55° 



/. B. TYRRELL 



miners attributed to the Indians a tradition that many, many years ago 

 it had so broken away, and had buried an Indian village beneath it. 

 But it is not necessary to invoke any sudden landslide to account 

 for this bare cliff and the great pile of loose rock at its base, since 

 fragments of rock are even now constantly falling 'from the face of 

 the scarp and adding to the size of the hill of rock-fragments below it. 



Fig. I. — The Slide at Dawson. 



The conditions which would seem to have combined to produce 

 this naked scarp and the wide-spreading talus of broken rock at 

 its base are somewhat as follows: 



The general surface of the Yukon Territory in the vicinity of 

 Dawson is permanently frozen for a depth of from loo to 200 feet, 

 beneath which the rock is more or less thoroughly saturated with 

 water. In some places, and often on hillsides, this underlying water 

 forms channels for itself through the frozen rock and soil, and breaks 

 out as springs, and at the foot of Moosehide Mountain, directly 



