118 THROUGH THE MACKENZIE BASIJST 



the manners and customs of the aborigines, since we had 

 no time to observe them closely. They have their legends 

 and traditions and remnants of ceremonies, much of which 

 is upon record, and they cherish, especially, some very 

 curious beliefs. One, in particular, we were told, obtained 

 amongst them, namely, that the mastodon still exists in the 

 fastnesses of the Upper Mackenzie. They describe it as a 

 monster many times larger than the buffalo, and they dread 

 going into the parts it is supposed to haunt. This singular 

 opinion may be the survival of a very old tradition regard- 

 ing that animal, but is more likely due to the presence of 

 its remains in the shape of tusks and bones found here and 

 there throughout the Mackenzie River district and the 

 Yukon.* 



On the 9th the steamer Grahame arrived from Smith's 

 Landing, bringing with her about 120 baffled Klondikers, 

 returning to the United States, there being still some sixty 

 more, they said, down the Mackenzie River, who intended 

 to make their way out, if possible, before 'winter. They 

 had a solitary woman with them who had discarded a duffer 

 husband, and who looked very self-reliant, indeed, being 

 girt about with bowie-knife and revolver, but otherwise not 

 alarming. 



*A similar belief, it is said, exists amongst the Indians of the 

 Yukon. The remains of the primeval elephant are exceedingly 

 abundant in the tundras of Siberia, and a considerable trade in 

 mammoth ivory has been carried on between that region and Eng- 

 land for many years. It is supposed that the Asian elephant 

 advanced far to the North during the interglacial period and 

 perished in the recurrent glacial epoch. Its American congener, 

 the mastodon, found its way from Asia to this continent during the 

 Drift period, when, it is believed, land communication existed in 

 what is now Bering's Strait, and perished in a like manner. It 

 was not a sudden but a gradual extinction in their native habitats 

 due to natural causes, such as encroaching ice and other material 

 changes in the animals' environment. This, I believe, is the accepted 

 scientific opinion of to-day. But the fact that these animals are 

 at times exposed entire by the falling away of ice-cliffs or ledges 

 their flesh being quite fresh and fit food for dogs, and even men' 

 opens up a very interesting field of inquiry and conjecture In the 

 bowels of a mammoth recently revealed in North-Eastern Siberia 



