340 APPENDIX. 



the manner in which masses and sheets of pure ice may have 

 been collected in hollows and fissures on and near the front of 

 the cliff in Eschscholtz Bay. 



1st. By the accumulation of snow drifted into hollows sub- 

 jacent to the overhanging stratum of black boggy soil that 

 forms the brink of the cliff, and subsequently converted into 

 ice by successive thawing and freezing in spring and summer. 



2dly. They may have been formed from water collected in 

 deep fissures and cavities that intersect the falling cliff' near its 

 maro-in. The inclined position of the land immediately above 

 this mar"-in of peat, and the annual undermining which is pro- 

 duced by the thawing of the frozen mud beneath it, produce 

 occasional land shps, and movements of the edge of the cliff 

 towards the sea ; these cause cracks and fissures of the soil in 

 various directions, but chiefly parallel to the external face of 

 the cliff. When these fissures descend through the black 

 boo-o-y soil of the surface into the frozen mud below, they be- 

 come receptacles for the formation of ice, since the water that 

 oozes into them is congealed upon their sides until it entirely 

 fills them with a wall or dyke of solid ice. The fall of a mass 

 of mud from the outer side of one of these walls would expose 

 this ice, forming a case over the inner side of the fissure in 

 which it was accumulated. 



Sdly. The manner in which an extensive facing of pure ice 

 may be formed on these cliffs, by water during the summer 

 trickling down their frozen surface from the soil above, and 

 becoming converted to ice in the course of its descent, has been 

 described by Captain Beechey (pages 353 and 454, Vol. I.) 



Lieutenant Belcher, in his notes, proposes another theory 

 to explain the occurrence of masses of pure ice immediately 

 below the margin of peat on the top of the cliff on the south- 

 ern shore of Eschscholtz Bay. He conceives that between the 

 superficial bed of spongy peat, and the mass of frozen mud 

 which forms the body and substance of this cliff, the water 

 oozing downwards through the peat, during the thaw of each 

 successive summer, is stopped at the point where it comes into 

 contact with the perpetually frozen earth below, and there ac- 

 cumidates into a thick horizontal sheet of pure transparent 



