178 National Geographic Magazine. 
anchorage we found was Cape Blossom, from which place we 
visited the rendezvous and were visited in turn by the natives. 
We had now been enjoying for some time twenty-fours hours of 
daylight, the midnight-sun having lighted our way to and from 
Point Hope during our first visit to that place. 
Leaving Cape Blossom upon the 24th of July we stood out of 
Kotzebue sound for the northward, running the greater part of 
the time in a heavy fog. We passed Point Hope on the 25th, 
Cape Lisburne on the 26th, and anchored off Cape Sabine early in 
the morning of the 27th of July. Near by was a very wide vein 
of lignite coal, from which the Thetis had been coaled the previ- 
ous year and to which the name of “Thetis coal mine ” had been 
given. This had been worked during the present summer, also, 
and a party of natives who were encamped near by had furnished 
coal to some of the whalers. 
Being now in the vicinity of a stream known to the natives as 
the Pitmegea, I went in a whaleboat to examine its mouth and 
entrance, as this stream was unknown to but few whites and did 
not exist upon any charts or maps. It was found to have but 
three feet of water on the bar at its entrance, but after crossing 
this a depth of six feet was found. The stream was found so 
full of bars and shoals that we could ascend but a short distance 
after entering it. The river and its narrow valley were very 
winding, the general course being northwest from its source to 
the coast. After the spring thaw, and the rains that follow, the 
stream rises to a depth sufficient for the natives to ascend and 
descend it with their light-draught skin-boats for a distance of 
about forty miles. Its length is estimated to be over one hun- 
dred miles. The river had been explored the previous year by 
John W. Kelly, who was this summer employed on board the 
Thetis as the official interpreter, and to him I am indebted for the 
following description of the ice-cliff existing upon the banks of 
the Pitmegea, and also of a peculiarly built stone hut near the 
source of one of the tributaries. 
Icn-CLiFF ON THE PITMEGEA. 
This ice-cliff is about twenty-five miles from the mouth of the 
Pitmegea, at a place where the hills run their spurs out to the 
banks of the river, closing the picturesque valley that stretches 
away to the sea-coast in an almost unbroken width of a mile. A 
glacier faces southward, and receives the full benefit of the sun- 
