AtG. 14, 1897.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
128 
The period covered by these articles is ralher longer than 
that required to wear out the average hoax, but its length 
can be explained by the fact that the natives know how to 
draw the mamnnoth. 
Twelve years ago I accompanied theTJniled States revenue 
cutler Cor win commanded by Oapt. Healy, on a voyage to 
ihe Arctic. We waited a few days in the neighborhood of 
Bering Straits for Ihe pack ice to recede somewhat, and on 
July 1 the bow of the Corwin, being protected by an ice 
breaker, pushed slowly through the heavy drift ice and 
entered Kotze:.ue Sound. Here it was the intention to land 
parlies for the purpose of exploring the Kowak and Noatak, 
two of the large rivers flowing into the Sound. Both were 
unknown, except for a reconnaissance of the lower course of 
the Kowak, which had been made the year before. The 
conditions being found favorable, the exploring parties set 
out on July a, my own, on what proved to be a two months' 
journey to the headwaters of the Kowak and back to Kotze- 
bue Sound. At Cape Prince of "Wales, in Bering Straits, 
where we anchored for a time before entering the Arctic, the 
natives brought on board the ship some tusks and bones of 
the mammoth for barter. When questioned as to the char- 
acter of the animal that produced them, they said it was a 
creature much larger than a reindeer — the only animal they 
found available for comparison— and they took great interest 
in pointing out to ua, from the bones at hand, how large it 
must have been. They were questioned particularly as to 
its existence and replied promptly that they were all dead. 
A text-book on geology was brought out, containing a pic- 
lure of the skeleton of the mammoth, which the natives at 
once recognized, and they delightedly compared the bones 
and tusks on the deck with those shown in the picture. 
The decks were swarming with natives, and the appear- 
ance of the book was followed bj"- voluble and prolonged dis- 
cussion. One native got the book down on the deck, and 
lying almost on top of it, laboriously copied the picture, a 
task he was not unequal to, as any one knows who is familiar 
with Eikitno picture writing on ivory. 
Having' served an apprenticeship in the Ward Museum of 
Natural History, at Rochester, where several restorations 
of the mammoth were constructed, 1 felt that I was prepared 
to speak with some authority on its personal appearance; and 
I furnished the Eskimo artist with a rough sketch of the ani- 
mal as it appeared in life. The sketch, which was highly 
appreciated by the recipient, was taken ashore when the 
natives left, along with such new ideas on mammoths as they 
might have assimilated during their visit to the ship, where 
the officers had taken pains to instruct them. This incident 
is related in a report published in a Congressional document, 
entitled "The Arctic Cruise of the Corwin in 1885." 
I have reasons for believing these unfortunate pictures to 
have begotten a numerous and persistent progeny, that have 
become dispersed in a natiu'al manner, and finally modified 
by their environment. The Innuits are great gadabouts; 
they have sledges and dogs, and can make the longest winter 
trips. In summer, when the mossy tundra lands become im- 
passably boggy, they take to the rivers. We found their 
summer, fi-ihing camps from the Arctic coast well inland 
toward the sources of the Kowak, where they were using 
birch- bark canoes, as well as the sealskin boats they manu- 
facture along the coast. 
Although the sled is laid aside in summer, the Eskinao 
dog contmues to work in harness. We saw the natives 
about Selawik Lake tiaveliag in large skin boats {Oiniaks) 
towed by dogs moviug along the beaches, like so many 
caual mules. They do a great deal of traveUng from village 
to village for purposes of trade, and it is likely that much of 
their wstndering is caused by a desire for entertainment, for 
t ley are a lively and sociable people. 
Every summer there is a great gathering of Innuits at 
Ki;lz^bue Sound, where a general exchange of Eskimo com- 
moaities takes place, and where they meet the Bering 
Straits natives, who trade with the Chuckchees, of the Si- 
berian aide. Alaskan furs in general are exchanged for large 
numbers of skins of the Siberian domesticated reindeer, 
which forms one of the principal articles of clothing among 
the Alaskan Eskimo. 
In August, 1885, there were more than 1,000 natives gath- 
ered at Hotham Inlet, and 1 was told that the gatherings fre- 
quently numbered over 2,000. Such gatherings mean large 
delegations from all the villages of the region; perhaps all of 
the coast villages north of the Yukon. 
I make special mention of their facilities for traveling, 
and their trading habits, to show that the chances for the 
dissemination of new ideas among them are good. 
We made many camps along tne Kowak during the two 
months we lived with the Innuits, and were always on the 
best of''lerms .with them. They enjoyed visiting us, and 
there were many long talks around oiir camp fires, where, in 
the enjoyment of our biscuit and tobacco, they told us of the 
big game and the fishes; of life in the long winter; of the 
bones pf the mammoth ; of theu- social life and beliefs, and 
a thousand other things. Their talk was interwoven with 
not a few legends, for they indulge in romances and tell some 
impressive tales. 
It was a summer of talk for ourselves as well as the people, 
for they are great questioners. They wanted to know how 
many days' journey it was to California, where all the ships 
they see come from. They wanted to know how long it took 
to make a whale ship or a rifle ; if the winter was as long with 
us as with them; if seals and reindeer were as plenty; if the 
wild geese came to us when they left them. And so it came 
to pass that we were explaining things as well as they. 
I woke up one night, or ralcer day, for we had no night 
to speak of, and in the twilight, of the midnight hour, when 
the sun was on the horizon, found Lieut. Cantwell explain- 
ing to our two native interpreters what the world was like. 
He had a bucket for a globe, and was tracing the Kowak 
River on one side and California on the other. He told them 
that it was round, for he had been around it on a ship, which 
they in their thirst for knowledge, weie not disposed to 
doubt. His globe was minus a continent or two, but com- 
plete enough for his purpose, and long after he retired the 
two natives could be heard discussing the tracings on the 
bucket. 
On the Kowak the people appreciated us, mainly, I think, 
because we were doing something they understood them- 
selves, namely, capturing the animals of the region. We 
did it intelligently, like good hunters, which they appreci- 
ated, while the examination of our preserved specimens de- 
lighted them beyond measure. They subsist entirely on the 
animals of the region, and they thought it only natural that 
we should wish to carry such desirable things away with us, 
particu arly if we had.none of those kinds at home. 
In all this familiar conversation the omnipresent mam- 
moth bones came in for a share of the discussion, and we 
\vere told of many places where -we could find ihem, I 
found the front half of a mammoth skull on the open mossy 
plain at .Schismareff Inlet that was not fossilized in the 
least, but was as light and dry as a bone could be. At one 
camp, I remember, we used mammoth tusk" to hold down 
the canvas of our tent. In the vicinity of Elephant Point, 
in Kotzebue Sound, mammoth bones are very con.'^pir'uous, 
and they can be found along^all the rivers flowinsrinto Kotze- 
bue Sound. There aie large deposits at many places on the 
Yukon and Kuskowim, and according to some of the news- 
papers represented in this budget of clippings they are espe- 
cially abundant about the headwaters of rivers flowing into 
Cook's Inlet. I think mammoth bones could bs procured 
of the natives of almost any village north of Cook's Inlet 
What we knew of the mammoth wa?, no doubt, told many 
times to the eager people, and two mammoth p'ctures at 
least— the ones I have referred to — were put into circulation. 
And so the tares were sown, to be reaped plentifully a few 
years later, when credulous newspaper gleaners began to 
write up the country. The people took to the white man's 
mammolh eagerly. The pictures that went ashore at C^pe 
Prince of Wales undoubtedly went, like the Ark of the Co- 
venant, with the people on their wanderings, and the native 
who bore thera was of no small importance. I can imagine 
him at each village, producing the firsi picture of the beast 
so prominent in 'their legends. There were the big tusks 
they had known all their lives, and the creature covered with 
long hair just as naturally as any Arctic animal. It waa 
food for the imagination. They must have surmised that 
the white men had seen it at some time, and the surmise was 
strengthened by the evidence of the book that all the Prince 
of Wales people had held in their hands. Along with the 
mammoth, the book showed other strange kinds of reindeer, 
some of them very like the cow that had been landed f i om a 
ship for the trader at St. Michaels, and that had almost 
scared the life out of the St, IVDchaels' children when it was 
turned loose on the beach. The evidence was strong in 
favor of the white man's knowinisr a great deal about the 
mammoth that the Innuits hadn't dreamed of; and they prob- 
ably very soon began to think that they might find them 
some day themselve?, away off somewhere, where nobody 
had ever been to hunt, since bones of them were slicking up 
i. 
THE Mammoth (ElepTias primigenlus). 
Restoration according- Co measurements afforded by the St, Peters- 
burg specimen and from bones in tbe Royal Museum of Stuctgard. 
This restoration is in the private geological museum of Prof Henrv 
A. Ward, Rochester, N. Y. 
everywhere. Such reasonings would not be unnatural to the 
Eskimo mind, and so the idea could have developed. Other 
natives could, of course, copy the picture, and it is almost 
certain that they did so. The people rapidly got the correct 
idea of the appearance of the mammoth, if not the facts con- 
nected with it. 
The natives of widely separated locahties appear to have 
absorbed the idea, and it is no doubt becoming ingrained, for 
the Innuits are a friendly race, disposed to be accommodat- 
ing to strangers who treat them fairly, and frequent inquiry 
about mammoth ivory, or about live mammoths, by the 
increasing number of visitors to the country, would lead 
them to the conclusion that the white man attached great 
importance to it, and also to acquiesce in the white man's 
fancies as to the mammoth's continued existence. 
I think the natives of northern Alaska may truly be said 
to be eager to please, and if they thought that certain admis- 
sions on their part about the mammoth's existence would 
give satisfaction, they would not hesitate to make them, in 
spite of whatever doubts they might entertain privately. 
Another point in connection with the making of mammoth 
pictures by natives is the possibihty of future trouble for the 
anthropologists. The Eskimos are adepts at ivory carving. 
AH sorts of implements and ornaments of ivory are covered 
with etchings of reindeer, seals, whales, bears and other 
animals, while their hunting and fishing operations are often 
minutely represented. Who knows but that they may be 
already working the mammoth into their ivory records, and 
that someone will presently be trying to prove man and the 
mammoth contemporaneous in Alaska? The idea almost 
excites suspicions of the famous mammoth etching by pre- 
historic man that is so commonly figured in the text-book on 
geology. 
Other explorers could, of course, have explained to the 
natives about the mammoth— and it is very likely that they 
have done so— but I am disposed to think that the first thor- 
ough awakening of their ideas on the subject took place 
eleven years ago at Cape Prince of Wales, where the picture 
and the story were passed along Both appear to be goiro- 
yet, and if the growth of the picture could keep pace with 
that of the story, I should be very glad to see it again after 
another dozen years. C. H. Towksend. 
Washikqton, D. C. 
A Mudhen in Trouble. 
Madison, Wis.— While returning from a hunting trip last 
fall, my companion in the boat noticed what he took to be a 
wounded duck, swimming along not far from us. We im- 
mediately turned the boat in that direction and gave chase 
Upon reaching the bird we found it to be a mudhen, whose 
head was held under the water as if in an attempt to dive 
Upon littiDg her from the water we found that she was hav- 
ing troubles of her own, her beak bemg held clasped be- 
tween the shells of a clam. When we found her she was 
nearly drowned, having become too tired to hold her head 
far enough out pf water to breathe. After lying gome tipe 
in the bottom of the boat she revived enough to shake the 
clam off by banging it against the sides of the boat. 
The lower mandible of the beak was held by the clam and 
we thought that in feeding she had seen the bright rim of the 
clam's shell on the bottom and had seized it only to find part 
of her bill held in a clammy embrace. 
Have any of your readers had a similar experience? 
PalPii Steward 
flnstances somewhat like the one cited above have often 
been noticed, and accounts of birds caught on the shore hy 
shellfish when the tide was down have been published. We 
once captured (unhurt) a blackheaded duck which had a 
mussel clamped to the root of its tongue. The bird could 
not close its bill, and was nearly exhausted when secured. 
It had evidently seized the partly-opened mussel and* 
attempted to swallow it w^hen the fleshy root of the tongue 
became wedged between the two valves of the mussel's shell, 
and could not bo freed. Have any of our readers beard of 
cases like these?] 
'^nie ^uq md 0utt 
The "Brief's" Pictures. 
There are twenty-nine illustrations in the current edition of Oam.e. 
Laws in Brief, most of them full page half-tone?, and all admirably 
printed. The book is a beau>y, and well worth having for the illus- 
trations which. Mr. Charles Hallock says, so well represent America's 
wildersess sports. The Brief gives all the laws of the United States 
and Canada for the practical guidance of anglers and shooters As 
an authority, it has a long record of unassailed and unassailable ac- 
curacy. Forest and Stream Pub. Co. sends it postpaid for S5 cents, 
or your dealer wUl supply you. 
AN ADVENTURE WITH A DEER. 
Paxatka Fla. — Your correspondent enjoys the life in the 
wilderness and the pursuit of game there with a zest beyond 
his ability to describe. The beauty of lake and pine forest 
in this State charms one with its inexhaustible variety. The 
balmy fragrance of the wocds is like incense. The excite- 
ment of the chase in this atmosphere exhilarates one like 
wine. Then the evenings spent in camp, lulled by the 
crackle of our fire, when fancy weaves strange shapes in its 
flames— who can describe the witchery of them? That the 
spice of danger attends the hunting of large game, one of 
our trips into the woods proved. I shall supply the details 
of this expedition, and leave it for the reader to furnish the 
proper setting for Ihem from his knowledge of camping out. 
Two of us left Auburndale, Fla., about 10 o'clock one 
bright December morning upon a camp-hunt to last a week. 
Numerous signs of bear and deer had been reported to us as 
seen near a group of lakes thirty-five miles from town. The 
Doctor and I were to join Morgan and Ben, t^e other two 
members of our party, twenty -five miles out at Deer Creek, 
where we would camp for the night. We drove a small.' 
black horse harnessed to a spring-seat wagon loaded with 
provisions and the camping outfit. A black and tan, half 
beagle, chained to the rear axle, ran beneath the wagon 
while an industrious white dog, a cross of beagle and fox- 
hound, made short excursions along the road within sight. 
The twenty five mile trip made that day, though through 
deep sand or over palmetto roots, was delightful. For the 
first ten miles the road lay in the edge of the pine forest 
where the air was fragrant, and past lakes rippled by the 
breezes. The sound made by the light wind through the 
treetops, and the lapping of the water along the shores, were 
a soothing accompaniment to the steady grind of our wheels. 
During the morning we passed within stonethrow of a dozen 
lakes, and within sight of many others. They varied in siz3 
from a quarter of a mile to two miles across, and each lake 
was a different shade of blue. During the afternoon we 
traveled through the pine forest. Small palmettos grew in 
profusion in many places, and their roots made the road very 
rough. From the wagon seat one could see for long dis- 
tances beneath the pines, except where swamp growth or 
sandhill cut off the view. Herds of branded cattle browsed 
about, and small droves of lean hogs rooted beneath occa- 
sional live-oak trees. A ford, a quarter of a mile Ions 
through a cypressed stream, was passed after dark. The 
water was so clear that the stumps might have been easily 
avoided in the day time, but they blocked our wheels and 
nearly threw the horse several times at night. Hootino- owls 
screaming herons, and screeching wild things of every degl 
cription cheered us through. From an elevation two miles 
beyond we could see the camp-fire of the other party, and 
horns were blown and answered to an accompaniment of 
howling dogs. 
We had strong coffee boiled in tomato cans, bread and 
butter, cold baked beans, cold beef and aople pie for supper 
The tent was pitched afterward with its' back to the road' 
A small stream flowing to the left passed forty rods in front' 
then turned at a right angle a short distance beyond and 
crossed the road lOOydi. to the left of camp. Its course 
below the ford lay beneath gum trees and bay bushes to a 
large sawgrass swamp 500yds. back of the tent. That night 
the hooting of a large owl in a cypress pond up stream was 
the signal for a chorus of screeches and yells from all 
quarters. Murder was committed in the ford while a 
climax was reached in the large swamp behind camp— the 
sphits of the damned were abroad. At intervals during the 
night fuel was heaped upon the fire till the flames showed 
the moss in the treetops. 
In the morning we found where several deer had entered 
the large swamp behind camp, and the tracks of a bear be- 
yond the stream in front. We struck camp about noon and 
started for the lake region, ten miles further on. At one 
place we crossed a ford several hundred yards long. The 
clouds of moss that hung from the arched cypress limba 
above the crossing formed a shaded tunnel, so narrow that 
the hubs of the wagon scraped the trunks of the trees The 
horses drank in there, and thrust their muzzles into the cur- 
rent for additional sips, even after their thkst seemed to be 
quenched. The stream was so clear that the smallest objects 
upon the sandy bottom were plainly visible, and the min- 
nows swimming about the wheels seemed to be suspended i^i 
air. Five miles of sandhills were crossed beyond the ford 
covered with a scattered growth of scrub oaks, and small' 
basin-like depressions surrounded by green palmettoes' 
Camp was pitched about 4 o'clock by the first lake of 
chain that foim the source of the Kissimee Eiver. Morgan 
waded into the lake durirg the afternoon till the watgr 
reached his waist, to fish, while we caught frogs f or bajt 
along shore. His rod was a heavy bamboo, and his line a 
stout cord. A large bass almost leaped from tjie water to 
