Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar Life

by Thomas Wallace Knox

My companion took every occurrence with the utmost coolness, and taught me some things in patience I had not known before. He was long accustomed to Siberian travel, having made several scientific journeys through Northern Asia. In 1859 the Russian Geographical Society sent him to visit the Amoor valley and explore the island of Sakhalin. His journey thither was accomplished in winter, and when he returned he brought many valuable data touching the geology and the vegetable and animal life of the island. He told me he spoke the American language, having learned it among my countrymen at Nicolayevsk, but had never studied English. His journey to the Arctic Circle was made on behalf of the Russian Academy of Science, of which he was an active member.

In 1865 the captain of a Yenesei steamer learned that some natives had discovered the perfectly preserved remains of a mammoth in latitude 67°, about a hundred versts west of the river. He announced the fact to a savant, who sent the intelligence to St. Petersburg. Scientific men deemed the discovery so important that they immediately commissioned Dr. Schmidt to follow it up. The doctor went to Eastern Siberia in February, and in the following month proceeded down the Yenesei to Turuhansk, where he remained four or five weeks waiting for the season of warmth and light. He was accompanied by Mr. Lopatin, a Russian geologist, and a staff of three or four assistants. They carried a photographic apparatus, and one of the sensations of their voyage was to take photographs at midnight in the light of a blazing sun.

When the Yenesei was free of ice the explorers, in a barge, descended from Turuhansk to the landing place nearest the mammoth deposit. Several Cossacks accompanied the party from Turuhansk, and assisted in its intercourse with the natives. The latter were peacefully inclined, and gladly served the men who came so recently from the emperor’s dwelling place. They brought their reindeer and sledges, and guided the explorers to the object of their search. The country in the Arctic Circle has very little vegetation, and the drift wood that descends the Yenesei is an important item to the few natives along the river. The trees growing north of latitude 66° are very small, and as one nears the coast of the Frozen Ocean they disappear altogether. The principal features of the country are the wide tundras, or moss-covered plains, similar to those of North Eastern Siberia.

The scattered aboriginals are Tunguse and Samoyedes. Their chief employment is the chase in winter, fishing in summer, and the care of their reindeer at all seasons. Reindeer form their principal wealth, and are emphatically the circulating medium of the country. Dr. Schmidt told me he rode in a reindeer sledge from the river to within a short distance of the mammoth. It was the month of June, but the snow had not disappeared and nothing could be accomplished. A second visit several weeks later was more successful. In the interval the party embarked on the steamer which makes one or two journeys every summer to the Arctic Ocean in search of fish, furs, and ivory. A vigorous traffic is maintained during the short period that the river remains open.

On the return from the Arctic Ocean, the season was more favorable to mammoth-hunting. Unfortunately the remains were not perfect. The skeleton was a good deal broken and scattered, and some parts were altogether lacking. The chief object of the enterprise was to obtain the stomach of the mammoth so that its contents could be analyzed. It is known that the beast lived upon vegetable food, but no one has yet ascertained its exact character. Some contend that the mammoth was a native of the tropics, and his presence in the north is due to the action of an earthquake. Others think he dwelt in the Arctic regions, and never belonged in the tropics.

“If we had found his stomach,” said the doctor, “and ascertained what kind of trees were in it, this question would have been decided. We could determine his residence from the character of his food.”

Though making diligent search the doctor found no trace of the stomach, and the great point is still open to dispute. He brought away the under jaw of the beast, and a quantity of skin and hair. The skin was half an inch thick, and as dry and hard as a piece of sole leather. The hair was like fine long bristles, and of a reddish brown color. From the quantity obtained it is thought the animal was pretty well protected against ordinary weather. The doctor gave me a cigar tube which a Samoyede fabricated from a small bone of the mammoth. He estimated that the beast had been frozen about ten thousand years in the bank where he found him, and that his natural dwelling place was in the north. The country was evidently much warmer when the mammoth, roamed over it than now, and there is a belief that some convulsion of the earth, followed by a lowering of the temperature, sealed the remains of the huge beasts in the spots where they are now discovered.

In the year 1799 a bank of frozen earth near the mouth of the Lina, in Latitude 77° broke away and revealed the body of a mammoth. Hair, skin, flesh and all, had been completely preserved by the frost. In 1806 a scientific commission visited the spot, but the lapse of seven years proved of serious consequence. There had been a famine in the surrounding region, and the natives did not scruple to feed their dogs from the store of flesh which nature had preserved. Not supposing the emperor desired the bones of the beast they carried away such as they fancied. The teeth of the bears, wolves, and foxes were worse than the tooth of Time, and finished all edible substance the natives did not take. Only the skeleton remained, and of this several bones were gone. All that could be found was taken, and is now in the Imperial collection at St. Petersburg.

The remains of the mammoth show that the beast was closely akin to the elephant, but had a longer and more compressed skull, and wore his tusks in a different manner. Tusks have been found more than nine feet long, and I am told that one discovered some years ago, exceeds ten feet in length. The skull from the Lena mammoth weighed four hundred and some odd pounds. Others have been found much larger. The mammoth was evidently an animal that commanded the respect of the elephant, and other small fry quadrupeds.

Bones of the rhinoceros and hippopotamus abound in Northern Siberia, and like those of the mammoth are found in the frozen earth. In the last century the body of a rhinoceros of an extinct species was found on the river Vilouy, a tributary of the Lena. In the museum at St. Petersburg there is a head of the Arctic rhinoceros on which the skin and tendons remain, and a foot of the same animal displays a portion of its hair. The claws of an enormous bird are also found in the north, some of them three feet long, and jointed through their whole length like the claws of an ostrich.