144 
MOSS-BEDS. 
of this cove, both by sections where streams from the 
lake had left denuded faces, and by piercing through 
them with a pointed staff. These mosses formed an 
investing mould, built up layer upon layer, until it had 
attained a mean depth of five feet. At one place, near 
the sea line, it was seven feet ; and even here the slow 
processes of Arctic decomposition had not entirely de- 
stroyed the delicate radicles and stems. The fronds 
of the pioneering lichens were still recognizable, en- 
tangled among the rest. 
Yet these little layers represented, in their diminu- 
tive stratification, the deposits of vegetable periods. I 
counted sixty-eight in the greatest section.* Those 
chemical processes by which nature converts our au- 
tumnal leaves into pabulum for future growths work 
slowly here. 
My companions were already firing away at the 
Auks, which covered in great numbers the debris of 
fallen rock. This was deposited at an excessive in- 
clination, sometimes as great as 47° ; its talus, some 
three hundred feet in height, cutting in cone-like proc- 
esses against the mural faces of the cliff. 
There was something about this great inclined plane, 
with its enormous fragments, their wild distribution, 
and steep angle of deposit, almost fearfully character- 
istic of the destructive agencies of Arctic congelation. 
I had never seen, not even at the bases of the mural 
traps of India and South America — or better, perhaps, 
than either, our own Connecticut — such evidences of 
active degradation. It is not to the geologist alone 
♦ I copy the number of these layers as I find it marked in my journal ; yet 
I do so, not without some fear that I may be misled by the chirography of a 
very hurried note. My recollections are of a very large number, yet not so 
large as that which my respect for the littera scrijata induces me to retain in 
the text. 
