80 NOTES ANiJ 



The Indians were surprised at the sight of it; and when they were asked what 

 they thought it was, they answered that it must be the chief or father of all the 

 beavers. It was of prodigious bulk, and had thick white teeth about ten inches 

 long. It was looked upon as the skeleton of an elephant. A french lieutenant 

 in the fort, who had seen it, assured me that the figure of the whole snout was 

 yet to be seen though it was half mouldered. He added that he had not obser- 

 ved that any of the bones were taken away, bat thought the skeleton lay quite 

 perfect there. I have heard people talk of this monstrous skeleton in several 

 other parts of Canada." Kalm's Travels, vol. 3. 



During the revolution a delegation of warriors from the Delaware tribe toW 

 ihe governor of Virginia that it was a tradition handed down from their fathers, 

 *' that, in ancient times, a herd of these tremendous animals came to the big 

 bone licks and be^nn an universal destruction of the bear, deer, elk, buffaloes, 

 and other animals which Lad been created for tlie use of the Indians ; that the 

 Great Man above, looking dotvn and seeing this, was so enraged, that he seized 

 his lightning, descended on the earth, seated himself on a neighbouring moun- 

 tain, on a rock of which his sent and the print of his feet are still to be seen, and 

 hurled his bolts among them till the whole were slaughtered, except the big bull? 

 who, presenting his forehead to the shafts, shook them off as they fell ; but mis- 

 sing one at length, it wounded him in the side ; whereon springing round, he 

 bounded over the Ohio, over the W abash, the Illinois, and finally over the great 

 lakes, where he is living at this day." Jefferson's Notes on Virginia. 



In the year 1748, M. Fabri, who had made great excursions into the northern 

 parts of Louisiana and the southern regions of Canada, informed Buffon that he 

 had seen heads and skeletons of an enormous quadrupod, called by the savages 

 the father of oxen ; and that the thigh bones of these animals were from five to 

 six feet in length. Biffin's Natural History, translated by Smellie, vol. 9. 



In Siberia a similar animal was supposed to exist under ground, and many 

 fables were related respecting it under the russian name of mammoth. Notwith- 

 standing these traditions and reports, the attention of the philosophers of Europe 

 was not fully drawn to this subject until 1765, when mr. George Croghan saw, in 

 the vicinity of a large salt marsh, on the country bordering on the Ohio, immense 

 bones and teeth, and he sent some of them to England, where they immediately 

 became the subject of speculation and discussion j before this similar bones were 

 discovered in the russian dominions. Dr. Hunter, a celebrated anatomist, from 

 nn examination of the teeth, pronounced them to belong to a carnivorous non- 

 descript animal. Daubenton declared, at one time, that this animal was an ele- 

 phant, and at another time thought that the teeth were those of an hippopota- 

 mus, and conceived that the animal partook of both those species, and was a real 

 mule. Muller supposed thai they belong to certain unknown quadrupeds, 



