A SIBERIAN MAMMOTH.
Some four or five years ago I came across an American illustrated
newspaper containing an account of the discovery of a perfect mammoth
in Siberia, where it had been imbedded in a glacier for thousands of
years. It was stated that an expedition had been sent from St.
Petersburg by the Imperial Academy of Sciences, headed by Dr. Herz;
also that later a telegram had been received stating the expedition
had been successful in securing the animal complete, and that all the
principal parts, including even part of the contents of the stomach,
had been secured and were being brought on sledges overland for
thousands of miles. I was intensely interested in the alleged
discovery, and made many enquiries of various people to find out if
there was anything in it more than sensation such as is often got
from some of the American papers. The result of my enquiries was very
disappointing; most of those I interviewed considered it a yarn. I
let the matter rest for some time and then decided to write a friend
in St. Petersburg for particulars. Mrs. Calthorpe (_nee_
Dunsmuir), wife of Captain Gough-Calthorpe, who was naval attache to
the British Legation at the time, responded in due course of time,
sending me a photo (Since lost.--E. F.), reproduced herewith, of the
animal as it appeared stuffed in the Imperial Museum, and the promise
of a description, which Mr. Norman, secretary of the legation, had
kindly promised to translate from the Russian for me. This has lately
come to hand, and as Mr. Norman states, is rather disappointing--that
is, as regards the size of the mammoth, it being a young one. The
wonderful part of the story is that the stomach of the mammoth
contained food as fresh as the day it was eaten thousands of years
ago. The food seems to have been young shoots of a species of pine
tree, with vegetable matter. The hair on its back was about 13 inches
long, with a thick fur at the roots of the hair. I submit the
translated account by Mr. Norman, with his letter to me, which I
think will be interesting to the many friends of the two British
Columbia ladies mentioned therein. I also give an account of the
expedition as contained in the newspapers at the time of discovery,
as follows:
Story of the Scientific Expedition.
"The discovery of the mammoth to which the cable despatch on this
page refers, was reported during the summer, and has excited the
widest interest in scientific circles.
"A very interesting account of the discovery by Dr. von Adelung,
curator of the museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St.
Petersburg, has just appeared in the _Globus_, a leading German
scientific paper, of Brunswick.
"From this account it appears that the mammoth was first reported by
a Cossack named Jawlowsky. He found it in a glacier near the
Beresowka River, a tributary of the Kolyma River, in far Northeastern
Siberia. The nearest settlement is Sredne Kolymsk, three hundred
versts (a verst is 3,500 yards) away.
"The situation of the body is a very extraordinary one.
It lies in an enormous pocket of ice, between the mountains, near
the river bank. The ice is evidently the relic of the great glacier
that existed here in former ages. The upper ice in time flowed away,
leaving only the lower part shut up in this pocket. The River
Beresowka only thaws for a short time in summer. The surface of
the earth in this region also thaws only at this season, and then
only to a depth of two or three feet. Beneath that the soil is
eternally frozen.
"A slight melting of the surface of the ice left a bright, smooth
space, peering through which the Cossack Jawlowsky saw the ancient
mammoth preserved, as we sometimes see a lobster in a cake of ice.
The Cossack knew how interesting such relics were to civilized men
and promptly reported this one.
"Through the agency of Mr. Horn, the Chief of Police of Kolymsk, the
Cossack's report was conveyed to the Governor of Yakutsk. He being
interested in scientific matters, promptly communicated the report to
the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg.
"The greatest scientific undertaking of this kind ever made was then
determined upon. This was nothing less than an expedition to bring
back the complete body of the mammoth. It was promptly organized by
the Imperial Academy, with the fullest assistance of the government
and the Ministry of Finance. Dr. Otto Herz, curator of the Imperial
Museum, was appointed leader of the expedition, with Dr. Pfitzenmayer
as assistant.
"The expedition proceeded along the Trans-Siberian railroad as far as
Irkutsk. From there to the place of the discovery is a journey by
land and water of fully 3,000 miles. The scientists made part of this
journey in boats down the Lena River to Jakutsk. They then
started on an overland journey to Sredne Kolymsk. They took fifty
horses for transport. A large part of the way lay through virgin
forest. Then came the formation called the Taiga, a sort of Arctic
moorland, which becomes swampy and dangerous in summer.
"The scientists had to live on salt fish, mare's milk and stewed tree
bark. Several lives were lost on the journey, but it is now known
that the chief scientists reached their destination. They proceeded
without delay to excavate the mammoth.
"The flesh is treated with arsenic and then sewn up in new cowhide,
which shrinks, becomes air-tight and preserves the contents.
"Nothing more will probably be heard from the scientists during the
present winter. Dr. Herz, according to the last report, was in doubt
as to which of two ways he will take in returning. He may, during the
coming summer, endeavor to take the mammoth's remains overland to
Markova, a little settlement on the Anadyr River, which runs into
Behring Sea. There he would winter and go down the river at the
opening of next summer, and catch the steamship that calls there once
a year.
"If this proves impracticable, he will have to wait until the winter
of 1902-1903, and take the remains overland by sledges to Irkutsk. It
would be impossible to make this tremendous journey in summer,
through a roadless country, where there are thousands of square miles
of swamps.
"Numerous relics of mammoths have been discovered in Siberia,
including pieces of skin, and all the bones. On more than one
occasion a complete animal has been found preserved in the ice,
but a complete animal has never been secured in its entirety and
brought back to civilization. That is exactly what the Imperial
Academy of Sciences now proposes to do. According to the last report
from Irkutsk, it is in a fair way to accomplish this.
"It is, perhaps, one of the most marvellous facts in the whole realm
of nature that the body of a mammoth should be preserved exactly as
it existed in life thousands and thousands of years ago, but there is
every reason to believe that this happened in countless cases.
"The mammoth was a gigantic species of extinct elephant. It
flourished in past geological ages, and also survived into the days
of early man. When the Palaeolithic or Old Stone man flourished on
earth two hundred thousand years ago, the mammoth was as common as
the horse to-day. In no part of the world were mammoths more abundant
than in Northern Siberia. They must have roamed about there as freely
as the buffalo did in North America fifty years ago.
"Though similar in structure to the modern elephant, the mammoth was
very different in habits. He was a northern animal, and with this in
view was provided with a very long, thick hair, reddish in color,
like that of the camel. He had extraordinary teeth and stomach, so
that he was able to masticate and digest, not only plants, leaves and
so forth, but wood and the trunks of trees. His stomach has been
found full of young fir trees. His teeth were built in layers and
renewed themselves ceaselessly through life.
"Sometimes the mammoth would become mired in a soft spot of earth,
and there sink in, die, become frozen and preserved forever. Another
mammoth, while walking across a glacier, would fall into a crevasse,
and there become frozen in a gigantic block of ice. That is what
happened in the case of the animal recently discovered in
Siberia. The soil is generally frozen to a depth of four hundred
feet in Northern Siberia.
"There were many species of mammoths, some of them existing in
earlier ages than others. One species was provided with four tusks,
the upper ones turning up as in the present elephant, and the lower
turning down, as in the walrus. These horns were of gigantic size, in
some cases measuring twelve feet long. They were adapted principally
to digging up and pulling down trees. The mastodon was a giant
elephant of a still earlier period than the mammoth.
"In spite of their gigantic size and weapons, the mammoths were
frequently killed by prehistoric men. These men must have been very
brave and determined to kill these huge and terribly armed beasts,
with stone and rude wood and bone spears.
"The very word 'mammoth' is of Siberian Tartar origin, being derived
from the word 'mammoth,' the earth, on account of the beast being
found frozen in the earth. Chinese records show that they, too,
frequently discovered the frozen mammoths. The beast is probably the
same as the 'Behemoth' of the Bible.
"The bones of the mammoth when first discovered in Europe were
variously regarded as the remains of giant men and of elephants that
had been brought to Europe by the ancient Romans. Even the majority
of scientists held to this opinion until Sir Richard Owen, the great
palaeontologist, first proved that they were the remains of an extinct
animal allied to, but of different species from, the elephant.
"One of the first mammoths described by modern scientists was found
on the peninsula of Tamut, near the Lena River, in 1799. It was fully
enclosed in a mass of clear ice. It was uncovered and rotted away
in 1804."
Mr. Norman's Letter.
The following is a copy of Mr. Norman's letter:
"British Embassy, St. Petersburg,
"Dec. 24, 1904.
"Dear Sir,--Before leaving St. Petersburg, Mrs. Gough-Calthorpe, wife
of our late naval attache, asked me to send you some information
about the stuffed mammoth which is in the Zoological Museum here, as
you were interested in such things, and I promised to translate the
passage in the catalogue which refers to the animal.
"The revolution which has been raging here for the last few months
has given me so much to do I really have not had time to keep my
promise sooner. However, I now send you the translation, which, I
fear, tells disappointingly little about the mammoth, giving no
measurements nor any description of his appearance. The earlier part,
too, about the distribution of the elephant family, is doubtless also
stale news to you.
"You have, I believe, already received a photograph of him from Mrs.
Calthorpe, so you know what he looks like, but as I have seen him
very often, I may add a few details as to his personal appearance
from my own observation. He is smaller than I expected--a good deal
smaller than an elephant, but then, it is true, he was young when he
died, not full grown, I suppose. His tusks are magnificent. His
hair is very thick, abundant and long and of a fashionable dark
reddish-brown tint. Otherwise he is very like an elephant in
general build, and I should say, so far as I can judge without
being a specialist, in details also.
"I hope these few details may be of use to you. Should you want more
about the mammoth, or require information about anything else in the
museum here, I shall be very glad to do my best to satisfy you.
"The Calthorpes are much regretted by all of us here, as they were
greatly beloved by us. Curiously enough, the wife of Calthorpe's
successor, Captain Victor Stanley, also comes from British Columbia.
"Yours very truly,
"H. Norman.
"Secretary to His Majesty's Embassy.
"I send this by King's messenger as far as London, which will still
further delay it, but the posts are now very irregular and unsafe in
Russia owing to the revolutionary strikes. H. N."
Translation from Catalogue.
"During the tertiary period elephants were very numerous and were
distributed over Europe, Asia as far as the Arctic Ocean, North
America and Africa. By the remains excavated, many species of extinct
elephants are now distinguished, among which one, known under the
name of Mammoth (_Elephas Primigenius_), existed in immense
numbers in Europe and in Siberia as far as its most northern limits.
In Siberia the frozen bodies of these animals have frequently been
found well preserved, with the skin and flesh. On account of the
remoteness of the places where these bodies have been found, not all
the expeditions sent to exhume them have had a successful issue.
In this connection the most successful of all was that organized by the
Academy of Sciences in 1901 to the River Berezovka, in the Yakutsk
district, which consisted of Messrs. O. F. Herz and E. W. Pfitzenmayer.
Thanks to this expedition an excellent specimen of the mammoth was
received by the Academy of Sciences,--rather young, with skin, parts
of the internal organs, some food and almost the whole skeleton.
Unfortunately some of the soft parts of the body, such as the trunk,
were not found. The remains of this mammoth made it possible not only
to set up the skeleton, but to stuff the animal, which is placed in the
position in which it died, suddenly, in all probability, and in which
it was found in a frozen condition."
This story can hardly be called a "reminiscence" of Victoria, but I
thought that it might be interesting to many who, like myself, have a
liking for old and ancient things, as this mammoth most assuredly
was. Also there may be an interest taken in the letter from Mr.
Norman, the secretary to H.M. Embassy, speaking as it does of one who
formerly was a resident and native-born of British Columbia.--E. F.