The ivory king

In one of the old Chinese histories, there is a description of a curious creature called tyn-schu, supposed to be a subterranean, rat-like animal. It lived, according to the old chroniclers, entirely beneath the ground; was as large as an ox; and had enormous tusks, with which it threw up the soil, or made its burrows; and the rumbling of earthquakes was attributed to them. This was naturally considered a fable by Europeans, but finally an English traveller was shown a piece of the tusk. He found it to be ivory, and suspected that the strange animal was a mammoth, as indeed was the case. The bodies of these elephantine giants were found in the far North, buried in the tundra; and the simple Chinamen believed that they lived there, and on their return from trading-trips told the story in the South; and thus it became a part of their curious and, it is needless to say, erroneous history.

The mammoth may rightly be considered the king of all elephants, and in general appearance it much resembled the African species. The full adult may have been a third more bulky than the largest existing elephants, and undoubtedly weighed at least twice as much. To protect them from the cold, they were covered with hair, which gave them a ferocious appearance. The hair was of three kinds: first there was a thick coat of reddish wool; over this grew a coat of long, thick hair; while upon the neck was a heavy mane. The tusks of the mammoth were enormous: some measured thirteen feet in length; and, curved in a circle, gave the animal a strange and formidable appearance.

While the mammoth greatly resembled the African elephant, there are some points of difference. The skull is narrower at the summit, and the molar teeth have great breadth of crown as compared to the length: the ridges also are narrow and crowded, while the enamel is thin and straight, the crimping that is seen in others being absent. The molars number, as in other elephants, eight, at one time present; or, one and a portion of another one each side of both jaws.

This huge elephant flourished principally in the far North; and, as its remains are now found in the greatest abundance on the shores of the Arctic Sea, it must have existed in vast herds. The majority of specimens discovered are buried in the soil, that is now frozen the year round in a solid mass for many feet. The finest specimen known is a skeleton in the museum at St. Petersburg; the original having been discovered in 1799 by a poor fisherman named Schumachoff, a Tongoose, who every spring followed down the Lena River that led into the Arctic Sea. One day while engaged in following his vocation, he observed on the side of a tundra a shapeless mass, appearing like some huge monster entombed. The following year he returned to the same locality, and found that the object had weathered out still more, and was a mammoth—a veritable frozen giant. Still, he could not claim the fine tusks; and another year passed, and then his family were so superstitions that they refused to consent to his again visiting the strange animal that he had described. But finally, five years after his first trip, he determined to again visit the scene of his discovery. He sailed down the river in his small boat, and, with mingled emotions of fear and curiosity, approached the imprisoned monster. Raising his eyes on reaching the spot, he saw a great cavity in the cliff, but the mammoth was gone. The ice had melted away, but beneath where the giant had rested lay the enormous body. The tusks were still intact; and Schumachoff carried them South in triumph, where he realized fifty rubles from the sale, leaving the body—which, wonderful to relate, was as fresh as if the animal had died only a week before—to the bears and wolves.

We could hardly expect a poor fisherman to know that it was a valuable scientific discovery, and it was only by accident that the story of the strange animal reached the scientific world. Seven years later a Mr. Adams visited the spot, where he found the mammoth still in the flesh, with the exception of the fore-leg; and, even after this lapse of time, its preservation was remarkable. The pupil of the eye was still intact; and the brain rested in the cranium, the tissues being so perfect that they could hardly be distinguished from those of a living animal. During the interim between its fall upon the beach and Mr. Adams’s visit, it had attracted numbers of wild animals,—bears, foxes, etc.,—that devoured much of the meat, that had been preserved for perhaps thousands of years. The neck of the animal was still covered with a long mane; and next to the skin was a thick brown wool, that was evidently very valuable as a protection against the severe cold. Much of the hair and wool of the huge creature was ground into the soil, but thirty pounds of this reddish wool was recovered. Mr. Adams purchased the tusks, which were nine feet in length; and finally the entire skeleton was removed to St. Petersburg, where it may still be seen.

From the description and measurements of the skeleton, Professor Ward has made a restoration of this ancient giant, which gives a striking idea of the grandeur of its appearance. (See Plate III.)

Dr. Pallas was the first to describe the mammoth with scientific accuracy; and Blumenbach gave it its present name, Elephas primigenius. In the northern countries it ranged the forests at one time in vast numbers, being especially common in England and Wales, where its remains are generally found in caves and river-deposits. In Yorkshire and Wales it was evidently followed by hyenas, that dragged its bones into the caves. W. Boyd Dawkins says, that, in the spring of 1866, he accompanied Mr. Antonio Brady to the Uphall pit, England, and describes his finds as follows:—

“At the top, there was the surface-soil from one to three feet deep; then an irregularly stratified layer of brick-earth and gravel six feet; and lastly, an irregular layer of flint gravel, underneath which was a fine reddish gray sandy loam, four feet thick. All these had been cleared away, leaving a platform exposed, on which was a most remarkable accumulation of bones carefully left in situ by the workmen. On the right hand was a huge tusk of mammoth, eight feet long, with the spiral curvature undisturbed by the pressure of the superadjacent strata. Across it lay a remarkably fine antler of red deer. At a little distance was the frontal portion of the skull of a urns, with its horn-cores perfect to the very tips; while around, bones of various animals were scattered,—of the Rhinoceros hemitœchus, mammoth, urus, horse, either brown or grisly bear, and wolf. As we gazed down on this tableau, we could not doubt for a moment that the bottom of an ancient river with all its contents lay before our eyes,—a river in which all these animals had been drowned, and by which they had been swept into the exact position which they then occupied. This inference was confirmed by the examination of the thin layer of sandy gravel on which they rested, for it was full of the shells of Corbicula fluminalis, with the valves together just as in life. There were also specimens of the common anodon of our rivers, and of the Helix nemoralis of our hedge-rows. On a continuation of the same platform, now cut away, the skull of a mammoth was discovered in 1864, perfect, with the exception of the tusks, which had been broken away, with their incisive alveoli. That of the right side lay twenty feet away from the skull, while the left has not yet been discovered. Owing to the surprising skill of Mr. Davies, the skull and tusk were taken up and re-united, and now constitute by far the finest specimen of mammoth in the British Museum. In some cases, the mammoth remains have not been deposited by a river. At Lexden, near Colchester, as the Rev. O. Fisher well observes, they were overwhelmed in a bog, the small bones of the feet being found in their natural position, a fact which shows that they sank feet foremost through the peat into the subjacent clay.”

That the sea has greatly encroached upon the land of England, and that the old grazing-grounds of the mammoth are now under water, is evident from the fact that the teeth of elephants are often dredged up by fishermen; and ivory-hunters in some localities have literally fished for these teeth with drag-nets. A tusk dredged at Scarborough was as fresh as when the animal was alive, and was cut up and used for the various purposes to which ivory is put.

In its day, the mammoth also wandered through the forests of France, and to the south as far as Rome. Portions of its skeleton have been found in the volcanic gravel of Ponte Molle and Monte Sacro, a fact showing that it flourished here when the site of Rome was a bed of lava that flowed from the volcanoes of Central Italy.

Germany was a famous grazing-ground for the mammoth. At Seilberg near Constadt on the Necker, a heap of thirteen tusks and teeth were found “heaped close upon each other,” as if they had been packed artificially. A like find was made in the village of Thiede, four miles south of Brunswick: in a heap of soil ten feet square, there were found eleven tusks, one eleven and another fourteen and three-quarters feet long; thirty molar teeth, and numbers of large bones; “mixed with these were the bones and teeth of rhinoceros, horse, ox, and stag; they all lay mixed confusedly together; none of them were rolled or much broken; and the teeth, for the most part, separate and without the jaws: there were also some horns of stag.”

The borders of the Arctic were, however, the favorite pasturage for these giants; and the store of ivory there may be said to be practically inexhaustible, though the trade in the tusks has been going on with the Jakuti and Tungusians from time immemorial.

The Siberian islands are a favorite locality for collectors, where the tusks have been found protruding from the sand in vast numbers. After Adams, the most valuable find was made by Dr. Middendorf, a famous Siberian explorer, in 1843. It was discovered in latitude 66° 30´, between the Obi and Yenesei, near the Arctic circle. Shortly after, the body of a young one was found in a bed of sand and gravel fifteen feet or so above the sea, near the river Taimyr; and in the former the eye was so perfectly preserved, that the bulb, now in the St. Petersburg museum, looks as though it had been taken from a recent animal.

One of the most interesting mammoth discoveries in late years was made by a young Russian engineer named Benkendorf, who was employed in 1846 by the government to survey the coast off the mouth of the Lena and Indigirka rivers. The discovery is of such great interest and value, that I give it in his own words, the account being an abstract from a letter written to a friend in Germany:—

“In 1846 there was unusually warm weather in the north of Siberia. Already in May unusual rains poured over the moors and bogs, storms shook the earth, and the streams carried not only ice to the sea, but also large tracts of land thawed by the masses of warm water fed by the southern rains.... We steamed on the first favorable day up the Indigirka, but there were no thoughts of land: we saw around us only a sea of dirty brown water, and knew the river only by the rushing and roaring of the stream. The river rolled against us trees, moss, and large masses of peat, so that it was only with great trouble and danger that we could proceed. At the end of the second day, we were only about forty wersts up the stream. Some one had to stand with the sounding-rod in hand continually, and the boat received so many shocks that it shuddered to the keel. A wooden vessel would have been smashed. Around us we saw nothing but the flooded land. For eight days we met with the like hinderances, until at last we reached the place where our Jakuti were to have met us. Farther up was a place called Ujandina, whence the people were to have come to us; but they were not there, prevented evidently by the floods. As we had been here in former years, we knew the place. But how it had changed! The Indigirka, here about three wersts wide, had torn up the land, and worn itself a fresh channel; and, when the waters sank, we saw, to our astonishment, that the old river-bed had become merely that of an insignificant stream. This allowed me to cut through the soft earth; and we went reconnoitring up the new stream, which had worn its way westward. Afterwards we landed on the new shore, and surveyed the undermining and destructive operation of the wild waters, that carried away, with extraordinary rapidity, masses of soft peat and loam. It was then that we made a wonderful discovery. The land on which we were treading was moorland, covered thickly with young plants. Many lovely flowers rejoiced the eye in the warm beams of the sun, that shone for twenty-two out of the twenty-four hours. The stream rolled over, and tore up the soft, wet ground like chaff: so that it was dangerous to go near the brink. While we were all quiet, we suddenly heard under our feet a sudden gurgling and stirring, which betrayed the working of the disturbed water. Suddenly our jäger, ever on the lookout, called loudly, and pointed to a singular and unshapely object, which rose and sank through the disturbed waters. I had already remarked it, but not given it any attention, considering it only drift-wood. Now we all hastened to the spot on the shore, had the boat drawn near, and waited until the mysterious thing should again show itself. Our patience was tried: but at last, a black, horrible, giant-like mass was thrust out of the water; and we beheld a colossal elephant’s head, armed with mighty tusks, with its long trunk moving in the water in an unearthly manner, as though seeking for something lost therein. Breathless with astonishment, I beheld the monster hardly twelve feet from me, with his half-open eyes yet showing the whites. It was still in good preservation.

“‘A mammoth! a mammoth!’ broke out the Tschernomori; and I shouted, ‘Here, quickly! chains and ropes!’ I will go over our preparations for securing the giant animal, whose body the water was trying to tear from us. As the animal again sank, we waited for an opportunity to throw the ropes over his neck. This was only accomplished after many efforts. For the rest we had no cause for anxiety; for, after examining the ground, I satisfied myself that the hind-legs of the mammoth still stuck in the earth, and that the waters would work for us to unloosen them. We therefore fastened a rope round his neck, threw a chain round his tusks, that were eight feet long, drove a stake into the ground about twenty feet from the shore, and made chain and rope fast to it. The day went by quicker than I thought for; but still, the time seemed long before the animal was secured, as it was only after the lapse of twenty-four hours that the water had loosened it. But the position of the animal was interesting to me: it was standing in the earth, and not lying on its side or back as a dead animal naturally would, indicating, by this, the manner of its destruction. The soft peat or marsh land, on which he stepped thousands of years ago, gave way under the weight of the giant; and he sank as he stood on it, feet foremost, incapable of saving himself; and a severe frost came, and turned him into ice and the moor which had buried him. The latter, however, grew and flourished, every summer renewing itself. Possibly the neighboring stream had heaped over the dead body plants and sand. God only knows what causes had worked for its preservation. Now, however, the stream had brought it once more to the light of day; and I, an ephemera of life compared with this primeval giant, was sent here by Heaven just at the right time to welcome him. You can imagine how I jumped for joy.

“During our evening meal, our posts announced strangers: a troop of Jakuti came on their fast, shaggy horses; they were our appointed people, and were very joyful at sight of us. Our company was augmented by them to about fifty persons. On showing them our wonderful capture, they hastened to the stream; and it was amusing to hear how they chattered and talked over the sight. The first day I left them in quiet possession; but when, on the following, the ropes and chains gave a great jerk, a sign that the mammoth was quite freed from the earth, I commanded them to use their utmost strength, and bring the beast to land. At length, after much hard work, in which the horses were extremely useful, the animal was brought to land; and we were able to roll the body about twelve feet from the shore. The decomposing effect of the warm air filled us all with astonishment.

“Picture to yourself an elephant with a body covered with thick fur, about thirteen feet in height, and fifteen in length, with tusks eight feet long, thick, and curving outward at their ends, a stout trunk of six feet in length, colossal limbs of one and a half feet in thickness, and a tail, naked up to the end, which was covered with thick, tufty hair. The animal was fat, and well grown. Death had overtaken him in the fulness of his powers. His parchment-like, large, naked ears lay fearfully turned up over the head. About the shoulders and the back he had stiff hair, about a foot in length, like a mane. The long, outer hair was deep brown, and coarsely rooted. The top of the head looked so wild, and so penetrated with pitch (und mit Pech so durchgedrungen), that it resembled the rind of an old oak-tree. On the sides it was cleaner (reiner); and under the outer hair, there appeared everywhere a wool, very soft, warm, and thick, and of a fallow-brown color. The giant was well protected against the cold. The whole appearance of the animal was fearfully strange and wild. It had not the shape of our present elephants. As compared with our Indian elephants, its head was rough, the brain-case low and narrow, but the trunk and mouth were much larger. The teeth were very powerful. Our elephant is an awkward animal; but, compared with this mammoth, it is as an Arabian steed to a coarse, ugly dray-horse. I could not divest myself of a feeling of fear as I approached the head. The broken, widely open eyes gave the animal an appearance of life, as though it might move in a moment, and destroy us with a roar.... The bad smell of the body warned us that it was time to save of it what we could; and the swelling flood, too, bid us hasten. First of all, we cut off the tusks, and sent them to the cutter. Then the people tried to hew the head off; but, notwithstanding their good will, this was slow work. As the belly of the animal was cut open, the intestines rolled out; and then the smell was so dreadful, that I could not overcome my nauseousness, and was obliged to turn away. But I had the stomach separated, and brought on one side. It was well filled, and the contents instructive and well preserved. The principal were young shoots of the fir and pine: a quantity of young fir-cones, also in a chewed state, were mixed with the mass.... As we were eviscerating the animal, I was as careless and forgetful as my Jakuti, who did not notice that the ground was sinking under their feet, until a fearful scream warned me of their misfortune, as I was still groping in the animal’s stomach. Shocked, I sprang up, and beheld how the river was burying in its waves our five Jakuti and our laboriously saved beast. Fortunately the boat was near, so that our poor work-people were all saved; but the mammoth was swallowed up by the waves, and never more made its appearance.”

This mammoth had undoubtedly strayed into a morass, and been ingulfed; and soon after, or before the body had an opportunity to decay, it had frozen up, to be released again ages after by an unusual thaw.

The most recent mammoth-hunt has been made by Dr. Bunge, who instituted a search along the Lena delta, finding, I believe, but one specimen, which was without its head and one fore-leg. It had been exposed for ten years to the attack of foxes, native dogs, and the natives themselves, and was well-nigh ruined.

The mammoth was not confined to the Old World. Vast quantities of bones have been found in Escholtz Bay in a peaty deposit that rests on a cliff of pure blue ice, and in various parts of America. As to the causes that led to its extinction, they are equally problematical. In Kentucky, Ohio, and Central North America, there would seem to have been every thing to favor its continuance,—an abundance of food, and vast areas to range upon. The one agency that might have produced its extermination is the one now at work upon its ally in Africa, namely, man. There is little doubt that the early Americans chased the great animal, and, hunted from one part of the country to another, they finally entirely disappeared.