182 National Geographic Magazine. 
Company’s station (Ray’s old station), gave a life and movement 
which was as shortlived as the season. Fortunately the weather 
proved most favorable and the heavy ice kept off shore while the 
stores were landed; the wind then freshened, but communication 
could still be kept up and the work of erection went on. 
The site of the house of refuge is within a few hundred 
yards of Ray’s old house and near the village, and its keeper, 
Captain Borden (an old New Bedford whaler) was busy in putting 
his house in order before the autumn should come on. During 
our stay at this place we were enabled to make a hydrographic 
survey of the anchorage, which demonstrated that the contour of 
the bottom is constantly changed by the ploughing 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. 
And here let me say a word about the ice of this part of the 
Arctic ocean. The ice in summer consists of floes and fields of 
various sizes, which are cemented together in winter by the young 
or newly frozen ice. No icebergs exist in this part of the Arctic, 
as there are no glaciers near the sea coast to form them. The 
shore along the entire Arctic coast of Alaska shows evidence of 
former glacial action, but the only glaciers to be found are in the 
southeastern part of the territory. 
The Arctic pack, which never melts, consists of hard blue ice, 
made up of fields and floes of comparatively level ice, which are 
surrounded and interspersed with hummocks varying from ten to 
forty feet in height. ‘These hummocks are formed by the broken — 
and telescoped ice resulting from the collision and grinding to- — 
gether of heavy ice-floes, the hummocks being often rounded 
and smoothed in outline by heavy falls of snow. 
In the spring, under the influence of the prevailing southerly 
winds and northerly currents, the packs break off from the 
shore and move to the north, the position of the southern edge 
varying in latitude with the season and the winds. 
The shore-ice, which remains fast to the coast line after the 
pack moves off, gradually breaks up as the season advances, and, 
becoming scattered, is taken to the northeastward from the vicinity 
of Point Barrow and northwestward from the vicinity of Herald 
island and Wrangel land. 
Sometimes a long line of heavy floe-ice from the pack grounds 
in the shallow water near the shore during northerly winds, 
