Library of Cryptozoology

... Russian scientists have not yet given up home of finding a live mammoth in the unexplored northern wastes of their country. Three times during the past 25 years mammoth trails have been reported–three branches broken off where animals of the region could not have reached them, and patches where bark had been eaten off tree-trunks high above the ground. Whites last saw the gigantic, shaggy pachyderm in the 16th century, when Ataman Yermak and his Cossacks conquered Siberia. In a message to Ivan the Terrible, the chieftain wrote of the "great hairy elephant which natives call the 'mountain of meat'," as being "one of the riches of the kingdom of Sibir."

"During the war, while I [Anthony Fiala] was working on rifles, I met a man who said he had been into Siberia and, on determining to penetrate a certain forest, found that the natives were unwilling to accompany him there ... they drew pictures of a fearsome beast like the prehistoric mammoth and trembled and said they would not go..."

The Tartars maintain that the mammoth still exists in their country at the mouths of rivers ... It is also claimed that hunters have pursued them [mammoths] west of the Mississippi.

The vulgar really imagine the Mammon to be a creature living in marshes and underground, and entertain many strange notions regarding it. The Tartars tell many fables of its having been seen alive... I have been told by Tartars in the Baraba that they have seen this creature called Mammon at the dawn of day near lakes and rivers; but that on discovering them the Mammon immediately tumbles into the water, and never appears in the daytime. They say it is about the size of a large elephant, with a monstrous large head and horns, with which he makes his way in marshy places and underground, where he conceals himself till night. I only mention these things as the reports of a superstitious and ignorant people.

In connection with this interesting discovery Dr. Brandt recounts a tradition of a tribe of Tartars in South Siberia, which describes the death of an enormous black ox. It possessed, however, but a single horn, and that of such size that it could be transported by sledges only. Possibly a reference to the elasmotherium.