coasts occasionally in the hunting season, may have brought with them the reindeer
from which these horns had been derived. This hypothesis may explain the
presence of such horns in a spot which no wild rein-deer are known to frequent at
present ; but as Kotzebue (p. 219) mentions also the abundance of drift-wood upon
the shores of this bay, it is probable that the same currents which brought the wood
may have also brought the carcasses of rein-deer, and have stranded them on the
shores where their horns were found.
The agency of the same currents to which I have referred the drifting of the
carcasses of rein-deer into Eschscholtz Bay will also equally explain the presence
of recent bones of the musk-ox in this bay on the same shoal with the bones of
elephants that had fallen from the cliff. I have already stated that the condition
of the skull and horns of a musk-ox, which were brought home with the fossil bones,
is so very recent, and differs so essentially from the condition of all the bones of
elephants from this place, that it is impossible it can have been buried in the same
matrix with them ; for, in such case, all would have been nearly in the same state,
either of preservation or decay.
It is stated by Cuvier (Ossemens Fossiles, second edition, vol. iv. p. 165),
that a similar doubt is attached to the heads of musk-oxen described by Pallas and
Ozeretzkovsky, as found near the mouth of the Ob, and at the embouchure of the
Yana, and that there is yet no sufficient proof of the existence of any fossil species
of musk-ox that may be considered of the same age with the fossil elephant, or
which can be brought in evidence as to the question of the climate of the polar
regions when these elephants were living. Of the very few remains of musk-oxen
which have yet been found, it does not appear that any have been buried at a
great depth.
There is nothing peculiar to Eschscholtz Bay in the occurrence of bones of
horses with those of elephants: from the number of localities in which their teeth
and bones have been found together, in diluvial deposits, it appears that more than
one species of horse was coextensive with the fossil elephant in its occupation of
the ancient surface of the earth. Wild horses are at present almost unknown,
except in warm or temperate latitudes.
We may now consider how far the facts we have collected respecting the
bones in Eschscholtz Bay are in accordance with similar occurrences, either in the
adjoining regions of the north, or in other still more distant parts of the earth,
and in different latitudes.
It is stated by Pallas in the 17th volume of the New Commentaries of the
Academy of Petersburg, 177^, that throughout the whole of northern Asia,
from the Don to the extreme point nearest America, there is scarce any great
river in whose banks they do not find the bones of elephants and other large
animals which cannot now endure the climate of this district, and that all the
fossil ivory which is collected for sale throughout Siberia is extracted from the
lofty, precipitous, and sandy banks of the rivers of that country; that in every
climate and latitude, from the zone of mountains in central Asia to the frozen
coasts of the Arctic Ocean, all Siberia abounds with these bones, but that the best
fossil ivory is found in the frozen lands adjacent to the arctic circle; that the
bones of large and small animals lie in some places piled together in great heaps,
but, in general, they are scattered separately, as if they had been agitatedby
waters, and buried in mud and gravel.
The term mammoth has been applied indiscriminately to all the largest
species of fossil animals, and is a word of Tartar origin, meaning simply “ animal
of the earth.” It is now appropriated exclusively to the fossil elephant, of which
one species only has been yet established, differing materially from the two existing
species, which are limited, one to Asia, the other to Africa.
Of all the fossil animals that have been ever discovered, the most remarkable
is the entire carcass of a mammoth, with its flesh, skin, and hair still fresh and
well preserved, which in the year 1803 fell from the frozen cliff of a peninsula in
Siberia, near the mouth of the Lena Nearly five years elapsed between the
period when this carcass was first observed by a Tungusian in the thawing cliff, in
1799, and the moment when it became entirely disengaged, and fell down upon
the strand, between the shore and the base of the cliff. Here it lay two more years,
till great part of the flesh was devoured by wolves and bears; the skeleton was
then collected by Mr. Adams and sent to Petersburg. Many of the ligaments
were perfect, and also the head, with its integuments, weighing four hundred and
fourteen pounds without the tusks, whose weight together was three hundred and
sixty pounds. Great part of the skin of the body was preserved, and was covered
with reddish wool and black hairs ; about thirty-six pounds of hair were collected
from the sand, into which it had been trampled by the bears.
The following description, by Mr. Adams, of the place in which this mammoth
was found will form an interesting subject of comparison with Captain
Beechey’s account of the cliff in Eschscholtz Bay: “ The place where 1 found the
mammoth is about sixty paces distant from the shore, and nearly a hundred
paces from the escarpment of the ice from which it had fallen. This escarpment
occupies exactly tlie middle between the two points of tlie peninsula, and is two
miles long; and in the place where the mammoth was found, this rock has a per-
* The details of this case were published by Dr. Tilesius in the fifth vol. of the Memoirs of the Academy of
Petersburg, and also by Mr. Adams in the Journal du Nord, printed at Petersburg in 1807.