Notices of New Books. 4381 



enunciated by these officers was most consistent with the facts, came to 

 the conclusion, after a rigid investigation of the cliffs, that Kotzebue 

 was correct in considering them to be icebergs. I have been favoured 

 with papers on the subject from each of the Herald's officers named 

 above, and shall quote as fully from them as my limits allow, after 

 premising a few general observations on the frozen cliffs of other parts 

 of the Arctic coast that have come under my personal observation. 



" At Cape Maitland, in Liverpool Bay, which forms the estuary of 

 the Beghula River, and lies near the 70th parallel, there are precipi- 

 tous cliffs from eighty to one hundred feet high, composed of layers 

 of black clay or loam, inclosing many small water-worn pebbles and 

 a few large boulders. With the exception of about eighteen inches 

 of soil on the summit, which thaws as the summer advances, these cliffs 

 present to the sea a constantly frozen wall, that crumbles annually 

 under the action of the rays of a summer sun, but the fragments being 

 carried away by the waves, and prevented from accumulating, the per- 

 pendicular form of the cliff is preserved. Elsewhere on the coast, 

 cliffs equally vertical, but having a different exposure, were seen 

 masked by a talus of snow, over which a coating of soil had been 

 thrown by land-floods of melting snow pouring down from the inland 

 slopes. The duration of these glacier-like snow-banks varies with 

 circumstances. When the cliffs rise out of deep water, the ice on 

 which the talus rests is broken up almost every summer, and the 

 superincumbent mass, previously consolidated by the percolation and 

 freezing of water, floats away in form of an iceberg. In other situa- 

 tions the snow-cliffs remain for a series of years, with occasional aug- 

 mentations marked by corresponding dirt-bands, and disappear only 

 towards the close of a cycle of warm summers. In valleys having a 

 northern exposure, and sheltered by high hills from the sun's rays, 

 the age of the snow may be very considerable ; but it is proper to say 

 that though aged glaciers of this description do exist on the shores of 

 Spitzbergen and Greenland, they are of very rare occurrence indeed 

 on the continental coast of America. The ice-cliffs of Eschscholtz 

 Bay may have had an origin similar to that of the Greenland icebergs, 

 and have been coated with soil by a single or by successive operations. 

 I find it difficult, however, to account for the introduction of the fos- 

 sil remains in such quantity, and can offer to the reader no conjecture 

 on that point that is satisfactory even to myself. The excellent state 

 of preservation of many of the bones, the recent decay of animal mat- 

 ter shown by existing odour, quantities of hair found in contact with 

 a mammoth's skull, the occurrence of the outer sheaths of bison 

 XIT. 2 H 



