THE MAMMOTH 155 



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 Mammoth story wandered from paper 

 to paper, untU 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 

 reaUstic touches, transferred it to McCIure's Magazine, 

 and — unfortunately for the officials thereof — to the 

 Smithsonian Institution. 



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

 mounted mammoth to awe the visitor to the national 

 collections, and with the exception of the largely re- 

 stored specimen in St. Petersburg there is none else- 

 where. And yet there seems no good and conclusive 

 reason why there should not be : true, there are no live 

 mammoths to be had at any price; neither are their car- 

 casses to be had on demand; still there is good reason to 

 believe that a much smaller sum than that said to have 

 been paid by Mr. Conradi for the mammoth which is 

 not in the Smithsonian Institution, would place one 

 there. It probably could not be done in one year; it 

 might not be possible in five years ; but should any man 

 of means wish to secure enduring fame by showing the 

 world the mammoth as it stood in life, a hundred cen- 

 turies ago, before the dawn of even tradition, he could 

 probably accomplish the result by the expenditure of a 



