"^6 Smithsonian Exploration in Alaska in 1904 



ericse, graminia?, and other herbaceous plants, and is intersected with 

 a few valleys containing small streams, and having their more pro- 

 tected declivities adorned wath shrubs of willow and dw'arf betula 

 {Betula incana). 



" A continued w^aste of the cliff is produced at the upper part by 

 its falling down in considerable lumps to the bottom, where the 

 debris remains for a longer or shorter time, and covers the front to 

 a greater or less height, in some places, almost to the very top. 

 Large masses are sometimes seen rent off and standing out from the 

 body of the cliff ready to have their last slight hold washed away by 

 the next shower, or by a little more thawing and separation of the 

 frozen earth that serves them for attachment. The lumps of soil 

 that fall are still covered w^ith the herbaceous and shrubby verdure 

 that grew upon them. The perpendicular front of the cliff' of frozen 

 mud and sand is every summer gradually decreasing by the melting 

 of the ice between its particles into water, which trickles down and 

 carries with it loose particles of earth. In some portions of the cliff 

 the earthy surface is protected with ice, partly the effect of snow 

 driven into the hollows and fissures, and partly from the congealation 

 of water, which may have collected in chinks or cavities : these 

 masses of ice dissolve in summer, and the w'ater running from them 

 carries with it any earth that lies in its way, and mixes itself with, 

 and moves forward, the mass of debris below\ By this gradual 

 thawing and falling of the cliff, the black boggy soil at the surface 

 becomes undermined, and assumes the projecting and overhanging 

 appearance which is so remarkable. At the base of the greater part 

 of the cliff the debris is w^ashed by the sea at full tide, and being 

 gradually carried away by the retiring w'aters, is spread out into an 

 extensive shoal along the coast. It was in this shoal, where it is left 

 dry by the ebbing tide, to the distance of fifty or a hundred yards 

 from the cliff, that the greater number of the fossil bones and teeth 

 were discovered, many of them so concealed as only to [599] leave 

 a small end or knob sticking up ; they were dispersed very irregu- 

 larly. Remains of the musk-ox were found on this shoal, along with 

 those of elephants. 



" The few specimens taken out of the cliff, or more properly 

 from the debris, on the front of it (for none, I believe, were taken 

 out of the very cliff") , were in a better state of preservation than those 

 which had been alternately covered and left exposed by the flux and 

 reflux of the tide, or imbedded in the mud and clay of the shoal. 



" A very strong odour, like that of heated bones, w^as exhaled 

 wherever the fossils abounded. Quantities of rolled stones, mostly 



