MANY ELEPHANT BONES. They and the Bodies with Flesh yet on. Them in Alaska.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 400, 7 September 1889, Page 6

MANY ELEPHANT BONES. They and the Bodies with Flesh yet on. Them in Alaska.

' ELr.ni \nts* tusks and bone?, and, in many instances, their flesh yeb sticking to the bones, are found in the valley of the Yukon ri\er,' said Geologist John Muir to a San Francisco reportei. 'There ?re so many tilings newand strange up there,' added the discoverer of the gicat-e.-t glacier in the world, • that have not yet come to the knowledge of the public, that one who has seen them hesitate* vvheie to begin. * Now, I said these elephant remains wore found all over the great valley of the Yukon. As a matter of fact, they are found everywhere throughout the great south-western slope of Alaska. 1 Dana and Sir Charles Lyell startled the world by announcing that hairy, fiozen elephants were found wedged among 1 the Siberian icebergs, but scarcely anybody knows that throughout Alaska are remains of countless thousands of these huge mastodons. You can dig them out and find them on the surface any vvheie. 1 saw hundreds of them possibly on my last trip, and I am now anxiously trying to got up there to complete my investigations.

Liki: Moj.Ks in tju: Gnot-M>. 1 So thick are die elephant remains that the native Indians on finding them buried partially in the ground, decided they were some kind of a great mole that burrowed in the soil. This is the story they gave me. I collected a lot of the remains, and I now have some well-preserved bones and home remarkably well-preserved tusks at my homo in Martinez. 'The collecting of elephant tusks every summer i.> a regular business in Siberia, just over Jiehring Sea. We have jutt as many of them on the Alaska side as they ever had in Siberia. Ages ago great herds of elephants roamed ovev these shore*. Perhaps they existed down to a comparatively recent date, too, tor the hairy bodies and the well-preserved bones give evidence of that.

Bridging Buikino Sea. ' Senator Stanford's girdle of ste^l round the earth via Bohiing Sea is a peiiectly feasible scheme. The Boh i ing Strait call bo bridged. It is only si.xty miles aciofrs in the narrowest place, and there are three islands strung along in it. This would divide the bridge up into four divisions. 'But, besides this, the water is very shallow. In many places it is not over twenty feet deep. I undertake to say that if a man was strong enough to take one of our California redwood trees in his hand ho could put it down anywhere over the 600 miles of the Behring Sea and yet have 100 feet of it left above the water. " 'This shows how easy it would be to bridge the straits. The only trouble would be from floating icebergs, but that could easily be overcome by constructing swinging bridges like they have across the river at Chicago. In this way the straits could be kept clear all the time and locomotives and trains of cars could run right along. How Vancouver JVJis.sk n It. •About the Muir glacier? Well, it is curious how I found that. It is to-day almost an unknown chapter in explorations. Id was in '73 that I first went up | there. In my course along the Alaskan coast I followed the chart of old Vancouver, the British explorer, who ninety - three ' years ago turned his prows in those un- ! .known seas. I found hia chart singularly correct. Every little bay and island were correctly marked. There are thousands of islands up there, too, and I was constantly surprised to ste how accurate he had got all of them down. {

'Finally, when I got away up in the vicinity of the Cross Sound J met an Indian who told me that from that on I would havo to take my own wood. I was astonished at this, for everywhere for hundreds and hundreds of inileti on our route we hnd seen nothing but the densest kinds of forests. Well, 1 told him all right, to go ahead and cut somo wood, and ho and a lot more did so and put it aboaid.

Bauk Land Evkuywhkrk. 'Wo went ahead, and pretty fcoon we struck the entrance to what seemed a threat by. X looked at Vancouver's chart and couldn't, find it marktd there. There was no mention of it anywhere. The shores all about, as far as I could see, were bare. The whole country was denuded. Some halt petiilied stumps and pieces of stone conifers could bo seen, and that wus al 1 . Wo steamed up the bay for forty miles, a»id there found the great glacier, which now bears my name. ' It was about six or seven miles by fifty or hixty in extent, and down in front it was 1,000 feet out of water. Pieces wore breaking off all tho time at intervals of a minute and a half or two minutos, and falling into the water with a tremendous roar. Of course, wo heard tins roaiing long before wo came in siyht of the

iiOd AND luKl'.EKfi.H. 1 Then I looked at my chart again, and found how it was that Vancouver nui-.cd it". r l he end of the bay was full of floating icebergs, combined with a big fog. lb wasn't Vancouver himself, but one of his men in a «mall boat that had steered round to the entrance. Thero he reported solid ico. The tog and the floating ice crave him that impression, and that is why Vancouver did not find the gieat glacier.' Mr iMuir says he has by no means yet completed his explorations in Alaska, and that in regard to tho elephant remains, tho bridging of Belmnp; Sea, and other matters theio, he hopes to add some information that will be of great value to science.