o many a
romantic story in the folk-lore both of the West and East. Even in
this century Hedenstroem, the otherwise sagacious traveller on the
Siberian Polar Sea, believed that the fossil rhinoceros' horns were
actual, "grip-claws." For he mentions in his oft-quoted work, that
he had seen such a claw 20 verschoks (0.9 metre) in length, and when
he visited St. Petersburg in 1830, the scientific men there did not
succeed in convincing him that his ideas on this subject were
incorrect.[224]

[Illustration: SIBERIAN RHINOCEROS HORN. Preserved in the Museum
at St. Petersburg. ]

A new _find_ of a mammoth _mummy_ was made in 1787, when the natives
informed the Russian travellers SARYTSCHEV and MERK, that about 100
versts below the village Alasejsk, situated on the river Alasej
running into the Polar Sea, a gigantic animal had been washed out of
the sand beds of the beach in an upright posture, undamaged, with
hide and hair. The _find_, however, does not appear to have been
thoroughly examined.[225]

In 1799 a Tunguse found on the Tamut Peninsula, which juts out into
the sea immediately south-east of the river-arm by which the _Lena_,
steamed up the river, another frozen-in mammoth. He waited patiently
five years for the ground thawing so much as that the precious tusks
should be uncovered. The softer parts of the animal accordingly were
partly torn in pieces and destroyed by beasts of prey and dogs, when
the place was closely examined in 1806 by ADAMS the Academician.
Only the head and two of the feet were then almost undamaged. The
skeleton, part of the hide, a large quantity of long hair and woolly
hair a foot and a half long were taken away. How fresh the carcase
was may be seen from the fact that parts of the eye could still be
clearly distinguished. Similar remains had been found two years
before, a little further beyond the mouth of the Lena, but they were
neither examined nor removed.[226]

A new _find_ was made in 1839, when a complete mammoth was uncovered
by a landslip on the shore of a large lake to the west of the mouth
of the Yenisej, seventy versts from the Polar Sea. It was originally
almost entire, so that even the trunk appears to have been
preserved, to judge by the statement of the natives that a black
tongue as long as a month-old reindeer calf was hanging out of the
mouth; but it had, when it was removed in 1842, by the care of the
merchant TROFIMOV, been already much destroyed.[227]

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