ALASKA. 221 



These great level, low areas, so peculiar to this island, are- 

 made up of fine granitic drift, lined at the sea-margin with sand ; 

 the hills and hill-fanges are rich in color, with deep blue-black 

 patches caused by i^rotrusions of trap; but no shrubbery what- 

 ever grows on those at the east end and north end of the island, 

 save the creeping salix, dwarfed and stunted— cryptogamic 

 plants chiefly. The main body of the range is composed of 

 reddish, coarse and fine grained feldspathic granite, with abun- 

 dant trap protrusions, which weather out and fall down upon 

 the flanks of the ridges in dark patches and streaks, contrast- 

 ing, at a distance of eight or ten miles, very sharply with the 

 main ground of pinkish rock, moss-grown, and colored here and 

 there with the greenish-russet tinge peculiar to such vegeta- 

 tion; this dark marking of the trap, at a little distance, appears, 

 like low-growing shrubbery. Snow and ice lay in the gullies- 

 and on the hill-sides. 



The low plains have the russet yellowish green peculiar to 

 the tundra of the north; the sand is a bright light brown. 

 Small streams flow down from the hills and empty into the sea 

 and lakes, in which we found a few pary or young salmon; the 

 lakes and lagoons are fairly stocked with a white-fish — nothing 

 else of this kind. / 



The entire expanse of the lowlands over which we traveled 

 was like a great sponge filled and overrunning with water, the 

 chief vegetation upon it being the beailtiful tufted or plumed 

 grass, {EnopJiorum,} bearing exquisite tassels of white, silken 

 floss; this grass, in conjunction with several cryptogams, a few 

 scattered Biibus cliatnoemorus and Umpetrum, make up the rich 

 russet-green, flecked with gray-green spots, which mark these^ 

 great marshy tracts in the Alaskan country. There are many 

 places where this vegetation, during ages past, has decayed ami 

 formed bog-holes or pools, into which the pedestrian will mire 

 down to his waist at a single step. 



A small suocinea, or land-snail, was very abundant on these 

 flats, near our lauding at Northeast Point, and all along the 

 shore-line we saw an abundance of drift- wood, logs, and pieces, 

 most of it pine or spruce, a few poplar sticks, and a number of 

 unrecoguizable twisted knots. 



Very little algce, or sea-weed, or any marine life whatever, was 

 evident from the surf-castings ; only a few mussels and small 

 conch-shells, (Funus.) The beach is made up, in some places 



