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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS 



VOL. 66 



The general aspect of these different elevated silt banks resembled very much 

 that of similar places in Alaska and Yukon Territory. The tops of the high, 

 steep ramparts were overgrown with moss, lichen, a few Arctic plants, and 

 grasses — among them our own " Labrador tea " — and thin larches without any 

 underbrush. The lower moist places of the surface exhibited an abundance 

 of " niggerheads." 



Through many deep, narrow, cross gullies, worn by erosion into these 

 elevated silt beds, little streams of muddy water trickled into the river below. 



Often there was no shelf at all at the base of these elevated silt beds. 

 Sometimes the shelves were extremely miry, overrun by sticky mud ava- 

 lanches and very difficult of access. 



Fig. 



-Big Anyui River. 



First elevated silt l)ank, looking up-stream, 

 June, 191 5. 



Bedrock was nowhere observed. However, during the last third of the 

 journey the current became rather suddenly swift and greatly obstructed 

 further progress of the clumsy dory. A fine reddish gravel appeared on the 

 river bars, mixed with quartz and slate pebbles, rapidly increa ing in size. As 

 soon as the gravel appeared, small fossils began to show on the river bars, 

 while the mud flats below had been entirely bare of such. On the last camping 

 place reached, fossils were found on the bars, and other elevated silt ridges 

 apparently bordering the river farther above were noticed. 



Finally the advanced season and lack of supplies compelled us to return. 

 Approximately 50 versts above the mouth of the Little Anyui, we were directed 

 by a lonesome half-breed fisherman — the only human being we met on this 

 river — to a connecting slough which took us into the Big Anyui. 



There we heard from another settler of three fossil banks farther above on 

 the Big Anyui, but could not examine them at the- present time. The winter 

 was too near. I resolved, however, to return at the earliest opportunity. 



