This lasted until the next year, when a messenger from the capital brought a letter to Ivan from the emperor himself, thanking him for his narrative, sending him a rich present, his warm approval, and the office of first civil magistrate in the city of Yakoutsk. This turned the scales wholly on one side, and Maria bowed low to Kolina. But Kolina had no feelings of the parvenu, and she was always a general favorite. Ivan accepted with pride his sovereign's favor, and by dint of assiduity, soon learned to be a useful magistrate. He always remained a good husband, a good father, and a good son, for he made the heart of old Sakalar glad. He never regretted his journey: he always declared he owed to it wealth and happiness, a high position in society, and an admirable wife. Great rejoicings took place many years after in Yakoutsk, at the marriage of the son of Maria, united to the daughter of Ivan, and from the first unto the last, none of the parties concerned ever had reason to mourn over the perilous journey in search of the Ivory Mine.
For the information of the non-scientific, it may be necessary to mention that the ivory alluded to in the preceding tale, is derived from the tusks of the mammoth, or fossil elephant of the geologist. The remains of this gigantic quadruped are found all over the northern hemisphere, from the 40th to the 75th degree of latitude: but most abundantly in the region which lies between the mountains of Central Asia and the shores and islands of the Frozen Sea. So profusely do they exist in this region, that the tusks have for more than a century constituted an important article of traffic—furnishing a large proportion of the ivory required by the carver and turner. The remains lie imbedded in the upper tertiary clays and gravels; and these, by exposure to the river-currents, to the waves of the sea, and other erosive agencies, are frequently swept away during the thaws of summer, leaving tusks and bones in masses, and occasionally even entire skeletons, in a wonderful state of preservation. The most perfect specimen yet obtained, and from the study of which the zoologist has been enabled to arrive at an accurate knowledge of the structure and habits of the mammoth, is that discovered by a Tungusian fisherman, near the mouth of the river Lena, in the summer of 1799.
Being in the habit of collecting tusks among the debris of the gravel-cliffs, (for it is generally at a considerable elevation in the cliffs and river banks that the remains occur,) he observed a strange shapeless mass projecting from an ice-bank some fifty or sixty feet above the river; during next summer's thaw he saw the same object, rather more disengaged from amongst the ice; in 1801 he could distinctly perceive the tusk and flank of an immense animal; and in 1803, in consequence of an earlier and more powerful thaw, the huge carcase became entirely disengaged, and fell on the sandbank beneath. In the spring of the following year the fisherman cut off the tusks, which he sold for fifty rubles (£7, 10s.;) and two years afterward, our countryman, Mr. Adams, visited the spot, and gives the following account of the extraordinary phenomenon:
"At this time I found the mammoth still in the same place, but altogether mutilated. The discoverer was contented with his profit for the tusks, and the Yakoutski of the neighborhood had cut off the flesh, with which they fed their dogs. During the scarcity, wild beasts, such as white bears, wolves, wolverines, and foxes, also fed upon it, and the traces of their footsteps were seen around. The skeleton, almost entirely cleared of its flesh, remained whole, with the exception of a foreleg. The head was covered with a dry skin; one of the ears, well preserved, was furnished with a tuft of hair. All these parts have necessarily been injured in transporting them a distance of 7,330 miles, (to the Imperial museum of St. Petersburgh,) but the eyes have been preserved, and the pupil of one can still be distinguished. The mammoth was a male, with a long mane on the neck. The tail and proboscis were not preserved. The skin, of which I possess three-fourths, is of a dark-gray color, covered with a reddish wool and black hairs: but the dampness of the spot where it had lain so long had in some degree destroyed the hair. The entire carcase, of which I collected the bones on the spot, was nine feet four inches high, and sixteen feet four inches long, without including the tusks, which measured nine feet six inches along the curve. The distance from the base or root of the tusk to the point is three feet seven inches. The two tusks together weighed three hundred and sixty pounds, English weight, and the head alone four hundred and fourteen pounds. The skin was of such weight that it required ten persons to transport it to the shore; and after having cleared the ground, upward of thirty-six pounds of hair were collected, which the white bears had trodden while devouring the flesh."
Since then, other carcases of elephants have been discovered, in a greater or less degree of preservation; as also the remains of rhinoceroses, mastodons, and allied pachyderms—the mammoth more abundantly in the old world, the mastodon in the new. In every case these animals differ from existing species: are of more gigantic dimensions; and, judging from their natural coverings of thick-set curly-crisped wool and strong hair, upward of a foot in length, were fitted to live, if not in a boreal, at least in a coldly-temperate region. Indeed, there is proof positive of the then more milder climate of these regions in the discovery of pine and birch-trunks where no vegetation now flourishes; and further, in the fact that fragments of pine-leaves, birch-twigs, and other northern plants, have been detected between the grinders and within the stomachs of these animals. We have thus evidence, that at the close of the tertiary, and shortly after the commencement of the current epoch, the northern hemisphere enjoyed a much milder climate; that it was the abode of huge pachyderms now extinct; that a different distribution of sea and land prevailed; and that on a new distribution or sea and land, accompanied also by a different relative level, these animals died away, leaving their remains imbedded in the clays, gravels, and other alluvial deposits, where, under the antiseptic influence of an almost eternal frost, many of them have been preserved as entire as at the fatal moment they sank under the rigors of external conditions no longer fitted for their existence. It has been attempted by some to prove the adaptability of these animals to the present conditions of the northern hemisphere; but so untenable in every phase is this opinion, that it would be sheer waste of time and space to attempt its refutation. That they may have migrated northward and southward with the seasons is more than probable, though it has been stated that the remains diminish in size the farther north they are found; but that numerous herds of such huge animals should have existed in these regions at all, and that for thousands of years, presupposes an exuberant arboreal vegetation, and the necessary degree of climate for its growth and development. It has been mentioned that the mastodon and mammoth seem to have attained their meridian toward the close of the tertiary epoch, and that a few may have lived even in the current era; but it is more probable that the commencement of existing conditions was the proximate cause of their extinction, and that not a solitary specimen ever lived to be the contemporary of man.