THE MAMMOTH 
209 
eviscerating the animal, I was as careless and forgetful as my 
Jakuti, who did not notice that the ground was sinking under 
their feet, until a fearful scream warned me of their misfortune, 
as I was still groping in the animal’s stomach. Shocked, I sprang 
up, and beheld how the river was burying in its waves our five 
Jakuti and our laboriously saved beast. Fortunately, the boat 
was near, so that our poor workpeople were all saved, but the 
Mammoth was swallowed up by the waves, and never more made 
its appearance.” 
Much may be learned from this highly interesting account ; it 
contains the key to several questions which otherwise might have 
remained unsolved. Let us see what conclusions can be derived 
therefrom. First, its position and perfect state of preservation 
are sufficient to prove that it was buried where it died. It sank 
in a marsh, probably during the summer. Then came the cold 
of winter ; the carcase, together with the ground around it, was 
frozen so that decomposition was arrested, and frozen it must have 
remained for many centuries till the day when M. Benkendorf 
came across it. Or it may have been buried up in a snow-drift 
which in time became ice. 
In the region where frozen Mammoths occur (and there are at 
least nine cases on record), a considerable thickness of frozen 
soil may be found at all seasons of the year ; so that if a carcase 
be once embedded in mud or ice, its putrefaction may be arrested 
for indefinite ages. According to one authority, the ground is 
now permanently frozen even to the depth of four hundred feet 
at the town of Jakutsh, on the western bank of the river Lena. 
Throughout a large part of Siberia the boundary cliffs of the lakes 
and rivers consist of earthy materials and ice in horizontal layers. 
Middendorf bored to the depth of seventy feet, and after passing 
through much frozen soil mixed with ice, came down upon a 
solid mass of pure transparent ice, the depth of which he was 
unable to ascertain. 
The year 1846, when M. Benkendorf saw his Mammoth, was 
p 
