SURFACE AND SOIL OF THE ARCTIC COAST. 455 



quietly down where it had been taken from, as if nothing extraordinary 

 had happened." 



" Blessed is the country whose annals are dull." If it is so also with 

 exploring expeditions, that of Lieutenant PuUen has, in parts at least, 

 special claims to blessedness. After leaving Icy Reef on the 22d August 

 until he reaches the Mackenzie, he has little of interest to relate. Each 

 day seems to have been, to a great extent, a repetition of the preceding one. 

 Successive storms, comfortless encampments, more or less satisfactory inter- 

 views with Eskimo families or tribes, form the too famiUar matter of this 

 portion of the narrative. The following sketch, however, of the geography, 

 etc., of the coasts eastward from Point Barrow has a scientific importance 

 apart from its value as testimony based upon personal observation : " The 

 coast, from Point Barrow eastward, is low and bare, hardly ever exceeding 

 a rise of fifteen feet, and that only in some places, until you pass Point Kay, 

 when it attains an elevation of from sixty to seventy feet as far as the 

 western entrance of the Mackenzie, the islands about whose mouth are low 

 and covered with dwarf willows. Westward of Harrison's Bay the country 

 appears to be uniformly level, consisting of one immense plain, covered with 

 short grass and moss, and close to the coast, intersected by small lagoons of 

 brackish water. The substratum close along the coast appears to me to be 

 composed of nothing but ice, covered with a dark vegetable soil, from two 

 to three feet in depth. This theory we had frequent opportunities of test- 

 ing, where large masses were separated by thaw, and once in particular on 

 Flaxman Island. Along the coast, in many places, are long, low, narrow 

 beds of gravel and sand, forced up by the pressure of ice, inside of which 

 we seldom found water for our boats. The Eeturn Eeef is the eastern part 

 of a chain of the same description, extending onwards till it comes abreast 

 of Point Beechey. The Escape Reef is coarse sand, with long wiry grass on 

 its western part. The Lion and Reliance Reefs are islands, the northern- 

 most, or outer one of which has at least ten feet of elevation on its sea 

 face; and stretching west from it for about one mile is a low gravelly 

 beach. 



" On aU these banks, as well as the coast eastward of Harrison's Bay, 

 large quantities of driftwood are to be found. Currents or tides are generally 

 influenced by the wind. About Point Barrow, in calm weather, the flood 

 comes up from the southward, and sweeps round the point to the eastward, 

 and the ebb retires from the eastward. About Herschel Island, and as far 

 east as Escape Reef, there appeared to me to be a set from the northward ; 

 and it was here we encountered the heaviest sea, and found the most open 

 water. The bay on the south-west shores of Herschel Island was the only 

 place like a harbour I saw along the coast. The Eskimos appear the same 

 all along the coast ; the only difference I noticed was the manner in which 



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