608 
APPENDIX. 
pendicular elevation of thirty or forty toises. Its substance is a clear pure ice ; it 
inclines towards the sea ; its top is covered with a layer of moss and friable earth 
fourteen inches in thickness. During the heat of the month of July a part of 
this crust is melted, but the rest remains frozen. Curiosity induced me to ascend 
two other hills at some distance from the sea ; they were of the same substance, 
and less covered with moss. In various places were seen enormous pieces of 
wood of all the kinds produced in Siberia ; and also mammoth’s horns, in great 
numbers, appeared between the hollows of the rocks ; they all were of astonishing 
freshness. The escarpment of ice was from thirty-five to forty toises high ; and, 
according to the report of the Tungusians, the animal was, when they first saw 
it, seven toises below the surface of the ice,” &c. 
I have to observe on this passage, that it contains no decisive evidence to 
show that the ice seen by Mr. Adams on the front of the clifl’ from which the 
elephant had fallen was any thing more than a superficial facing, similar to that 
found by Captain Beechey on parts of the front of the earthy cliff* in Eschscholtz 
Bay ; the same cliff* which, a few years before, when visited by Kotzebue, seems to 
have been so completely incased with a false fronting ol ice as to induce him 
to consider the entire hill to be a solid iceberg. One thing, however, is certain 
as to this mammoth, viz. that whether it was imbedded in a matrix of pure ice or 
of frozen earth, it must have been rapidly and totally enveloped in that matrix 
before its flesh had undei'gone decay, and that whatever may have been the 
climate of the coast of Siberia in antecedent periods, not only was it intensely cold 
within a few days after the mammoth perished, but it has also continued cold from 
that time to the present hour. 
Remains of the rhinoceros also appear to be nearly co-extensive with those of 
the elephant in these northern regions. Pallas mentions the head of a rhinoceros 
which was found beyond Lake Baikal, near Tshikoi, and four heads and five horns 
of this animal from various parts of Siberia on the Irtis, the Alei, the Obi, and 
the Lena. These horns in the frozen districts are so well preserved that splices of 
them are used by the natives to strengthen their bows. 
Pallas conceived that these remains are not derived from animals that ever 
inhabited Siberia, but from carcasses drifted northward from the southern regions 
by some violent aqueous catastrophe, and that there is proof both of the violence 
and suddenness of this catastrophe in the phenomenon of an entire rhinoceros found 
with its skin, tendons, ligaments, and flesh preserved in ihefro&en soiloi the coldest 
part of Eastern Siberia. On the arrival of Pallas in Ircutia in March, 1772 j th® 
head of this animal was laid before him, together with two of its feet, having their 
skin and flesh hardened like a mummy; it had been found in December, 1771 j 
