296 REMARKS AND OPINIONS. 



The frost bursts the rocks ; the mild heat of every 

 summer brings down new masses, and the destruc- 

 tion continues, till it is complete. The soil is 

 every where composed of fragments of rocks, ex- 

 cept where the Sphagnwn has formed a turf, or 

 marshy soil, in deep watered places. 



The poet of a happier climate, shows us, in the 

 wood-covered summits of his mountains, the image 

 of indestructibility, while the gloomy song of the 

 northern bard exemplifies by his rocks the de- 

 structive power of age. 



The Tschukutskoi, who inhabit St. Lawrence 

 Bay, possess a tolerably large quantity of a fine 

 graphite, with which they paint their faces with 

 crosses and diflTerent figures, as an ornament. We 

 have obtained, of the diflTerent tribes with whom 

 we traded of both coasts, nephrites wrought in 

 different manners, on which, with their present 

 riches in iron, they place no particular value. We 

 have been unable to discover where those two 

 minerals are found. 



St. Lav»'rence Island is of moderate height, and 

 its ridges are flattened. At the place where we 

 landed, in the year 1816, we met with a kind of 

 rock mixed with green-stone ; and in the year 1 8 1 7j 

 to the east, and near the south cape, we also found, 

 as it were at its foot, large masses of granite. 

 The forms which, when viewed from the sea, the 

 profile of this promontory exhibited, excited our 

 curiosity, and we believed we had seen in them 



