154 THE TIME OF THE MAMMOTHS. 
of the river Lena. The following account is translated and 
condensed from the description published in the "Memoirs 
of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.” * 
*In 1799 he built a cabin for his wife on the borders of the Lake 
Oncoul, and then went to search on the shore of the northern sea. hoping 
to find some elephants tusks. One day he perceived in the midst of the 
ice cliffs a shapeless mass, which did not look like the heaps of drift wood 
which are often found there. In order to examine it more nearly, he 
came ashore and observed the object on all sides, but could not recognize 
what it was. 
‘The following year he discovered at this point a sea cow, and saw at 
the same time that the mass which he had seen before was farther sepa- 
rated from the ice, and showed two long projections, but he could not yet 
determine what it was. Towards the close of the following summer the 
whole side of the animal and one of the tusks projected beyond the ice 
wall of the cliff. On his return to the shores of Lake Oncoul he commu- 
nicated the result of this discovery to his wife and to some of his friends; 
but their way of looking at the matter gave him much distress. The old 
men told him that they had heard their fathers say that once before a 
similar monster had shown itself on the same peninsula, and that the dis- 
coverer and all his mg perished soon afterwards. The mammoth was 
consequently looked upon as an augury of a dire calamity, and the Chief 
was so much affected AR The fell very ill; but at last, being a little con- 
valescent, his first idea was of the profits he might gain by selling the 
usks, which were of extraordinary beauty and size. He gave orders to 
have the locality carefully "dran, and all strangers turned away on 
some pretext, charging at the e time some of his people to watch 
carefully that no one should cs pni treasure. 
But the summer was less warm than the preceding, and the mammoth 
remained buried in the ice which scarcely melted at all. At last, towards 
the close of the fifth year, the ardent desires of Schumachoff were happily 
accomplished. For that part of the ice which was between the ground 
and the mammoth having melted more rapidly than the rest, the surface 
became sloping, and this enormous mass, pushed by its own weight, slid 
down and sorted on a bank of sand upon the shore. 
In the month of March, Schumachoff came to his mammoth, and having 
cut off his tusks sold them to à merchant for goods worth fifty roubles. 
to establish these facts which one would have believed so improbable. I 
found the mammoth still in the same place, but entirely mutilated. The 
Jacutes of the neighborhood had cut up the flesh and fed it to their dogs 
during a period of scarcity, and the wild animals, white bears, wolves, 
*Tio etal ^r 4 Qiu H ad m ris gl fat. Tit. 1797 efosso, Auctore 
Tilesio. Mem. Acad. Imp., St. Petersburg. Tome v. 
