Notices of New Books. 4579 



which have been washed down the ravine, where only good landing 

 for boats is afforded. The soil of the cliffs is a bluish -coloured mud, 

 for the most part covered with moss and long grass, full of deep fur- 

 rows, generally filled with water or frozen snow. Mud in a frozen 

 state forms the surface of the cliff in some parts ; in others, the rock 

 appears with the mud above it, or sometimes with a bank halfway up 

 it, as if the superstratum had slid down and accumulated against the 

 cliff. By large rents near the edges of the mud-cliffs they appear to 

 be breaking away, and contributing daily to diminish the depth of 

 water in the bay.' — P. 257. 



" ' Such is the general conformation of this line of coast. That 

 particular formation, which, when it was first discovered by Captain 

 Kotzebue, excited so much curiosity, and bore so near a resemblance 

 to an iceberg as to deceive himself and his officers, remains to be de- 

 scribed. As we rowed along the shore, the shining surface of small 

 portions of the cliffs attracted our attention and directed us where to 

 search for this curious phenomenon, which we should otherwise have 

 had difficulty in finding, notwithstanding its locality had been parti- 

 cularly described ; for so large a portion of the ice-cliff has thawed 

 since it was visited by Captain Kotzebue and his naturalists, that 

 only a few insignificant patches of the frozen surface now remain. 

 The largest of these, situated about a mile to the westward of Ele- 

 phant Point, was particularly examined by Mr. Collie, who, in cutting 

 through the ice in a horizontal direction, found that it formed only a 

 casing of the cliff, which was composed of mud and gravel in a frozen 

 state. On removing the earth above, it was also evident, by a de- 

 cided line of separation between the ice and the cliff, that the Rus- 

 sians had been deceived by appearances. By cutting into the surface 

 of the cliff, three feet from the edge, frozen earth, similar to that which 

 formed the face of the cliff, was found at eleven inches' depth, and 

 four yards further back the same substance occurred at twenty inches' 

 depth. This glacial facing we afterwards noticed in several parts of 

 the Sound, and it appears to be occasioned either by the snow being 

 banked up against the cliff or collected in its hollows in the winter, 

 and converted into ice in the summer by partial thawings and freez- 

 ings, or by the constant flow of water during the summer over the 

 edges of the cliffs, on which the sun's rays operate less forcibly than 

 on other parts in consequence of their aspect. The streams thus be- 

 come converted into ice, either in trickling down the still frozen sur- 

 face of the cliffs, or after they reach the earth at their base, in which 

 case the ice rises like a stalagmite, and in time reaches the surface. 



