Ice-beds on Eschscholtz Bay ioi 



still covered with from seven to ten feet of soil. Water was flowing 

 copiously from these walls of ice, and they were transparent, without 

 admixture of earth, while the soil which capped them was dry and 

 friable. In the slope of this ruined cliff most of the fossils obtained 

 on this occasion were found, a few small fragments only having been 

 gathered from the soft mud at its foot. Some were collected from 

 the surface of the slope, others were dug out at places where the tips 

 of the tusks protruded through the soil. 



" A deep valley through which a stream of water flows divides the 

 sixth hill from the preceding one. Portions of this hill had subsided 

 from the melting of the icy foundation, but in one part a solitary 

 block of ice about twenty feet square rose above the surface, retain- 

 ing a thin layer of soil on its summit. From the vicinity of this 

 block the hill rose abruptly on all sides ; its declivity descended 

 without break to the beach, and its soil, except in the section that 

 had sunk, did not appear to have been ever disturbed. The beach at 

 this place was not composed of muddy detritus, like that which 

 skirted the bases of the other cliffs. A mammoth tusk, having been 

 noticed protruding above the surface of the hill, w^as traced down- 

 wards by digging to the depth of eight feet, and the skull with a 

 quantity of hair and wool were found lying on a thin bed of gravel, 

 beneath which was solid transparent ice. Enveloping the bones there 

 was a bed of stiff clay several feet in thickness, and mixed with them 

 a small quantity of sticks and vegetable matter. The superficial 

 soil was loose and dry. A strong, pungent, unpleasant odor, like 

 that of a newly opened grave in one of the crowded burial places of 

 London, was felt on digging out the bones, and the same kind of 

 smell, in a less degree, was perceptible in various other places where 

 the cliffs had fallen. From the same pit out of which the mammoth's 

 skull was dug the bones of some smaller animals (scapula, tibia, etc.) 

 were taken and were duly labelled at the time, but in the course of 

 their transfer from one public department to another, after reaching 

 London, the labels have been lost, together with the specimens of the 

 buried wood, gravel, and other matters found associated with the 

 bones. Dr. Goodridge says that this eminence was the last exam- 

 ined, the approach of night having prevented the party from explor- 

 ing another [p. 8] hill lying between it and Eschscholtz Bluff. That 

 hill, however, was covered with luxuriant vegetation and no icy cliffs 

 showed themselves. 



On Choris Peninsula,' says the same gentleman, ' frozen soil 

 was found at the depth of four feet at the end of September, after 

 an unusually warm summer, and a cask full of flour deposited by 



