Notes on the Occurrence of Mammoth-remains in the Yukon District of Canada and in Alaska

Abstract

These notes, relating primarily to the occurrence of remains of the Mammoth in the geographical valley of the Yukon River, are the result of a correspondence between Mr. H. Moody of the Canadian Pacific Railway Co., the Assistant Secretary of the Geological Society, and the writer, respecting statements which had reached Mr. Moody from a friend resident in the extreme north-western part of the Dominion of Canada. It has been suggested that a brief notice of the facts in this connexion, so far as these are known, may be of some interest to the Geological Society. The original discovery of bones of the Mammoth in the Yukon region is due to Mr. Robert Campbell, an officer in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, who between 1840 and 1852 travelled through and established trading-posts in the upper valley of the Yukon, and was the first white man to penetrate this remote part of North America. In a brief account of his explorations, printed at Winnipeg in 1885, Campbell writes:—“I saw the bones, heads, and horns of Buffaloes [Musk-Oxen ?]; but this animal had become extinct before our visit, as had also some species of Elephant, whose remains were found in various swamps. I forwarded an Elephant's thigh-bone to the British Museum., where it m.ay still be seen”. As Campbell's posts on the Upper Yukon were finally abandoned in 1852, the bone thus referred to by him must have been sent out before this date. It was a tibia, not a