102 



JOHN BURROUGHS 



crow, riding astride its mother's neck, cried and yelled 

 vigorously as we approached. The sun was bright but the 



air was very 

 chilly, the mer- 

 cury standing at 

 about 38 Fahr. 

 We were with- 

 in 120 miles of 

 the Arctic cir- 

 cle. The slen- 

 der peninsula 

 we were on is 

 a few hundred 

 feet wide; it is 



UNFINISHED ESKIMO WINTER HOUSE: CIRCULAR FRAME Hiarshy in S01Tie 

 OF WHALE BONES, FILLED WITH SOD. pkceS, t)Ut for 



the most part dry and covered with herbage. Here was 

 the yellow poppy blooming, and two species of saxifrage. 

 In my walk I came upon a large patch of ground covered 

 with a small low pink primrose. The ground was painted 

 by it. But the prettiest flower we found was a low forget- 

 me-not, scarcely an inch high, of deep ultramarine blue 

 — the deepest, most intense blue I ever saw in a wild 

 flower. Here also we saw and heard the Lapland long- 

 spur and the yellow wagtail. A flock of male eider ducks 

 was seen in the bay. 



PORT CLARENCE. 



We traveled two hours in Asia. I am tempted to write 

 a book on the country, but forbear. At eight o'clock we 

 steamed away along the coast toward Indian Point, in an 

 unending twilight. We reached the point at midnight, 

 but the surf was running so high that no landing was 

 attempted. Then we stood off across Bering Strait for 

 Port Clarence in Alaska, where we hoped to take water, 



