IN GREEN ALASKA 



plaint. The robber jaeger was there too, — a very 

 beautiful bird, a sort of cross between a hawk and a 

 gull, — sitting quietly upon the moss and eying our 

 movements. On the top of the grassy bank near the 

 sea some of the party found the nest and young of 

 the snowy owl. Fragments of the bodies of murres 

 and ducks lay upon the ground beside it. 



The most novel and striking of the wild flowers 

 was a species of large white claytonia growing in 

 rings of the size of a tea plate, floral rings dropped 

 here and there upon the carpet of moss. In the centre 

 was a rosette of pointed green leaves pressed close to 

 the ground; around this grew the ring of flowers, 

 made up of thirty or forty individuals, all springing 

 from the same root, their faces turned out in all direc- 

 tions from the parent centre. In places they were so 

 near together that one could easily step from one 

 circle to another. 



The forenoon of the next day, the 15th, we spent 

 upon St. Matthew Island, and repeated our experi- 

 ence of walking over ground covered with na- 

 ture's matchless tapestry. Here, too, a thick, heavy 

 carpet of variegated mosses and lichens had been 

 stretched to the very edge of the cliffs, with rugs and 

 mats of many-colored flowers — pink, yellow, violet, 

 white; saxifrage, chickweed, astragalus, claytonia — 

 dropped here and there upon it. Sometimes the 

 flowers seemed worked into the carpet itself, and a 

 species of creeping willow spread its leaves out as if 

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