SIDE VIEW—(Ovibos moschatus)
How either variety of musk-ox ever got to Greenland has been a subject of much discussion among scientists who seem now, however, to have finally decided that they reached the island from the west by crossing Smith Sound from Ellesmere Land, and by crossing Robeson’s Channel from Grinnell Land, thence along the low Greenland Coast to East Greenland. Outside of the Arctic islands and of Arctic America so far south as the 62d parallel, the musk-ox is unknown. There was a time, however, when its range included all that part of the northern hemisphere between, roughly speaking, the Arctic Circle and the North Pole. It seems even possible that in the dim ages, the musk-ox had a wider and much more southern distribution, for the skull from which the extinct type bombifrons was named, was found in Kentucky, another having been found also in Arkansas. Fossil remains of musk-oxen have been unearthed in Siberia, Alaska, Grinnell Land, and Northern Europe. There is no authentic data of their having been found in Alaska within the memory of present living man, and they do not range within two hundred miles of the Mackenzie River, which is laid down as their western limit. Much has been said of their being of recent existence in Alaska. I made careful search for authentic data concerning their western range, but secured no information at all trustworthy of even a tradition of them in Alaska; while nothing more certain than hearsay handed from father to son did I find as to their being seen near the Mackenzie River. From time to time statements find their way into print of a musk-ox found in Alaska. Such misleading information is based on the tales of traders who may perhaps have got a musk-ox skin at some Alaskan post. Mr. Andrew J. Stone, who has spent several years in the Far North collecting for the Museum of Natural History, and who knows Alaska and all that great stretch of country west of the Mackenzie River thoroughly, has covered this question in a statement published in an American Museum bulletin in 1901. It touches finally upon a question much agitated, and it seems to me sufficiently important to make permanent record here. Therefore I reproduce it.
MALE YEARLING OF THE EAST GREENLAND MUSK-OX
(From a photograph provided by the American Museum of Natural History)
AS TO THE WESTERN RANGE OF MUSK-OXEN.
Febr’y 28, 1901.
My dear Dr. Allen:—
In response to your inquiry in reference to the existence of the musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus) west of the Mackenzie River, or in Alaska, I will state there are none of these animals in any part of Arctic America west of the Mackenzie. Previous to my departure for the North in the spring of 1897, I had for several years carefully searched for information upon this subject, and from what I had gathered I had a faint hope of finding some of these animals in the mountains west of the Mackenzie, just south of the Arctic Coast. These mountains are known, respectively, as the Richardson, Buckland, British, Romanzof, and Franklin Mountains, but in reality they are the western extension of the main Rocky Mountain range that bends west from the Mackenzie along the Arctic Coast. On reaching the neighborhood of these mountains, however, in the winter of 1898-99, all hope of finding living specimens of musk-ox in them was destroyed.