74 Smithsonian Exploration in Alaska in 1904 



1816. Captain Beechey, in the course of his narrative (pp. 257, 323, 

 and 560), has given a general description of the circumstances at- 

 tending the examination of the locahty in which the existence of 

 these bones had been indicated by Lieutenant Kotzebue, and before 

 I proceed to ofifer any observations of my own on these remarkable 

 organic remains, or on the causes that may have collected them in 

 such abundance on the spots where they are now found, I shall 

 extract a further and more detailed account of the place and circum- 

 stances in which they were discovered, from the journals of Mr. 

 Collie (surgeon to the English Expedition), by whom the bones 

 were principally collected, and the chief observations and experi- 

 ments made, on which Captain Beechey has founded his opinion, in 

 which his officers. Lieutenant Belcher and Mr. Collie, entirely coin- 

 cide with him, that the cliffs containing bones, which have been 

 described by Kotzebue and Eschscholtz as icebergs covered with 

 moss and grass, are not composed of pure ice, but are merely one of 

 the ordinary deposits of mud and gravel, that occur on many parts 

 of the shores of the Polar Sea, being identical in age and character 

 with diluvial deposits of the same kind which are known to be dis- 

 persed over the whole of Europe, and over a large part of northern 

 Asia and North America ; and presenting no other peculiarities in 

 the frozen regions of the north, than that which results from the 

 present temperature of these regions, causing the water which per- 

 colates this mud and gravel to be congealed into ice. 



" The question of fact, whether the clift"s containing these bones 

 of elephants, and other land quadrupeds, are composed of ' masses 

 of the purest ice, a hundred feet high, and covered on their surface 

 with vegetation,' as stated in the voyage of Lieutenant Kotzebue 

 (p. 219, English translation), or are simply composed, as Captain 

 Beechey thinks them to be, of ordinary diluvium, having its in- 

 terstices filled up with frozen waters, is important, as it affects 

 materially the consideration of the further question, as to what was 

 the state of the climate of the arctic regions at the time when they 

 were thickly inhabited by genera of the largest quadrupeds, such as 

 at present exist only in our warmest latitudes ; this being a point of 

 much interest and cviriosity, in relation to the history of the physical 

 revolutions that have affected our planet, and on which there still 

 exists a difference of opinion among those individuals who have 

 paid the greatest attention to the subject. 



" Before I proceed to Mr. Collie's observations on the spot in 

 which they were found, I shall extract from his journal a list of 

 the total number of animal remains collected during: the short time 



