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pendicular elevation of thirty or forty toises. Its substance is a clear pure ice; it
inclines towards the sea; its top is covered with a layer of moss and friable earth
fourteen inches in thickness. During the heat of the month of July a part of
this crust is melted, but the rest remains frozen. Curiosity induced me to ascend
two other hills at some distance from the sea; they were of the same substance,
and less covered with moss. In various places were seen enormous pieces of
wood of all the kinds produced in Siberia; and also mammoth’s horns, in great
numbers, appeared between the hollows of the rocks; they all were of astonishing
freshness. The escarpment of ice was from thirty-five to forty toises high ; and,
according to the report of the Tungusians, the animal was, when they first saw
it, seven toises below the surface of the ice,” &c.
I have to observe on this passage, that it contains no decisive evidence to
show tliat the ice seen by Mr. Adams on the front of the cliff from which the
elephant had fallen was any thing more than a superficial facing, similar to that
found by Captain Beechey on parts of the front of the earthy clitf in Eschscholtz
Bay; the same cliff which, a few years before, when visited by Kotzebue, seems to
have been so completely incased with a false fronting of ice as to induce him
to consider the entire hill to be a solid iceberg. One thing, however, is certain
as to this mammoth, viz. that whether it was imbedded in a matrix of pure ice or
of frozen earth, it must have been rapidly and totally enveloped in that matrix
before its flesh had undergone decay, and that whatever may have been the
climate of the coast of Siberia in antecedent periods, not only was it intensely cold
within a few days after the mammoth perished, but it has also continued cold from
that time to the present hour.
Remains of the rhinoceros also appear to be nearly co-extensive with those of
the elephant in these northern regions. Pallas mentions the head of a rhinoceros
which was found beyond Lake Baikal, near Tshikoi, and four heads and five horns
of this animal from various parts of Siberia on the Irtis, the Alei, the Obi, and
the Lena. These horns in the frozen districts are so well preserved that splices of
them are used by the natives to strengthen their bows.
Pallas conceived that these remains are not derived from animals that ever
inhabited Siberia, but from carcasses drifted northward from the soutliern regions
by some violent aqueous catastrophe, and that there is proof both of the violence
and suddenness of this catastrophe in the phenomenon of an entire rhinoceros found
with its skin, tendons, ligaments, and flesh preserved in thejroxen soil of the coldest
part of Eastern Siberia. On the arrival of Pallas in Ircutia in March, 1772, the
head of this animal was laid before him, together with two of its feet, having their
skin and flesh hardened like a mummy; it had been found in December, 1771» in
the sand banks of the Wiliiji, which runs in about 64” of north latitude into the
Lena ; the head and two feet only were taken care of, the rest of the carcass,
though much decayed, was still enclosed in its skin, and was left to perish : the
boneèwere yellow; the foot had on its skin many hairs and roots of hairs. On
various parts ofthe skin were stiff hairs from one to three inches long.
If we compare these phenomena of the arctic regions with those of other
countries, and especially with England, we shall find it by no means peculiar to the
northern extremities of the world to afford extensive deposits of diluvial mud and
gravel, containing the remains of extinct species of the elephant and rhinoceros,
together with those of horses, oxen, deer, and other land quadrupeds. A large
portion of the east coast of England, particularly of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk,
Yorkshire, and Northumberland, is composed of similar deposits of argillaceous
diluvium, loaded in many places with bones of the same species of quadrupeds ;
these deposits occur not only on the low grounds and lands of moderate elevation,
but also on the summits of the highest hills, e. on the chalky cliff of Flambo-
rough Head, four hundred and thirty feet above the sea. In the central parts of
England, near Rugby, we have similar deposits, containing bones, tusks, and
teeth of the same species of animals. In Scotland we have the same argillaceous
diluvium on the east coast, near Peterhead, and near the western coast, at Kilmaurs,
in Ayrshire, where it contains tusks of elephants and bones.
The analogies which these deposits offer to those in the arctic regions are
very striking. In both cases the bones ave of the same species of animals. In both
cases they are imbedded in superficial deposits of mud and gravel of enormous
extent and thickness. In both cases the deposits derive no accession from existing
causes, and are suffering only continual loss and destruction by the action of the
atmosphere, of rivers, and of the sea. Their chief peculiarity in the polar regions
seems to consist in the congelation, to which the diluvium itself as well as the
remains included in it are subject, from the influence of the present polar climate.
Examples might be quoted to show the occurrence of similar remains in diluvial
deposits all over Europe, and largely in America. Having then such extensive
accumulations of the bones of animals, and the detritus of rocks, all apparently
resulting from the simultaneous action of water, but which the operation of
existing seas and rivers in the districts occupied by this detritus can never have
produced, and are only tending to destroy, we may surely be justified in referring
them all to some adequate and common cause, such as the catastrophe of a violent
and general inundation alone seems competent to have afforded.
'ïho facts we have been considering arc obviously much connected with the
still unsettled question respecting the former climate and temperature of that part
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