continued richness in fossil ivory, for the steamer in which he ascended the Yenisei in 1875 carried more than one hundred mammoths' tusks; and he declares that Middendorf's estimate of the amount of fossil ivory sold every year in northern Siberia is far too low. Nordenskiold also dredged up, near the Liakoff Islands, portions of mammoths' tusks, confirming the belief that there is still a vast deposit of elephants' remains at the bottom of the sea around these islands.

when he was in Kotelnoi and Fadeyeff-| dangerous, owing to the shallowness of skoi in 1809, he saw from the northern the sea- three to four fathoms onlyshores of these islands the distant and the floating icebergs. Liakoff's mountains of another island far away chief island was reached on August 30; to the north. Efforts were made to but the enormous masses of ice which reach this unknown land by sledging surrounded every part of the shore over the ice, but great open stretches made a landing impossible. Still, alof water rendered progress towards though unable to examine the islands, the north impossible. When Erman Nordenskiold obtained proof of their was at Yakutsk in 1829, he was told that the ivory trade from the New Siberian Islands was as lucrative and important as ever, and that the traders journeyed to the islands in sledges over the frozen surface of the ocean. The tusks of the mammoth could be seen in New Siberia sticking up out of the sand, and the ivory-hunters were accustomed to stand on an eminence and examine the wastes of sand and gravel with telescopes, to see where the tusks protruded from the ground, which showed that the skeletons of the great A few years ago, most valuable scienelephants were buried beneath. One tific researches were carried on in these ivory-hunter in 1821 brought away wonderful islands by Baron von Toll twenty thousand pounds of ivory from and Professor Bunge. These explorers New Siberia alone; and in 1836 sixty- | carried on their investigations in 1886, eight thousand pounds of fossil ivory, which came cliiefly from the New Siberian and Liakoff Islands, were sold at Yakutsk. Middendorf, some years later, calculated that every year one hundred and ten thousand pounds of fossil ivory were sold in the markets of Yakutsk, Obdorsk, Turukhansk, and Tobolsk; eighty thousand pounds of this amount being sold at Yakutsk alone, the market at this place being supplied chiefly from New Siberia, where the quantity of fossil ivory still seemed to be inexhaustible. Great boats full of ivory were constantly ascending the Lena to Yakutsk, and at length steamers carried the ivory to the market, up the great river.

In 1878 Nordenskiold in the Vega traversed the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia, and was anxious to visit the ivory islands. He was informed of their wonderful wealth, and shortly before had discovered the bones and portions of the hide of a mammoth on the barren tundra of the Yenisei. The Vega neared the New Siberian Islands on August 28; but navigation was

an

Dr. Bunge visiting the Liakoff group, while Von Toll explored the New Sibcrian Islands. The latter explorer examined the famous "wood-hills" in New Siberia, and made a complete circuit of Kotelnoi in forty days, undertaking which was very difficult, owing to the whole coast of the island being blocked with enormous masses of ice. From the northern point of Kotelnoi, Von Toll was fortunate enough to obtain a view of the unknown land which Sannikoff had seen eighty years ago from Kotelnoi and New Siberia. This island — which is called Saunikoff Land after its discoverer-has never yet been visited by Europeans, and lies according to Von Toll's estimate - one hundred miles to the north of New Siberia. In Liakoff's Island, Dr. Bunge found great quantities of bones of the mammoth, rhinoceros, musk-ox, and wild oxen, and this accumulation of the bones of so many animals proves how temperate the climate must have been formerly.

In 1889 news was received at St. Petersburg that the body of a mam

The

moth had been found in northern Sibe- | picture up in northern Siberia, when ria, and Baron von Toll was once more the huge hairy mammoth, the woolly sent into this desolate region to verify rhinoceros, and the musk-ox wandered the discovery. He did not reach the over its plains, and browsed along by spot, however-which was near the the banks of its majestic rivers! Svaiatoi Noss-until 1893, and was climate was then comparatively genial, then too late to find anything but frag- and its rolling uplands and widements of the skeleton and portions of stretching plains were covered with the skin, which were covered with dense forests and carpeted with verhair. From the Holy Cape, Von Toll dant grass. The land stretched two went to one of the Liakoff Islands hundred miles farther to the north called Maloi, and found here complete then than it does now, and the New fossil trees, fifteen feet in length. Siberian Islands formed high mounElephants' bones abounded, showing tains, looking over the Northern Ocean. that great trees grew at the time when On this long-vanished land vast herds mammoths and rhinoceroses wandered of elephants, rhinoceroses, buffaloes, over these islands; and beneath were and wild horses lived peacefully and cliffs of solid ice. These ice-cliffs are securely, for food was plentiful and common in the New Siberian Islands, carnivorous animals were few. What and occur in many parts of the coast of great convulsion of nature destroyed Siberia; they are also found in Kotze- these myriads of gigantic beasts, and bue Sound in north-western Alaska, piled their bones in vast masses upon and on them rests a layer of earth full the islands of the Polar Sea ? What of the bones of elephants and musk

oxen.

cataclysm sank the verdant plains beneath the waves, and changed northern Siberia into a waste and empty wilderness? And what catastrophe occurred on the land and in the sea which altered the climate of northern Siberia from one of a genial, or at least temperate, character to one of awful cold and of Arctic severity?

We cannot fully answer these questions. It seems probable, however, that great floods of rushing water must

We are led to ask the question, Will Sannikoff Land, when explored, be found to be as full of fossil ivory as the New Siberian Islands? The answer will depend upon the depth of the sea to the north of New Siberia. All round the ivory islands, the sea is very shallow, averaging only from five to fifteen fathoms in depth; and if this shallowness should continue as far north as Sannikoff Land, then we may have poured over these lands, and confidently expect that this hitherto untrodden island will be found to be rich in the tusks and teeth of elephants. But if the sea steadily deepens to the north of New Siberia, so that the waters rapidly become of a great depth, there will be little chance of finding mammoths' remains in Saunikoff Land, because it will then be proved that the New Siberian Islands form what was the extreme northern point of Siberia in the days when the mammoth lived, and great forests grew where now the Polar Ocean rolls its icy waves.

What a marvellous contrast to present conditions does the imagination

great invasions of the waters of the ocean must have inundated them. In these tremendous deluges, the elephants, rhinoceroses, and buffaloes were destroyed, and their carcasses were piled up in heaps in the places where they had congregated to take refuge from the rising waters. When these deluges subsided and the waters retired, the lands were covered with the remains of the drowned animals, and in some as yet unexplained manner the climate changed, and northern Siberia, which was formerly a beautiful and verdant region, became an icy wilderness and a land of death.

For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & CO.

Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

THE TOMB OF KING JOHN IN WORCESTER We judge and marvel, loath to leave with

On that still form, and stony brow that Thus with a strange, pathetic cry of faith

outward sign of kindly complaisance. The steel-blue eyes had a peculiarly hard, cold glitter-clear and piercing - undimmed by age, something uncanny, as of an eagle or falcon, spelling solitude around, now and then only warmed by a ray of benevolence, of spiritual culture. You could readily imagine the tremor that terrible countenance might inspire in the breast of a subordinate. Seen at a distauce,

MANY, many years ago, the late Emperor William, then Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, was one day inspecting a regiment and expressed his dissatisfaction rather forcibly with the unsoldierly appearance of a daudified subaltern who was leading his men past his Royal Highness. The subaltern in question was a certain Lieutenant von Moltke. When this lieutenant attired in a plain, half-threadbare overhad risen to world-wide fame, the coat and black felt hat-Moltke's emperor still remembered his first favorite disguise when travelling it meeting with the illustrious soldier, might have been possible to fancy the and, jocularly recalling the incident to schoolmaster; but that illusion was him, was wont to say: "You see, soon dispelled when you came to peer Moltke, what a poor judge of character closely into those adamantine features. I am." Brave old William, in truth Like all Prussian officers of high one of the best judges of human grit rank, Count Moltke's manner was that ever lived, could well afford to marked by extreme, almost courtieravow his mistake in this particular in-like urbanity; and notwithstanding his stance; for a great United Germany. reputation for taciturnity, at times he cemented by the blood shed on fifty could be full of conversation. battlefields was there palpably articulate to bear witness to the fact !

On one occasion he entered into a disquisition of the principles which underlie the organization of the German general staff and the connection of politics with the leadership of the

During the last years of his life, when not at his country seat in Silesia, the late Count Moltke lived in Berlin in the huge general staff building (Gen- | army. He emphasized the importance eralstabsgebäude), just opposite the column of Victory in the Thiergarten. His nephew, Major von Moltke, with his family, lived with him and presided over the household, in which the grace of a beautiful woman and the merry laughter of children did a deal to brighten the declining days of the old widower. Retired from business, his active mind kept still well in touch with the latest topics of the day. Either politics, art, philosophy, or literature possessed in him a keen appreciator and critic up to the last.

of the organization and supreme command of the army being kept entirely independent of the daily current of party politics the advantages of stability, only to be obtained in the hands of permanent authority, etc. He touched upon the difficulties which the military administration had to contend with in countries like Spain, France, and even England, owing to political causes.

Moltke was evidently a believer in the directing power of one man in military matters; but he did not seem to allow for the difficulty of discovering a man, in times when public opinion is prone to produce "popular generals."

In Berlin, Count Moltke always wore the smart undress uniform of a Prussian general; and had it not been for his thin voice and the thousands of The subject of Russia was ever minute wrinkles spread over every inch present in his thoughts; in fact, the of his beardless face, there would have old warrior created the impression that been little to denote a difference be- he would not have been averse to tween a man of sixty and one not far tackle the Russians and push the from ninety. He had a habit of stoop-northern colossus a few pegs back ing slightly when speaking to a visitor, towards Asia. It is well known that but that could easily have passed for an he believed the conflict sooner or later