84 OSCAR EEE RS ELEY, 
of the faceted pebbles and boulders are striated; indeed, a few min- 
utes’ search yielded some of the finest scratched stones I have ever 
found. 
Owing to the masses of tundra soil that have fallen down the 
cliff, the upper limit of this apparent glacial deposit is obscured but 
appears to be quite irregular. It is overlaid by a thick bed of dark 
blue-gray laminated silt and muck, which is better exposed than the 
boulder clay. In places the silt forms steep banks 30 feet high, 
reaching down to sea-level. In other places the boulder clay reaches 
from 3 to 6 feet above the water and at one place fifteen feet, 
being there overlaid by only about ten feet of silt. The fine lamina- 
tion, absence of gravel or coarse sand, and the presence of much peat 
in the silt at first suggested to me that it was deposited in a lagoon (at 
a time the land was lower) behind a beach ridge which has been 
completely destroyed by marine erosion. 
The boulder clay has a character typical of ground moraine and 
it is undoubtedly due to ice action. However, the question may be 
raised as to the method of its formation and how it reached its present 
position. This is especially pertinent in view of the fact that this 
locality is far beyond the reputed limits of Quaternary glaciation in 
northern Alaska. Three hypotheses are worthy of consideration. 
The first attributes the boulder clay to the action of shore ice. This 
would not account for the presence of the clay and the extensive 
faceting and scratching on all sides of the included rock fragments, 
for it is inconceivable that the shore ice could work long enough on the 
same material to produce these features as strongly developed as they 
are found. 
The second hypothesis recognizes the material as till but attributes 
its present position to transportation by floating ice. The objection 
to this is that there is too much of it to have been carried en masse and 
that if carried in small quantities and dropped from time to time, it 
should be mixed with typical marine deposits which so far have not 
appeared in the exposures. 
The last hypothesis, and one which I am inclined most strongly 
to favor, is that it is a portion of the ground moraine of a great glacier 
that came out of the mountainous interior of Alaska, probably cover- 
ing, in part at least, the basin of Hotham Inlet. 
