638 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fifteen feet above the water, was associated with one of the man- 

 dibular bones of the whale. I could obtain no information as to 

 their having been possibly carried to their present position by 

 man, bnt it may have been the case. A large skull, which I owe to 

 the kindness of Mr. Inglestadt and to Mr. Louis Sloss, Jr., man- 

 ager of the Alaska Commercial Company, was obtained, as nearly 

 as I could determine through inquiry on the spot, from about the 

 same locality. Where it abuts upon the sea the tundra stands 

 from eight to twenty feet above it, at places descending to even 

 lower levels. The sea face is almost everywhere an abrupt one, 

 showing undercutting by high water, and it is continued by a broad, 

 rapidly sloping sand and shingle beach, which packs firmly, and 

 almost immediately beneath the surface exhibits a distinctly strati- 

 fied construction — the alternate layers of fine, flat gravel, coarse, 

 clayey sand, and finer " ruby " (fragmented garnet) sand sloping 

 like the surface, although generally with a milder pitch, to the sea. 

 The open sea front, Avith inland tundra, is continued for a dis- 

 tance of about fourteen miles westward of ISTome, where it is inter- 

 rupted by the mountains, in a west-southwest course, reaching the 

 sea; flat-topped Sledge Island, so much recalling in aspect some of 

 the islands lying off AVhale Sound, in the northwest of Greenland, is 

 their oceanic continuation for some distance, with, sharp breaks on 

 both the oceanic and inner sides. It is probable that much of the 

 debris that has resulted from the disruption of the mountain masses 

 has been distributed littorally by the sea, with an eastward wash, 

 to form the bars and shallows which for some distance stretch 

 along the coast; nor is it impossible that some of the giant bowlders 

 of limestone, marble, granite, and syenite which are found on the 

 margin of the beach about four or five miles west of ISTome, some 

 of them measuring eight and twelve feet or more in diameter, 

 and all of them smoothly rounded and evenly polished, represent a 

 part of this destruction. At the same time, there is good reason to 

 suspect that they may have been deposited by ice action, either as 

 erratics of floe ice coming from the northwest, or of glacial distri- 

 bution from the region of the mountains. Whatever may have 

 been the final stage in the history of the amphitheater of Nome 

 (the region included between Cape Nome and Sledge Island), which 

 my limited observation did not permit me to determine to full satis- 

 faction, it is almost certain, even in the absence of the ordinary gla- 

 cial testimony, that the region is one of past glaciation, and that 

 much of the gravel and bowlder material of the ocean front is of 

 morainic origin, so modified and altered in position by readjust- 

 ments of the land and water ns to have lost its proper physiographic 

 contours. The aspect of tlie hills aiul valleys is almost precisely 



