bodies; and spring must have come back at last, 

 and another hope-inspiring summer, cheering, but short 

 and illusory. And if a secular pause in the severity of 

 the climate ensued, a few survivors may have lingered 

 for many years. But winter, dire and permanent, was 

 on the march, and the record which it has left declares 

 that the mammoth population struggled in vain against 

 the despotism of frost, and that the empire which was 

 set up has crumbled only under the attacks of many 

 thousand summers. 



There has been a time in the history of the Ai-yan 

 family of men when they seem to have suffered from a 

 sudden change of climate which compelled them to mi- 

 grate southwai-d. When we trace the movements of the 

 European nations backward, we find, in the remote past, 

 a point of divergence from the nations which crossed the 



