438 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



a pleasing and marked contrast with the gray head of the other. 

 The first is elevated from the sea in distinct strata, with a south- 

 western dip, and consists of layers of impure chert in its central and 

 most prominent projections, and of a soft, friable slate and shale in 

 its worn and more retiring sides. The front of the second is rugged 

 and shelving, with very indistinct bandings ; it is partly covered 

 with tundra vegetable-growths, and with fallen masses of gray flint. 

 Both points to this double-headed cape of Lisburne are easily acces- 

 sible ; they are about one thousand feet in height from the shore 

 of the ocean, and both stretch their ridges away inland far to the 

 southeast. 



The highly elevated country here ceases at once to the northeast 

 of Cape Lisburne, where the entire coast-line, away on and off to 

 Icy Cape, and beyond again, forms a deep and extensive bay skirted 

 by a dark, low beach. A gravel-flat fronts this again, filled with 

 shallow estuaries and lagoons. The land of the interior rises from 

 that beach in a series of low, earthy cliffs and in gradual acclivities. 



The coal-veins, which Beechey visited in 1826, are about fifty 

 miles to the eastward of Lisburne, embedded in a ridge some three 

 hundred feet high where it juts into the ocean. This point is 

 known as Cape Beaufort. A narrow vein of pure carboniferous coal 

 is exposed there, about a quarter of a mile from the beach. " It 

 was slaty, but burned with a bright, clear flame and rapid consump- 

 tion." Again, at a point about midway between Beaufort and Lis- 

 burne, directly at the surf -margin, the officers of the United States 

 Revenue Marine cutter Corwin mined a few tons of this same coal 

 in 1880-81. But no harbor for a coaling ship is near by ; the 

 steady north and westerly winds of summer, which blow right on 

 shore almost all of that short time in which a vessel can navigate 

 the Arctic, make it very doubtful whether these remote mines of 

 Alaskan "black diamonds" will ever be of real economic value. 



That sand- and shingle-spit ahead of us, which the whalers have 

 named Icy Cape with perfect fitness, is in itself almost invisible, 

 since it is a mere continuation of the outer rim to a remarkable 

 lagoon which borders this coast from Cape Beaufort to Wainright 

 Inlet, over one hundred miles in length, and varying in width from 

 five to ten miles, with an average depth of two fathoms. It is 

 spanned by occasional sand-bars, some of them entirely dry, so that 

 it is not navigable except for those small boats and oomiaks of 

 the natives, who haul these craft across as they journey, thus safe 



