NOTES ON THE POINT HOPE SPIT, ALASKA 187 
leaving a comparatively ice-free tract of water, three to six fathoms 
deep, between the ice-pack and the coast, through which he laid his 
course.* 
All observers agree in ascribing great thickness to the ice of the 
Arctic ice-pack. ‘The whalers distinguish it from the ordinary sea 
ice produced by one or two winters’ freezing by calling it the “big ice.” 
Jarvis, in speaking of the ice-pack of the Alaskan coast, states that 
though the pack contains no real icebergs it nevertheless extends six to eight 
fathoms below the water and occupies from a third to a half the depth of the 
shallow Arctic Sea. 
Lieutenant Chas. H. Stockton, of the U. S. Navy, thus describes 
the action of this ice when it is driven ashore: 
Sometimes a long line of heavy floe ice from the pack grounds in the shallow 
water near the shore during northerly winds, pressed from behind by the force 
and the weight of the entire northern pack. It is gradually forced up, plowing 
its way through the bottom, at the same time rising gradually along the ascent 
of the bottom toward the land.? 
Lieutenant Stockton made a hydrographic survey of the anchorage 
near Point Barrow in which he 
demonstrated that the contour of the bottom is constantly changed by the plowing 
and planing done by the heavy ice grounded and driven up by the pressure of the 
mighty ice-pack, under the influence of northerly winds and gales.3 
In this connection the observations and opinion of Mr. A. J. 
Collier who has seen much of the Arctic coast of Alaska is of interest. 
He states that 
Dr. E. O. Campbell, government school-teacher at Cape Chibukak, St. Lawrence 
Island, whose residence is nearly one-half mile back of the beach,- reports that 
he has often feared the destruction of the mission buildings from the same cause 
(driving ashore of the ice-pack). The beach at Cape Chibukuk is marked by a 
series of regular ridges parallel to the shore, said by Dr. Campbell to have been 
pushed up by the ice-pack. In view of these considerations the barrier beaches 
of the shores of the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea, though in nearly all respects 
they resemble the barrier beaches formed by wave and current action in southern 
altitudes, must in the opinion of the writer be regarded as in part due to material 
pushed up from the sea-floor by the ice-pack and only transported in a minor 
t Osborn, The Discovery of the Northwest Passage, p. 71, 1857. 
2 Chas. H. Stockton, Natl. Geog. Mag., Vol. I], 1891, pp. 182, 183. 
3 [bid., p. 182. 
