"Restes Henry Arkwright peri Mont Blanc 1866 retrouvés."
Once more the glacier had given up its dead, and during these thirty-one years the body of Henry Arkwright had descended 9000 feet in the ice and had been rendered back to his family at the foot of the glacier.
The remains of the Englishman were buried at Chamonix, and perhaps never has so pathetic a service been held there as that which consigned to the earth what was left of him who thirty-one years before had been snatched away in the mighty grip of the avalanche.
Many belongings of the lost one's came by degrees to light. A pocket-handkerchief was intact, and on it as well as on his shirt-front, Henry Arkwright's name and that of his regiment written in marking-ink were legible. Though the shirt was torn to pieces, yet two of the studs and the collar-stud were still in the button-holes and uninjured. The gold pencil-case (I have handled it), opened and shut as smoothly as it had ever done, and on the watch-chain there was not a scratch. A pair of gloves were tied together with a boot-lace which his sister remembered taking from her own boot so that he might have a spare one, and coins, a used cartridge, and various other odds and ends, were all recovered from the ice.
The remains of the guides had been found and brought down soon after the accident, but that of Henry Arkwright had been buried too deeply to be discovered.
In connection with the preservation of bodies in ice the following extract from The Daily Telegraph for 10th May 1902 is of great interest. It is headed:
MAMMOTH 8000 YEARS OLD
Reuter's representative has had an interview with Mr J. Talbot Clifton, who has lately returned from an expedition in Northern Siberia, undertaken for the purpose of discovering new species of animals.
Mr Clifton gives the following account of the Herz mammoth, which he saw on his arrival at Irkutsk. "It is," he said, "about the size of an elephant, which it resembles somewhat in form. It possesses a trunk, has five toes instead of four, and is a heavy beast. It is supposed to have lived about 8000 years ago. Its age was probably not more than twenty-six years—very young for a mammoth. Its flesh was quite complete, except for a few pieces which had been bitten at by wolves or bears. Most of the hair on the body had been scraped away by ice, but its mane and near foreleg were in perfect preservation and covered with long hair. The hair of the mane was from 4 in. to 5 in. long, and of a yellowish brown colour, while its left leg was covered with black hair. In its stomach was found a quantity of undigested food, and on its tongue was the herbage which it had been eating when it died. This was quite green."