PORT CLARENCE 



I05 



water, and in due course anchored near the mouth of 

 the little stream. This gave us an opportunity to spend sev- 

 eral hours upon the real tundra. Cape Nome was on the 

 other side of the peninsula, fifty miles away, but the fame 

 of the gold fields had not then reached us. We may have 

 walked over ground rich in gold but our mining expert 

 failed to call our attention to the fact. As we approached 

 the land it looked as smooth as if it had just been gone 

 over with a mowing machine. My first thought was, 

 " Well, the people are done haying here." The tundra 

 was of a greenish brown color and rose from a long cres- 

 cent-shaped beach in a very gentle ascent to low cones 

 and bare volcanic peaks many miles away. It had the 

 appearance of a vast meadow lifted up but a few degrees 

 above the level. This then was the tundra that covers so 

 much of North America — where the ground remains 

 perpetually frozen to an unknown depth, thawing out only 

 a foot or so on the surface during the summer. How 

 eagerly we set foot 

 upon it; how quickly 

 we dispersed in all 

 directions, lured on 

 by the strangeness. 

 In a few moments our 

 hands were full of 

 wild flowers which 

 we kept dropping to 

 gather others more 



ESKIMO CHILDREN, PORT CLARENCE. 



taking, to be in turn 

 discarded as still more novel ones appeared. I found my- 

 self very soon treading upon a large pink claytonia or 

 spring beauty, many times larger than our delicate April 

 flower of the same name. Then I came upon a bank by 

 the little creek covered with a low nodding purple prim- 

 rose; then masses of the shooting-star attracted me, then 



