LONELY NORTHERN WASTES. 433 



suit of accumulated mud and sand, brought down in former times 

 by the melting and running of large glacial rivers, and then thrown 

 up later by recent ice-floes of the Arctic Sea. The cliffs are, in part, 

 abrupt and rocky ; others are made up of falling masses of mud, 

 sand, and ice. The rocky cliffs are dominant on the western and 

 southern shores, while the diluvial bluff's and flats complete that 

 remaining east and northeast circuit of the sound. Lowlands bor- 

 der a major portion of the Bay of Good Hope, and form the land 

 of Cape Espenberg and contiguous country. 



A most striking natural feature of this final rendezvous of the 

 salmon-loving Innuits is the Peninsula of Choris, which divides the 

 inner waters of the Bay of Escholtz from those of Good Hope. It 

 is a narrow, variously indented tongue ; its northern end is sepa- 

 rated from the southern, and connected by a slender neck of very 

 low land. This lower point assumes the shape of a round and some- 

 what conical eminence, surmounted by a flat, hut-like peak, the sides 

 of which rise a few feet perpendicularly above a surrounding sur- 

 face, as though raised artificially by masonry. The whole height is 

 about six hundred feet above sea-level. Both sides of that quaint 

 headland terminate in rocky cliff's which, toward the west, are one 

 hundred and fifty or two hundred feet high, stratified, unbroken, 

 and dipping to the west at an angle of thirty degrees. They are 

 composed of micaceous slate, with no included minerals. This slate 

 is of a greenish hue, with a very considerable predominance of mica. 

 In it are garnets, veins of feldspar enclosing crystals of schorl, and 

 fissures filled with quartz. At one point, nearly midway between 

 the southern end of this peninsula and its low neck, is a singular 

 bed of pure milk-white quartz, that marks its locality from a long 

 distance by the masses of large white blocks which have fallen down 

 by natural processes of cleavage and frost-chiselling, and these re- 

 main unaltered in their snowy color in spite of the corroding action 

 of time and weather. Again, still nearer the neck, a narrow bed of 

 limestone forms a distinct protrusion above some mica-schist, about 

 thirty feet in length and five in depth. It reappears in such 

 strength, however, at the southern end of the peninsula, that it 

 forms most of the rock exposed, and produces four perpendicular 

 and contiguous promontories, separated from each other by small, 

 receding bays, that present curious walls striped a white and blue 

 tint in beautifully blended stratification, most unique and attractive 

 to the eye. The upper part of this limestone contains iron pyrites, 



