Animals of the Past

by Frederic A. Lucas

That man was contemporary with the mammoth in southern Europe is fairly certain, for not only are the remains of the mammoth and man's flint weapons found together, but in a few instances some primeval Landseer graved on slate, ivory, or reindeer antler a sketchy outline of the beast, somewhat impressionistic perhaps, but still, like the work of a true artist, preserving the salient features. We see the curved tusks, the snaky trunk, and the shaggy coat that we know belonged to the mammoth, and we may feel assured that if early man did not conquer the clumsy creature with fire and flint, he yet gazed upon him from the safe vantage point of some lofty tree or inaccessible rock, and then went home to tell his wife and neighbors how the animal escaped because his bow missed fire. That man and mammoth lived together in North America is uncertain; so far there is no evidence to show that they did, although the absence of such evidence is no proof that they did not. That any live mammoth has for centuries been seen on the Alaskan tundras is utterly improbable, and on Mr. C. H. Townsend seems to rest the responsibility of having, though quite unintentionally, introduced the Alaskan Live Mammoth into the columns of the daily press. It befell in this wise: Among the varied duties of our revenue marine is that of patrolling and exploring the shores of arctic Alaska and the waters of the adjoining sea, and it is not so many years ago that the cutter Corwin, if memory serves aright, held the record of farthest north on the Pacific side. On one of these northern trips, to the Kotzebue Sound region, famous for the abundance of its deposits of mammoth bones,[16] the Corwin carried Mr. Townsend, then naturalist to the United States Fish Commission. At Cape Prince of Wales some natives came on board bringing a few bones and tusks of the mammoth, and upon being questioned as to whether or not any of the animals to which they pertained were living, promptly replied that all were dead, inquiring in turn if the white men had ever seen any, and if they knew how these animals, so vastly larger than a reindeer, looked.

[16] Elephant Point, at the mouth of the Buckland River, is so named from the numbers of mammoth bones which have accumulated there.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, there was on board a text-book of geology containing the well-known cut of the St. Petersburg mammoth, and this was brought forth, greatly to the edification of the natives, who were delighted at recognizing the curved tusks and the bones they knew so well. Next the natives wished to know what the outside of the creature looked like, and as Mr. Townsend had been at Ward's establishment in Rochester when the first copy of the Stuttgart restoration was made, he rose to the emergency, and made a sketch. This was taken ashore, together with a copy of the cut of the skeleton that was laboriously made by an Innuit sprawled out at full length on the deck. Now the Innuits, as Mr. Townsend tells us, are great gadabouts, making long sledge journeys in winter and equally long trips by boat in summer, while each season they hold a regular fair on Kotzebue Sound, where a thousand or two natives gather to barter and gossip. On these journeys and at these gatherings the sketches were no doubt passed about, copied, and recopied, until a large number of Innuits had become well acquainted with the appearance of the mammoth, a knowledge that naturally they were well pleased to display to any white visitors. Also, like the Celt, the Alaskan native delights to give a "soft answer," and is always ready to furnish the kind of information desired. Thus in due time the newspaper man learned that the Alaskans could make pictures of the mammoth, and that they had some knowledge of its size and habits; so with inference and logic quite as good as that of the Tungusian peasant, the reporter came to the conclusion that somewhere in the frozen wilderness the last survivor of the mammoths must still be at large. And so, starting on the Pacific coast, the Live Mammoth story wandered from paper to paper, until it had spread throughout the length and breadth of the United States, when it was captured by Mr. Tukeman, who with much artistic color and some realistic touches, transferred it to McClure's Magazine, and—unfortunately for the officials thereof—to the Smithsonian Institution.

And now, once for all, it may be said that there is no mounted mammoth to awe the visitor to the national collections or to any other; and yet there seems no good and conclusive reason why there should not be. True, there are no live mammoths to be had at any price; neither are their carcasses to be had on demand; still there is good reason to believe that a much smaller sum than that said to have been paid by Mr. Conradi for the mammoth which is not in the Smithsonian Institution, would place one there.[17] It probably could not be done in one year; it might not be possible in five years; but should any man of means wish to secure enduring fame by showing the world the mammoth as it stood in life, a hundred centuries ago, before the dawn of even tradition, he could probably accomplish the result by the expenditure of a far less sum than it would cost to participate in an international yacht race.

[17] Since these lines were written another fine example of the Mammoth has been discovered in Siberia and even now (Oct., 1901) an expedition is on its way to secure the skin and skeleton for the Academy of Natural Sciences at St. Petersburg.

REFERENCES

The mounted skeleton of the mammoth in the museum of the Chicago Academy of Science is still the only one on exhibition in the United States; this specimen is probably the Southern Mammoth, Elephas columbi, a species, or race, characterized by its great size and the coarse structure of the teeth. Remains of the mammoth are common enough but, save in Alaska, they are usually in a poor state of preservation or consist of isolated bones or teeth. A great many skeletons of mammoth have been found by gold miners in Alaska, and with proper care some of these could undoubtedly have been secured. Naturally, however, the miners do not feel like taking the time and trouble to exhume bones whose value is uncertain, while the cost of transportation precludes the bringing out of many specimens.

Some reports of mammoths have been based on the bones of whales, including a skull that was figured in the daily papers.

Almost every museum has on exhibition teeth of the mammoth, and there is a skull, though from a small individual, of the Southern Mammoth in the American Museum of Natural History, New York.