48 RECONNAISSANCE IN NORTHERN ALASKA IN 1901. 



to. This view i- si rengthened by the fact that under certain conditions of light along 

 the coast low objects become, by refraction, enormously exaggerated in vertical scale. 

 Colville River has formerly been described as having four mouths, but it prob- 

 ably has five or six. The westernmost is said to be shallow, but the second from the 

 west is navigable and is used by the natives in ascending and descending the river on 

 the west. Whether any of these channels will admit river steamboats was not learned. 

 If so, it must be the right or most easterly channel, which seems to be the main 

 one. Once across the delta, judging from its gradient and volume, the river can 

 probably be ascended by steamboat for a distance of 150 or more miles above its 

 mouth. McClure, in crossing Harrison Bay in 1850, found the freshening influence 

 of the Colville to extend 12 to 14 miles seaward, the surface of the water being of a 

 dirt}- mud color and scarcely salt. 



ANAKTUVUK RIVER. 



Next to the Colville, the principal stream of this province is Anaktuvuk 

 River, the large southeast tributary of the Colville, which, rising in the northern 

 part of the mountains, flows almost directly northward across the Anaktuvuk Plateau 

 and joins the Colville at the inland edge of the coastal plain. At about 30 miles 

 from the mountains the Anaktuvuk is joined on the east by Willow Creek, a stream 

 equal to itself in size. 



Above Willow Creek, owing to the swiftness of the current and frequent riffles 

 formed by large bowlders that beset the bed of the stream, the Anaktuvuk can 

 hardly be regarded as navigable at ordinary water for canoe or rowboat. In the 

 npper section of the river, the valley, as shown in PI. IV, A, is shallow and open, 

 with no bluffs or banks to speak of. The tundra extends almost to the water's edge. 



Below Willow Creek the floor of the valley consists of a gravel- or bowlder- 

 covered flat, a mile or more in width, along the edges of which the gentle, moss- 

 covered side slopes are occasionally interrupted by low bluffs rising from 20 to 100 

 feet above the river. Willow Creek and Nanushuk River both seem to head in the 

 mountains to the southeast of the edge of the plateau, while Tuluga River, on 

 the west, apparently takes its rise on the plateau, near its middle part. 



COAST LINE. 



From Colville River to Point Barrow. — The northern Arctic coast of Alaska, 

 from the mouth of the Mackenzie to Point Barrow, trends a little north of west. It 

 is low and flat, the actual shore line being formed by a low shelving beach (PL IX, A), 

 whose seaward extension forms the shallow sea floor. From east of the Colville 

 westward to Point Barrow the surface of the tundra often descends to or within a 

 few feet of tide level, so that the same gentle slope seems to be continued in the very 



