MORSE AND MAHLEMOOT. 443 



lichen-grown, and colored here and there with areas of that pecu- 

 liar and characteristic greenish-russet tinge of sphagnous origin. 

 This dark marking of those trap-dikes appears like the presence of 

 low-growing shrubbery from the vessel, as an observer sails by. 

 Snow and ice he all the year around in small bodies Avithin the 

 gullies and on the hill-sides. 



The lower plains have a richer, warmer, yellowish-green tone 

 than that cold tint of the uplands, while the sand of the sea-shore is 

 a bright light-brown. Small streams flow down from these hills, 

 and twist and turn sluggishly through the tundra as they lead to 

 lakes or empty directly into the sea — a few parr, or young salmon, 

 being the only fish in them that can be found ; most of the fresh- 

 water lakes and lagoons are, however, fairly stocked with familiar- 

 looking mullets (Gatastomus), but nothing else. 



The entire expanse of these lowlands of St. Lawrence are pre- 

 cisely like all of those vast reaches of Alaskan tundra — they are 

 great saturated, earthy sponges, filled and overrunning with wa- 

 ter in midsummer — the chief and happiest vegetation ujjon them 

 being that same beautiful tufted or plumed grass which we no- 

 ticed at Michaelovsky, since the white and silken tassels of its 

 feathery inflorescence never fail to charm even tired and travel- 

 worn eyes. This grass, in conjunction with several rank-growing 

 mosses, the trailing runners of the crowberry-vines, and little 

 patches of the humble arctic raspberry (Bubus chamcemorus) make 

 up that conventional tvmdra color of russet-green (flecked with 

 graj'ish-blue spots on the slopes of stern northern exposures) which 

 mark these great marshy tracts of Alaska, and under which eter- 

 nal frost is found, even in midsummer, a foot or two only from 

 their surfaces. Small white shells of a land-mollusk (succinea^ are 

 scattered thickly over these moorlands. 



On the flats of the east shore of St. Lawrence a great abundance 

 of drift-wood was piled in much confusion. Here the natives had a 

 wood-cutting camp, hewing and carving ; its chips were scattered 

 all along the beach-levels for miles. There are places, here, where 

 the ice in some unusual seasons has carried large logs and pieces 

 of drift-wood far back, full half a mile from the sea, and a vigorous 

 growth of tundra vegetation now flourishes in between ; and there 

 they lie to-day deeply embedded in the swale, settling down in de- 

 cay — that slow, hungering eremacausis of the Ai'ctic. 



The Innuits, living here as they do, some three or four hundred 



