Kansas City daily journal., 1896-12-16
MAsTODoN's IN ALASKA.
Conclusive Evidence of Their Exist
ence in an Isolated Region.

From the Forest ana Stream.
Miners and Stick Indians who have come
out this fall from the headwateIS of the
White river in Alaska, where they have
been prospecting for gold bring almost
conclusive evidence of the presence of liv-
ing mastodons in that isolated region. For
instance, the testimony of such veraciOuS
witnesses as those residents of Denver,
Col. who were interviewed as recently as
October 15 by Editor Eugene c. Stahl. of
the Juneau News, himself Il conscientious
naturalist of no mean abilities. is not TO be
flippantly disregarded; nor the collateral
testimony. which is more than circumstan-
tial. furnished by traders and intelligent
Indians who profess to have seen the ami
mails and their massive footprints.
The location of the mastodon country.
according to the sketch map OF William
Ogilvie, of the Dominion survey, is about
midway between Mount st. Elias and the
Yukon river and 100 miles due north from
st. Elias. and less than that from old Fort
Selkirk and the mouth of Stewart river
and Forty Mile creek where hundreds of
gold miners have been prospecting for ten
years or more The White river is an af-
fluent of the Yukon, whose course is due
north. That it should never have been viS-
tied is not remarkabl unless the trappers
and woodrunners of the old Russian Amer
lean Fur Company may by possible chance
have got there in years gone by, and that
nastodons may have chosen this inaccess-
ible seclusion as their final stamping ground
and still survive is also not improbable.
Indeed. their actual living existence at the
present day is essentially necessary TO ex-
plain the phenomena of the numerous bur
led deposits of remains of this animal
which have been discovered in Siberia and
Alaska, not only of bones and tusks which
ESquimauX have articles of barter for gen.
erations. but of well preserved carcasses
so fresh that the sled dogs of overland
Arctic explorers have repeatedly been fed
upon the flesh-carcasses which We're sup
posed to have lain refrigerated and Cnde-
cayed for centuries, but which it is more
reasonable to believe, under the new teS-
timony and revelation on the White river
have been buried within a comparatively
recent period of historical time
WaShouts along the deltaS of the Lena,
Mackenzie and other Arctic rivers are con-
stantly revealing masses of maStodon tusks
and bones: and deposits are often found in
just such bogs as overlay the country ad-
jacent to the White river headwaterS
where the animals have been drowned and
mired by hundreds by some flood or cata-
clysm which has overwhelmed them. On
the heights of land which separate the
tributaries of the Yukon from the affiuents
of the Pacific ocean they would be quite
exempt from such a catastrophe: and as
they have moss. grass. browse and fodder
in unlimited supply in their present hab-
itat, and temperature cold enough to suit
and plenty of water to drink. credulous
scientists will be ready to believe, from the
evidence adduced, that a remnant of the
huge creature. long supposed to be extinct,
still exists within possible access of human
habitations and a resident population of at
least 1000 miners, traders and furriers.