CRUISE OF STEAMER CORWIX IX TTTE ARCTIC OCEAN. 



145 



The dividing ridge along- the high eastern portion is traversed by a telling series of par- 

 allel grooves and small valleys trending north and south approximately, the curves on the 

 north commencing nearly at the water's edge, while, the south side is more or less precipitous. 

 The culminating point of the elevated eastern portion of the peninsula is about 2,500 feet high, 

 and has been cut off from the mainland and added as another island to the Diomede group, 

 the wide gap of low ground connecting it with the adjacent mountainous portion of the main- 

 land being only a few feet above tide-water. Out in the midst of this low, flat region smooth 

 upswelling roches moutonnees were discovered here and there like groups of small islands, with 

 trends and contours emphatically Glacial, all telling the action of a universal abrading ice-sheet 

 moving southward. 



Hence along the coast to Cape North, which is the limit of our observations in this direc- 

 tion, the same class of ice phenomena was discovered — moraine material, washed and reformed, 

 moutonnee masses of the harder rocks standing like islands in the low, mossy tundra, and trav- 

 eled bowlders and pebbles lying stranded on the summits of rocky headlands. 



These enduring monuments are particularly abundant and significant in the neighborhood 

 of Cape Wankerem, where the granite is more compact and resisting than is commonly found 

 in the Arctic regions we have visited, and consequently has longer retained the more evanes- 

 cent of the glacial markings. Cape Wankerem is a narrow, flat topped, residual mass of this 

 enduring granite,' on the summit of which two patches of the original polished surface were 

 discovered that still retain the fine stria' and many erratic bowlders of slate, quartz, and various 

 kinds of lava, which, from the configuration and geographical position of the cape with reference 

 to the surrounding region, could not have been brought to their present resting-places by any 

 local glacier. 



Cape Serdze is another of these residual island masses, brought into relief by general glacial 

 denudation, manifesting its origin in every feature, and corroborating the testimony given at Cape 

 Wankerem and elsewhere in the most emphatic, manner. 



EAST CAPE I FROM THK SOUTH ). 



All the sections of the tundra seen either on the Siberian or Alaskan coast lead towards the 

 conclusion that the ground is Glacial, reformed under the action of running water derived in broad 

 shallow currents from the melting receding edge of the ice sheet, and also in some measure from 

 ice left on the high lands after the main ice sheet, had been withdrawn; for these low, flat deposits 

 differ in no particular of form or composition that we have been able to detect from those still in 

 process of formation in front of the large receding glaciers of Southeastern Alaska. On many of 

 the so-called "mud Hats" extending from the snouts of glaciers that have receded a tew miles from 

 the shore, mosses and litchens and other kinds of tundra vegetation are being gradually acquired, 

 and when thus clothed these patches of tundra, are not to be distinguished from the extensive 

 deposits about the shores of the Arctic regions. 



The, phenomena observed on the American coast from Saint Michael's to Point Barrow differ 

 in no essential particular from what have been described on the opposite shores of Siberia. 



