In our own country elephantine remains have also given rise to strange tales. The village of Walton, near Harwich, is famous for the abundance of Mammoth remains, which lie along the base of the sea-cliffs, mixed with the bones of horses, oxen, and deer. "The more bulky of these fossils," says Professor Owen, "appear to have early attracted the notice of the curious. Lambard, in his _Dictionary_, says that 'in Queen Elizabeth's time bones were found, at Walton, of a man whose skull would contain five pecks, and one of his teeth as big as a man's fist, and weighed ten ounces. These bones had sometimes bodies, not of beasts, but of men, for the difference is manifest.'"
According to the same authority, there is reason to believe that instances have occurred in Great Britain in which, with due care and attention, a more or less entire skeleton of the Mammoth might have been secured. He mentions the case of the discovery of a number of Mammoth bones by some workmen in a brick-ground, near the village of Grays, in Essex. But most unfortunately, in their ignorance, they broke up these valuable relics, and sold the fragments, for three half-pence a pound, to a dealer in old bones! This somewhat lucrative traffic went on for over half a year before the matter came to the notice of Mr. R. Ball, F.G.S., who recovered some fine bones from the men, and thus rescued them from the destruction that awaited them.
It is greatly to be hoped that some day our National Treasure House at South Kensington may be enriched with a complete Mammoth skeleton from British soil.
The Chinese, as might be expected, heard of the Mammoth long before Europeans did, and they have some strange stories about it. In the northern part of Siberia, so great is the abundance of Mammoth tusks, that for a very long period there has been a regular export of Mammoth ivory, both eastward to China and westward to Europe. Even in the middle of the tenth century an active trade was carried on at Khiva in fossil ivory, which was fashioned into combs, vases, and other objects, as related by an Arab writer of that time. Middendorf reckoned that the number of fossil tusks which have yearly come into the market, during the last two centuries, has been at least a hundred pairs--an estimate which Nordenskiöld considers as well within the mark. They are found all along the line of the shore between the mouth of the Obi and Behring Straits, and the further north a traveller goes, the more numerous does he find them. The soil of Bear Island and of the Liachoff Islands (New Siberia) is said to consist only of sand and ice with such quantities of Mammoth bones that it appears as if they were almost made up of bones and tusks. Every summer numbers of fishermen make for these islands to collect fossil ivory, and during the winter immense caravans return laden with Mammoth tusks. The convoys are drawn by dogs, and in this way the ivory reaches both the ancient Eastern and the newer Western markets.