GLACIERS ON THE PACIFIC COAST. 37 



15', Kotzebue discovered in 1818 a cliff of frozen mud and 

 ice " capped by a few feet of soil bearing moss and grass." * 

 Large number of bones of the " mammoth, bison (?), rein- 

 deer, moose-deer, musk-ox, and horse, were found" at the base, 

 where they had fallen down from the cliff during the summer 

 thaws. Sir Edward Belcher and Mr. G. B. Seeman after- 

 ward visited the same spot and corroborated Kotzebue's ac- 

 count. From their report it was evident that the conditions 

 in northern Alaska are very similar to those in northern Si- 

 beria, where so many similar remains of extinct and other 

 animals have been found in the frozen soil. The section de- 

 scribed at Eschscholtz i Bay seems to be simply the edge of 

 the tundra which is so largely represented in the central 

 portions of the Territory. In 1880 Mr. Dall visited the local- 

 ity and gave a fuller description than had been before given. 

 The conditions are so unique that we reproduce his account : 



The ice-cliffs at this point were for a considerable distance 

 double ; that is, there was au ice-face exposed near the beach 

 with a small talus in front of it and covered with a coatiug of 

 soil two or three feet thick, on which luxuriant vegetation was 

 growing. All this might be thirty feet in height. On climb- 

 ing to the brow of this bank the rise from that brow proved to 

 be broken, hummocky, and full of crevices and holes ; in fact, 

 a second talus on a larger scale, ascending to the foot of a sec- 

 ond ice-face, above which was a layer of soil one to three feet 

 thick covered with herbage. 



The brow of this second bluff we estimated at eighty feet or 

 more above the sea. Thence the land rose slowly and gradu- 

 ally to a rounded ridge, reaching the height of three or four 

 hundred feet only at a distance of several miles from the sea, 

 with its axis in a north-and-south direction, a low valley west 

 from it, the shallow bay at Elephant Point east from it, and 

 its northern end abutting in the cliffs on the southern shore of 

 Eschscholtz Bay. There w T ere no mountains or other high 

 land about this ridge in any direction ; all the surface around 

 was lower than the ridge itself. 



* See Prestwich's " Geology," vol. ii, p. 463 et seq. 



