MEMOIR I.

I venture to invite the public attention to a subject, which has for several years excited considerable curiosity, but no profound or solid investigation. In accompanying me through this arduous duty, I trust you will not expect from me a rhetoric to admire, or an eloquence to applaud; these are endowments which the naturalist has neither leisure to cultivate, nor to acquire: therefore I aim at nothing but simplicity and truth, and shall even divest myself of such technical terms as may perplex the reason of those who are not desirous 0013 2 of entering into useless refinements, or tedious abstractions.

Long has the greater part of mankind laboured under difficulties, which might have been avoided by an acquaintance with the discoveries of travellers and philosophers. During the study of most sciences, we notice improvements unknown to the majority of the people; and in no one have these become more conspicuous, than in the study of natural history, and particularly that portion of it which relates to the extinct animals of the immense and interesting continent of America.

Since the wild conjectures of deluded men were banished from the annals of natural history, the study has become one of the most useful and pleasing to all of a common understanding. The science is now characterised by a manner, hostile only to the pride of the pedantic scholar. I have the honor to open some of the most extensive scenes;—let their magnificence lead the intelligent. An entrance is desired, that the wonderful greatness and wisdom displayed in the operations of nature may be contemplated with rapture, in parts neglected 0014 3 B2 by the vulgar as a “dreary void.” For my part, although imperious circumstances frequently compelled me to suspend my views, still I bring with me an undecayed sensibility to their attractions, and a determination to perform my duty with all the assiduity and zeal I am capable of exerting, and merited by your encouragement.

It is not a little to the honor of the present age, that so many gentlemen of liberal fortune and respectable families, declining the slippery paths of political ambition, have dedicated much of their time, and not a little of their wealth, to sustain the cause of science and of literature. This observation will undoubtedly, from the association of ideas, recall the names of Walpole, of Pennant, of Jefferson, and of Banks, to your familiar recollection:—painful recollection, which informs, that the two first are now no more!

Of the writers of natural history I only mention the names of those who have endeavoured to make themselves acquainted with the object of our immediate investigation. And yet how imperfect was the information they 0015 4 obtained! It could not be otherwise. Sir Joseph Banks passed the greatest part of his life in anatomizing the smallest productions of nature, such as grubs and butterflies; the province of Walpole was equally confined; Pennant never left Great Britain; and Mr. Jefferson, though amply qualified by an improved, philosophic, and energetic mind, had not met with sufficient evidence to establish irrefragible and certain conclusions. Hence the variety of conjecture, and error of judgment, which, on this subject, so universally abound. The ruling passions of mankind are excited, and the future current of their lives frequently directed, by trivial circumstances. One of the greatest painters of the age was attracted by an irresistible impulse towards his art, by a perusal of a treatise on it; and Mr. Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, at an early period gave me a turn for natural history, which has never abandoned me, even to this middle period of life. His critical and philosophic remarks on the mammoth, excited my enthusiasm, but did not satisfy my judgment; and I determined to explore the country where the bones of so stupendous an animal were so frequently found. With this intent, I gained the Apelichean; descended 0016 5 the Ohio; traversed the depths of the valley and the highest summit of the mountain; saw the Illinois, the Mississippi, and the Missouri; and at length-obtained the completion of my wish, the ardent object of my prayer,— a collection of bones, vulgarly called mammoth bones, but which I shall treat on under separate heads.

Before, however, I go into details of this particular nature, it may be amusing to you, to hear the conjectures of those who have passed before me, and the authorities on which such conjectures were grounded.

It is now ninety years ago, since the first remains of this animal were found in America. They were then thought to be the remains of a Giant! The formation of the teeth, the under jaw, the singularity and size of the bones, and the difficulty of discovering what part they performed in the animal machine, led to this egregious error; which was augmented by that disposition to the marvellous, which emigration encourages mankind to feel. This absurd idea gave way to one, not more sound. These remains were called extraneous fossils by some, by 0017 6 by others mineral substances. However, but few years elapsed, before numerous attempts were made by all nations to procure a satisfactory collection of bones. At length Mr. Peale, of Philadelphia imagined he had accomplished this great object. He dug up a parcel of bones in Ulster county, state of New York, formed a skeleton, and dignified it with the name of mammoth, a Russian term, from memoth, a word derived from the Arabic mehemot, signifying the behemot of Job. This word is applied to any animal of extraordinary bigness: for instance, fyhl is the Arabic appellation for an elephant of ordinary size; but when of uncommon magnitude, the adjective mehemodi is always added.

The skeleton exhibited by Mr. Peale is of the following dimensions:—

Height over the shoulders 11 feet; length from the chin so the rump 15 feet; from the end of the tusk to the end of the tail 31 feet; width of the hips and body 5 feet 8 inches; length of the under jaw 3 ft. 1 inch; weight of the same 63 ½ lbs; length of the thigh bones 3 ft. 7 inches; smallest circumference of the 0018 7 same 1 foot 6 inches; length of the bone of the fore leg 2 ft. 9 inches; length of the tusks, defenses, or horns, 10 ft. 7 inches; circumference of one tooth 1 ft. 6 ½ inches; weight of the same 4 lbs. 10 oz. The whole weighing about 1000 lbs.

Within the breast of this skeleton Mr. Peale, accompanied by a dozen of his friends, partook of a superb dinner.

The curiosity excited by this singular spectacle was augmented by the following tradition, then in circulation, and said to be delivered in the terms of a Shawanece Indian:—

“Ten thousand moons ago, when nought but gloomy forests covered this land of the sleeping sun; long before the pale men, with thunder and fire at their command, rushed on the wings of the wind to ruin this garden of nature; when nought but the untamed wanderers of the woods, and men as unrestrained as they, were the masters of the soil; a race of animals were in being, huge as the frowning precipice, cruel as the bloody panther, swift as the descending eagle, and terrible as the angel of night. The pines crashed beneath their 0019 8 feet; and the lake shrunk when they slacked their thirst. The forceful javelin in vain was hurled, and the barbed arrow fell harmless from their side. Forests were laid waste at a meal; the groans of expiring animals were heard, and whole villages, inhabited by men, were destroyed in a moment. The cry of universal distress extended even to the regions of peace in the west, and the Good Spirit interposed to save the unhappy. The forked lightning gleamed all around, and loudest thunder racked the globe. The bolts of heaven where hurled upon the cruel destroyers alone, and the mountains echoed with the bellowings of death. All were killed except one male, the fiercest of the race, and him even the fury of the skies assailed in vain. He ascended the bluest summit which shades the source of many waters, and, roaring aloud, bid defiance to every vengeance. The red lightning scorched the lofty firs, and rived the knotty oaks, but only glanced on the enraged monster. At length, maddened with disdain, he leaped over the waves of the West, and at this moment reigns the uncontrouled monarch of the wilderness, in despite even of Omnipotence himself.”

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As the enthusiasm, awakened by the first discovery of these stupendous remains, began to subside, and as the effect of this sublime tradition must necessarily have yielded to reason and abstract enquiry, it was soon ascertained, that bones and skeletons of vast magnitude had been frequently found in Siberia, Russia, and Germany. Many specimens of them are to be seen in the Imperial Cabinet at Petersburgh; in the British, Doctor Hunter's, and the late Sir Ashton Lever's Museums, and in that of the Royal Society. Several eminent naturalists, as Sir Hans Sloane, Gmelin, Daubenton, Buffon, &c. are of opinion, that these prodigious bones and tusks are really the bones and tusks of elephants; and many modern philosophers have held the mammoth to be as fabulous as the centaur. The great difference in size they endeavour to account for, as arising in difference in age, sex, and climate; and the cause of their being found in those northern parts of the world, where elephants are no longer natives, nor even long exist, they presume to have arisen from hence, that, in the great revolutions which have happened in the earth, the elephants, to avoid destruction, have left their native country, and dispersed themselves where 0021 10 ever they could find safety. Their lot has been different. Some in a longer, and some in a shorter time after their death, have been transported to great distances by some vast inundations. Those, on the contrary, which survived, and wandered far to the north, must have fallen victims to the rigour of the climate.

In the year 1767, Doctor Hunter had an opportunity of investigating more particularly this part of natural history; and has evidently endeavoured to prove, that these fossil bones and tusks are not only larger than the generality of elephants, but that the tusks are more twisted, or have more of a spiral curve than elephants'; and that the thigh and jaw bones differ, in several respects, from those of the elephant: but what appeared to put the matter beyond all dispute, was, the shape of the grinders, which seemed to belong to a carnivorous animal, or at least to an animal of the mixed kind. Some have supposed these bones to belong to the hippopotamus, or river horse; but there are many reasons against this supposition, as that animal is even much smaller than the elephant, and has such remarkably short legs, that his belly reaches within a few inches of the ground.

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America seems to be the quarter where the remains in question most abound. On the Ohio, and in many parts further north, tusks, grinders, and skeletons of unparalleled magnitude, are found in vast numbers, some lying on the surface of the earth, and some a little below it. Mr. Stanley, taken prisoner by the Indians near the mouth of the Tenessee River, relates that being transferred thro' several tribes, he was at length carried over the mountains, west of the Missouri, to a river which runs westwardly; that these bones abounded there; and that the natives described to him an animal, to which they belonged, as still existing in the northern parts of their country. Bones of the same kind have been found in salines opened on the North Holston, a branch of the Tenessee about the latitude 36 north. Instances are mentioned of like animal remains found in the more southern climates of both hemispheres; but Mr. Jefferson observes, that they are either so loosely mentioned as to leave a doubt of the fact; so inaccurately described as not to authorize the classing them with the great northern bones; or so rare as to found a suspicion, that they have been carried thither as curiosities from more northern regions. “So that on the whole 0023 0024 13 has declared on a like investigation that they are precisely the same.

“Between two such authorities I will suppose this circumstance as equivocal. But, first, the skeleton of the mammoth bespeaks an animal of five or six times the cubic volume of the elephant. 2dly. The grinders are five times as large, are square, and the grinding surface studded with four or five rows of blunt points; whereas those of the elephant are broad and thin, and their grinding surface flat. 3dly. I have never heard of an instance, and suppose there has been none, of the grinder of an elephant having been found in America. 4thly. From the known temperate and constitution of the elephant, he could never have existed in those regions, where the remains of the mammoth have been found. The elephant is a native only of the torrid zone and its vicinities: if, with the assistance of warm apartments and warm clothing, he has been preserved in life in the temperature climates in Europe, it has only been for a short portion of what would have been his natural period; and no instance of his multiplication in them have ever been known. But no bones of the mammoth, as I 0025 14 have before observed, have been ever found farther south than the salines of the Holston, and they have been found as far north as the arctic circle. Those, therefore, who are of opinion, that the elephant and mammoth are the same, must believe, 1st, that the elephant known to us can exist and multiply in the frozen zone; or, 2dly, that an internal fire may once have warmed those regions, and since abandoned them; of which, however, the globe exhibits no unequivocal indications: or, 3dly, that the obliquity of the ecliptic, when these elephants lived, was so great as to include within the tropics all those regions in which the bones are found: the tropics being, as is before observed, the natural limits of habitation for the elephant. But if it be admitted that this obliquity has really decreased, and we adopt the highest rate of decrease yet pretended, that is, of one minute in a century—to transfer the northern tropic to the arctic circle would carry the existence of these supposed elephants 250,000 years back; a period far beyond the conception of the duration of animal bones left exposed to the open air, as these are in many instances. Besides, though these regions would then be supposed within the tropics, yet their winters 0026 15 would have been too severe for the sensibility of the elephant. They would have had, too, but one night and one day in the year; a circumstance to which we have no reason to suppose the nature of the elephant fitted. However, it has been demonstrated, that if a variation of the obliquity in the ecliptic takes place at all, it is vibratory, and never exceeds the limits of 9 degrees, which is not sufficient to bring these bones within the tropics.

“One of these hypotheses, or some other equally arbitrary and inadmissible to cautious philosophy, must be adopted, to support the opinion, that these are the bones of the elephant. For my own part, I find it easier to believe that an animal may have existed, resembling the elephant in its tusks and general anatomy, while his nature was in other respects extremely different. From the 30° of south latitude to the 30° of north, are nearly the limits which nature has fixed for the existence and multiplication of the elephant known to us. Proceeding thence northwardly to 36 ½°, we enter those assigned to the mammoth. The farther we advance north, the more the vestiges multiply, as far as the earth has been explored 0027 16 in that direction; and it is as probable as otherwise, that this progression continues to the pole itself, if land extend so far. The centre of the frozen zone, then, may be the acme of their vigour, as that of the torrid is to the elephant. Thus nature seems to have drawn a belt of separation between these two tremendous animals, the breadth of which belt, indeed, is not so precisely known, though at present we may suppose it about 6 ½ degrees of latitude; to have assigned to the elephant the regions south of these confines, and those north to the mammoth, founding the constitution of the one in extreme heat, and that of the other in the extreme of cold. When the Creator has therefore separated their nature as far as the extent of the scale of animal life allowed to this planet would permit, it seems perverse to declare it the same, from a partial resemblance of the tusks and bones. But to whatever animal we may ascribe these remains, it is certain, that such an one existed in America, and that it was the largest of all terrestrial beings of which any traces have been known to appear.” Such are the conclusions of the ingenious author of “Notes on Virginia.”

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Since the publication of the “Notes,” however, many additional facts have occurred, which favor the assigning a wider range to this incognitum; for in cutting the Santre and Cowper River Canal in South Carolina, there was turned up a collection of bones, answering by description to those of the mammoth. Their number, variety, and arrangement were such, as entirely to prelude the idea of their having been carried thither as curiosities. The following letter, from the most respectable authority, extends this range still wider:—

“Washington, 1804.

“SIR, “It is with some interest that I have learned from the Baron Hombaldt, who has been five years travelling through South America, that among other curious animal remains, he has discovered several specimens of the mammoth, perfectly distinguished by the great carnivorous teeth. He found them as far as latitude 33 south, but always on the highest mountains; which the baron takes to be satisfactory evidence, that this great unknown must have been the inhabitant of a cold climate. In North America, none of those bones have ever 0029 18 been found, but in comparatively low situations; this is to be expected of an animal, which in a cold climate, would inhabit the valleys, and in a warm one would seek the cold retreats of the mountains.

“Yours, &c. “R. P.”

Had the opportunities of Mr. Jefferson been greater than it appears they were, or, in other words, had his materials been less scant