NOTES ON THE POINT HOPE SPIT, ALASKA 183 
on the north and south sides and the comparative extent to which 
vegetation has secured a foothold on the two sides. A few varieties 
of grass, which constitute nearly the sole vegetation, extend everywhere 
along the north shore up to the limit of wave action. On the south 
side the gravel is fresh-looking and in many places is entirely barren 
of vegetation for two or three hundred yards from the shore. 
It is interesting to note that the first white men to land on this 
point were impressed with the recent character of some of the deposits, 
comprising the spit. Mr. A. Collie, who was a member of the scien- 
tific staff of Captain Beechey’s expedition to this coast in 1827, made 
the following observations concerning it: 
To the north of Cape Thompson the coast runs out by means of a low spit 
to the distance of perhaps 20 miles into the sea. ‘The low point itself seemed to 
be acquiring almost a daily accession to the basaltic gravel of which the beach 
was in greater part formed. 
The location of the Point Hope spit is undoubtedly due in large 
measure to the combined influence of the Kukpuk River and a coast- 
wise current which sets northward out of Kotzebue Sound, at from 
one to three miles an hour. This current appears to be continuous 
with the current which sets northward through Bering Strait during 
the summer months. The current through Bering Strait forks a 
short distance north of the Strait, one branch bearing northwesterly 
along the Siberian coast, and the other ‘going north through Kotze- 
bue Sound and thence along the mainland by Cape Seppings, Point 
Hope, and Icy Cape to Point Barrow at which point it goes off to 
the unknown northeast.’’? 
The drift of the ice-beset ‘‘ Jeannette’? seems to be conclusive evi- 
dence of the northwesterly current to the west of the Strait. 
The current through Bering Strait may, of course, be greatly 
accelerated or retarded by the winds, but they do not seem to be ever 
able to entirely check it. Captain F. W. Beechey recorded that he 
found a current in Bering Strait running against a heavy gale “at 
the rate of upward of a mile an hour in a N. 41° W. direction.” 
The influence of this current is manifested as far south as Teller 
t Zoblogy of Captain Beechey’s Voyage, London, Bohm, 1839, p. 172. 
2 Chas. H. Stockton, Natl. Geog. Mag., Vol. II, 1891, p. 183. 
3 Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Bering Strait, Part II, 1831, p. 546. 
