Animals of the PastLucas, Frederic A. (Frederic Augustus)
Science
Animals of the Past
Lucas, Frederic A. (Frederic Augustus)
Paleontology
Fortunately, or unfortunately, there was on board a text-book of geology
containing the well-known cut of the St. Petersburg mammoth, and this
was brought forth, greatly to the edification of the natives, who were
delighted at recognizing the curved tusks and the bones they knew so
well. Next the natives wished to know what the outside of the creature
looked like, and as Mr. Townsend had been at Ward's establishment in
Rochester when the first copy of the Stuttgart restoration was made, he
rose to the emergency, and made a sketch. This was taken ashore,
together with a copy of the cut of the skeleton that was laboriously
made by an Innuit sprawled out at full length on the deck. Now the
Innuits, as Mr. Townsend tells us, are great gadabouts, making long
sledge journeys in winter and equally long trips by boat in summer,
while each season they hold a regular fair on Kotzebue Sound, where a
thousand or two natives gather to barter and gossip. On these journeys
and at these gatherings the sketches were no doubt passed about, copied,
and recopied, until a large number of Innuits had become well acquainted
with the appearance of the mammoth, a knowledge that naturally they were
well pleased to display to any white visitors. Also, like the Celt, the
Alaskan native delights to give a "soft answer," and is always ready to
furnish the kind of information desired. Thus in due time the newspaper
man learned that the Alaskans could make pictures of the mammoth, and
that they had some knowledge of its size and habits; so with inference
and logic quite as good as that of the Tungusian peasant, the reporter
came to the conclusion that somewhere in the frozen wilderness the last
survivor of the mammoths must still be at large. And so, starting on the
Pacific coast, the Live Mammoth story wandered from paper to paper,
until it had spread throughout the length and breadth of the United
States, when it was captured by Mr. Tukeman, who with much artistic
color and some realistic touches, transferred it to _McClure's
Magazine_, and--unfortunately for the officials thereof--to the
Smithsonian Institution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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