i8 Smithsonian Exploration in Alaska in 1904 



This fact accounts for their steep face. The same escarpment 

 extends some ten miles up the river, with a wooded flood plain along 

 its base. There is a little ice on top of these bluffs but nothing- like 

 the extensive development exposed in the Old Crow Basin. The 

 under-cutting of the river causes large slabs and blocks of the 

 frozen silts to fall into the river and it has been reported that num- 

 bers of bones, teeth, and tusks are thereby exposed, which has 

 given this locality the name of " Bone-Yard." The writer found 

 only a few scattered fragments in 1904 (pi. 11, fig. i). 



G. M. Dawson says : ° 



" In 1886 the Geological Survey of Canada acquired from Mr. F. 

 Mercier, who had spent many years as a trader in the Yukon re- 

 gion, a number of bones, tusks, and teeth of the Alammoth. These 

 were chiefly obtained by Mr. Mercier near the mouth of the Tanana 

 River." It is probable the " Palisades " is the locality where these 

 specimens were gathered. 



The Palisades form a typical exposure of the lacustrine phase of 

 the deposits Spurr and Collier designate the " Yukon Silts " 

 and which Dall has called the " Kowak Clays." They are for the 

 most part of Pleistocene age as is shown by the bones of mammoth 

 and other large mammals besides the shells of freshwater and land 

 molluscs represented by living species contained in them. All 

 phases of " Yukon Silts " grading from coarse gravels to clays are 

 distributed as fluvial and lacustral deposits throughout the Bering 

 Sea and arctic drainage basins of Alaska and adjacent territory. 

 Their elevation and dissection by the present streams has produced 

 the bluffs and terraces that form such a conspicuous feature along 

 most of the rivers. 



At a settlement called Kokrines, steamer transportation was re- 

 sumed to Kaltag, a small trading post where the government tele- 

 graph line and winter mail trail that extends down the river leaves 

 the Yukon, ascends Kaltag river to near its head, then crosses the 

 divide to Unalaklik River, and descends that stream to Norton 

 Sound, a total distance of about one hundred miles. At Kaltag the 

 services of two natives as packers and guides were engaged and on 

 August 14 with two additional Eskimos engaged to pack for 

 the first fifty miles, the party commenced an overland trip which 

 occupied thirty-one days and extended, for nearly three hundred 

 miles, across the drainage basins of the Ungalik, Inglutalik, and 



° Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc, Lond., Vol. 50, p. 2, see also Lambe in the Ottawa 

 Naturalist, Vol. XII, Oct. and Nov., 1898, p. 136. 



