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 tributary of the Lena.  In the museum at St. Petersburg there is a head of the Arctic rhinoceros on which the skin and tendons remain, and a foot of the same animal displays a portion of its hair.  The claws of an enormous bird are also found in the north, some of them three feet long, and jointed through their whole length like the claws of an ostrich.

Captain Wrangell and other explorers say the mammoth bones are smaller on the Arctic islands than on the main land, but are wonderfully increased in quantity.  For many years the natives and fur traders have brought away large cargoes, but the supply is not yet exhausted.  The teeth and tusks on the islands are more fresh and white than those of the Continent.  On the Lachoff Islands the principal deposit was on a low sand bank, and the natives declared that when the waves receded after an easterly wind, a fresh supply was always found.  One island about latitude 80 deg. was said to be largely composed of mammoth bones.  I presume this statement should be received with a little caution.  During the doctor’s expedition the supply of provisions was not always abundant, but there was no absolute scarcity.  The party lived for some time on fish, and on the flesh of the reindeer.  A story was told that the explorers were reduced to subsisting on the mammoth they discovered, and hence their failure to bring away portions of the flesh.  Mammoth cutlets and soup were occasionally proposed for the entertainment of the savants on their return to Irkutsk.