ii6 Smithsonian Exploration in Alaska in 1904 



the ice-cliffs, in which not a particle of ice is to be seen. All the 

 ice-cliff's are located on the left or south bank of the river." 



[National Geographic Magazine. Vol. VII, 1896, pp. 345-346. Ice-Cliffs 

 on the Kowak River. By Lieut. J. C. CantwelL] 



" The Kowak River rises in the northwestern part of Alaska, and 

 after a tortuous easterly course of about 550 miles, the greater por- 

 tion of which is within the Arctic Circle, it flows into Hotham Inlet, 

 a large body of fresh water opening into Kotzebue Sound. During 

 the summer of 1884-85 it was my good fortune to visit this region 

 and to make a reconnaissance of the stream from its mouth to its 

 headwaters. Among the many novel and interesting features of the 

 region, which had never previously been visited by w^hite men, none 

 w^ere more striking than a remarkable series of ice-cliffs observed 

 along the banks of the river about 80 miles from its mouth. These 

 deposits of ice were first seen in some of the low silt banks of the 

 delta, and it was supposed that they were the result of the spring 

 freshets in the river forcing large masses of ice into the soft, yield- 

 ing soil of the banks. But when on our emerging from the delta, 

 and reaching the higher land of the interior we still found these 

 ice deposits in the form of clifs, from 80 to 150 feet high, the theory 

 of current formation had to be abandoned. The banks of the 

 stream in the region where the ice-cliffs are found are not all filled 

 with ice. and the water marks on those which are composed only of 

 soil and rock show beyond question that the water has never reached 

 a sufficiently high stage to have transported the ice to its present 

 position. 



"At two points the cliffs attain an altitude of over 150 feet, and 

 one cliff measured by sextant angles showed 185 feet. The tops of 

 all the cliffs were superposed by a layer of black, silt-like soil from 6 

 to 8 feet thick, and from this springs a luxuriant growth of mosses, 

 grass, and the characteristic arctic shrubbery, consisting for the 

 most part of willow, alder, and berry bushes, and a dense forest of 

 spruce trees from 50 to 80 feet high and from 4 to 8 inches in 

 diameter. 



" Where the face of the cliffs was towards the south the upper 

 portion of the formation would be found undergoing the process 

 of destruction under the melting action of the sun's rays, while in 

 other situations the erosion of the river current was constantly un- 

 dermining the cliffs. Both of these destructive agents caused great 

 masses of soil and tree-laden ice to become detached and fall into 

 the stream, ^^'here the retreating waters of spring had left these 



