--had he done this, I say, I could have
taken him by the hand for the true sportsman that he was. Not he. He
sniffed, looked on me, and sniffed again; then gave my tobacco due
praise, thrust one foot into my lap, and bade me examine the gear. It
was a _mucluc_ of the Innuit pattern, sewed together with sinew threads,
and devoid of beads or furbelows. But it was the skin itself that was
remarkable. In that it was all of half an inch thick, it reminded me of
walrus-hide; but there the resemblance ceased, for no walrus ever bore so
marvellous a growth of hair. On the side and ankles this hair was well-
nigh worn away, what of friction with underbrush and snow; but around the
top and down the more sheltered back it was coarse, dirty black, and very
thick. I parted it with difficulty and looked beneath for the fine fur
that is common with northern animals, but found it in this case to be
absent. This, however, was compensated for by the length. Indeed, the
tufts that had survived wear and tear measured all of seven or eight
inches.

I looked up into the man's face, and he pulled his foot down and asked,
"Find hide like that on your St Elias bear?"

I shook my head. "Nor on any other creature of land or sea," I answered
candidly. The thickness of it, and the length of the hair, puzzled me.

"That," he said, and said without the slightest hint of impressiveness,
"that came from a mammoth."

"Nonsense!" I exclaimed, for I could not forbear the protest of my
unbelief. "The mammoth, my dear sir, long ago vanished from the earth.
We know it once existed by the fossil remains that we have unearthed, and
by a frozen carcase that the Siberian sun saw fit to melt from out the
bosom of a glacier; but we also know that no living specimen exists. Our
explorers--"

At this word he broke in impatiently. "Your explorers? Pish! A weakly
breed. Let us hear no more of them. But tell me, O man, what you may
know of the mammoth and his ways."

Beyond contradiction, this was leading to a yarn; so I baited my hook by
ransacking my memory for whatever data I possessed on the subject in
hand. To begin with, I emphasized that the animal was prehistoric, and
marshalled all my facts in support of this. I mentioned the Siberian
sand-bars that abounded with ancient mammoth bones; spoke of the large
quantities of fossil ivory purchased from the Innuits by the Alaska
Commercial Company; and acknowledged having myself mined six- an