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 deg. 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 tributar