loo Smithsonian Exploration in Alaska in 1904 



Point, forming a high promontory in 1826, had now subsided to a 

 mere hillock by the thawing of the icy substratum, as Kotzebue 

 predicted would happen. A pit was dug to some depth in the loose 

 loamy soil of this hillock, formed by the debris of the ruined cliff, 

 at a point where the thighbone of a mammoth protruded above the 

 surface, without any ice being found ; but on the east of the hill next 

 in succession, a wedge-shaped landslip had left a triangular chasm, 

 whose floor, elevated twenty feet above the beach, was bounded by 

 walls fifty feet high, of pure transparent ice, and its interior angle, 

 reaching thirty feet backwards from the face of the cliff, exhibited 

 an alluvium seemingly undisturbed since it was originally deposited, 

 and consisting of regular layers of * drift ' and peat covered with 

 thick beds of broken sticks and vegetable matter, over which lay a 

 stratum of red river-gravel, then a bed of argillaceous earth, capped 

 by dry friable mould [p. 7] and surface peat, nourishing its peculiar 

 ve;getation of coarse grass, moss, lichens, etc. The icy side walls 

 showed bands or layers considerably inclined, and testifying to their 

 origin in drift snow ; and the size of the sticks imbedded in the back 

 walls of the chasm was greater than that of the stems of any of the 

 bushes now growing in the neighboring ravines. It is to be recol- 

 lected, however, that a short way up Buckland River, groves of 

 spruce-fir are to be met with. A rivulet separates this hill from 

 Elephant Point, and Dr. Goodridge found some of its slopes to be 

 formed of semi-fluid mud, over which a man could not pass. On 

 the second hill or cliff the depth of the soil varied with the uneven- 

 ness of the ice on which it rested, from twenty feet to less than four, 

 the soil being everywhere dry. On digging in one spot to the latter 

 depth the surface of the ice was found to incline upwards in the 

 direction of the hill, and the soil thrown out by the spade was so 

 pulverulent that it was readily blown away by the wind. The third 

 hill, which projected more boldly than the others, contained as far 

 as explored, neither fossils nor ice, but seemed to be entirely com- 

 posed of thick beds of peat, logs of wood, sticks, and vegetable 

 matter, lying generally, but not regularly, in a horizontal position, 

 resting on dry clay, and a bed of river gravel two feet thick. The 

 fourth hill presented a higher and more extensive ice-cliff than any 

 of the others, the ice having melted further back towards the center 

 of the hill, and forming an even wall upwards of eightv feet in 

 height. The Hfth cliff or marked projection, in proceeding to the 

 eastwards, appeared to have sunk bodily from the hill, forming its 

 background, but had left behind it a few icy pillars and detached 

 walls standing twenty feet above the surrounding level surface, and 



