ession of a treasure
which amply recompensed me for the fatigues and dangers of the journey,
and the considerable expenses of the enterprise.... The escarpment of
ice was thirty-five to forty toises high; and, according to the report
of the Tungusians, the animal was, when they first saw it, seven toises
below the surface of the ice, &c. On arriving with the Mammoth at
Borchaya, our first care was to separate the remaining flesh and
ligaments from the bones, which were then packed up. When I arrived at
the Jakutsk, I had the good fortune to repurchase the tusks, and from
thence expedited the whole to St Petersburg. The skeleton is now in the
Museum of the Academy, and the skin still remains attached to the head
and feet. A part of the skin, and some of the hair of this animal were
sent by Mr Adams to Sir Joseph Banks, who presented them to the Museum
of the Royal College of Surgeons. The hair is entirely separated from
the skin, excepting in one very small part, where it still remains
attached. It consists of two sorts, common hair and bristles, and of
each there are several varieties, differing in length and thickness.
That remaining fixed on the skin is of the colour of the camel, an inch
and a-half long, very thick-set, and curled in locks. It is interspersed
with a few bristles about three inches long, of a dark-reddish colour.
Among the separate parcels of hair are some rather redder than the short
hair just mentioned, about four inches; and some bristles nearly black,
much thicker than horse hair, and from twelve to eighteen inches long.
The skin, when first brought to the Museum, was offensive; it is now
quite dry and hard, and where most compact, is half-an-inch thick. Its
colour is the dull black of the living elephants."[10]

To me this narrative possesses an intense interest, and I have gazed
with great curiosity on the bit of dried and blackened leather that is
preserved in the Museum in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, knowing it to have
presented the primal freshness of life within the present century. I
cannot help thinking that both the rhinoceros and this elephant roamed
over the plains of Siberia, not only since the creation of man, but even
since the Deluge. The freshness of their state shews that the freezing
up of their carcases must have been sudden, and immediate upon death.
What supposition so natural as that, perhaps in a blinding snowstorm,
they slipped into a crevice in the ice-cliff, were snowed up insta