432 Sir R. I. Murchison on the 



of the streams, may easily have been transported into the estuaries* 

 and even, by the power of such volumes of water as are poured forth 

 into the glacial ocean by the Obe, the Yenisei, and the Lena, borne 

 out far to sea, and there lodged in former mud banks, which now 

 constitute the shores of New Siberia, where thousands of bones of 

 these mammals are interred.* If the power of drifting the bodies of 

 animals to great distances be assigned to any rivers (and mariners 

 have seen floating carcases in the ocean very far removed from the 

 lands from whence they came), in no part of the world is it more 

 probable that such operations may have been carried on upon a 

 gigantic scale, than from the northern shores of Siberia, where such 

 enormous rivers must have continuously extended their influence to 

 several degrees of latitude beyond their mouths, and where the na- 

 ture of the climate is singularly favourable to the conservation of 

 animal substances. 



And here let us say a word more on the ancient physical geo- 

 graphy of this region. Such as are the present north-flowing courses 

 of the great Siberian rivers, such, we affirm, they must have 

 been from the very earliest periods — from the time, in short, when 

 the palaeozoic rocks constituting the Altai and Ural mountains, and 

 their dependencies, were raised into dry lands, never more to be 

 depressed beneath the waters of the ocean. Infinitely the loftiest 

 and the grandest of these chains, the Altai, with its snowy peaks 

 (yet void of glaciers), ranging from west to east, is the great southern 

 watershed from whence the Siberian rivers must, we say, have flowed 

 from south to north during long ages, whilst the peculiarity of all 

 the great counter-forts or advanced ridges of that mighty chain, 

 consists in their being composed of palaeozoic, metamorphic, and 

 igneous rocks, which equally extend from south to north in a number 

 of long, low, meridian, parallel ridges. These north and south 

 ridges, of which the Ural is the westernmost, thus encase each 

 river, and, preventing its flexure to the east and west, have neces- 



* See admiral Wrangel's "Voyage for a description of the sands and mud 

 of the "Tundra" (evidently all ancient marine sediment), in which the 

 mammoth bones are found on the continent, including his companion, 

 Anjou's, account of their enormous quantity in the isles of New Siberia. 

 (English edition, translated by Mrs. Sabine.) 



