Ice-beds on Eschscholtz Bay hi 



The bones are found generally in the bed of rivers or in the alluvial 

 deposits near their mouths. Many theories have been advanced to 

 account for the accumulation of these bones, and by some writers 

 it was supposed that the animals may have died in large numbers 

 when in herds, but it is altogether likely that the remains were 

 brought together by the action of the thousands of small streams of 

 water formed by the melting snow, which everywhere flood the 

 tundras in the spring. In this way they are carried to the larger 

 rivers, and by them swept down, until by the widening of the river 

 and the consequent decrease of the strength of the current they 

 become stationary and are in time buried in the alluvium." 



Hooper prolongs his text with a series of disconnected compiled 

 remarks concerning the mammoth in general. Concerning Cape 

 Blossom he remarks, pages 39 : " It presents seaward a sheer cliff, 

 which was described by Beechey as having an ice formation similar 

 to that at Elephant Point. Although I visited this place several 

 times during my two cruises, yet I saw no signs of ice against the 

 face of the cliff like that at Elephant Point, which remains the same 

 from year to year." 



Fortunately this account may be materially supplemented from the 

 personal notes of Mr. E. W. Nelson who has generously placed his 

 private journal, with drawings, in the writer's hands. 



September 7, 1881. " We steamed up opposite the bluff" on Ele- 

 phant Point. The water shoaled so we were forced to anchor in two 

 and three quarters fathoms. The bluff was found to be one hun- 

 dred and forty feet high and to be made up of ice and clay along its 

 face for about three miles. The lower ice frequently presents a 

 shelving projection under which the water at high tide (the rise and 

 fall at the time of our visit being about three feet) had eaten fifteen 

 to twenty feet. This exposure of ice slopes up and has its upper 

 surface hidden by an inclined bank of sod and soil fallen from the 

 terrace above. This sloping bank, covered with a luxuriant mass 

 of vegetation, mainly grass two to four feet high interspersed with 

 thrifty alder bushes, ends sharply against a more or less abruptly 

 rising wall of ice five to twenty feet high forming the brow of the 

 bluff. Over this upper ice is a layer from a foot to three or four 

 feet of vegetable humus and peat upon which is a rank growth of 

 grass. This surface ascends back and up gradually a few hundred 

 yards or less to meet a slope rising at a much greater angle that 

 extends up to the rounded summits of hills that continue into the 

 interior. 



