The scattered aboriginals are Tunguse and Samoyedes.  Their chief employment is the chase in winter, fishing in summer, and the care of their reindeer at all seasons.  Reindeer form their principal wealth, and are emphatically the circulating medium of the country.  Dr. Schmidt told me he rode in a reindeer sledge from the river to within a short distance of the mammoth.  It was the month of June, but the snow had not disappeared and nothing could be accomplished.  A second visit several weeks later was more successful.  In the interval the party embarked on the steamer which makes one or two journeys every summer to the Arctic Ocean in search of fish, furs, and ivory.  A vigorous traffic is maintained during the short period that the river remains open.

On the return from the Arctic Ocean, the season was more favorable to mammoth-hunting.  Unfortunately the remains were not perfect.  The skeleton was a good deal broken and scattered, and some parts were altogether lacking.  The chief object of the enterprise was to obtain the stomach of the mammoth so that its contents could be analyzed.  It is known that the beast lived upon vegetable food, but no one has yet ascertained its exact character.  Some contend that the mammoth was a native of the tropics, and his presence in the north is due to the action of an earthquake.  Others think he dwelt in the Arctic regions, and never belonged in the tropics.

“If we had found his stomach,” said the doctor, “and ascertained what kind of trees were in it, this question would have been decided.  We could determine his residence from the character of his food.”

Though making diligent search the doctor found no trace of the stomach, and the great point is still open to dispute.  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.