580 
VOYAGE TO THE 
CHAP. The quantity of drift wood found upon the shores of Beering^s 
Strait has occasioned various conjectures as to the source from which it 
Oct. proceeds ; some imagining it to be brought down the rivers ; others to 
be drifted from the southward. 
We found some at almost every place where we landed, and 
occasionally in great quantities. There was more at Point Kodney 
than in any other part ; a great deal upon Point Spencer ; some upon 
Cape Espenburg, but more in Kotzebue Sound. Between Cape Krusen- 
stern and Cape Lisburn there was very little, and in the bay to the 
eastward of the Cape scarcely any ; but when the coast turned to the 
northward it became more plentiful, and it was afterwards tolerably 
abundant, and continued so all the way to Point Barrow. In addition to 
this, it should be remembered, that a great deal is used by the Esqui- 
maux for boats, implements of all sorts, houses, and fuel. 
These trees are principally, if not all, either pine or birch ; the 
wood is often tough and good ; indeed some that was taken from 
Choris Peninsula was superior to the pine we procured at Monterey ; 
but from this stage of preservation it may be traced to old trunks 
crumbling to dust. Some trees still retained their bark, and appeared 
to have been recently uprooted ; and comparatively few showed marks 
of having been at sea. 
Some circumstances favour an opinion, by no means uncommon, 
that this wood is drifted from the southward ; such as its being found 
in such large quantities on Point Rodney, the many floating trees 
met with at sea to the southward of Kamschatka, &c. ; but the quan- 
tity of this material found by Captain Franklin and Dr. Richardson 
at the mouths of the rivers on the northern coast of America, and 
some being found by us high up Kotzebue Sound, in Port Clarence, 
and other places, where it is hardly possible for it to be drifted, con- 
sidering the outset of fresh water, renders it more probable that it is 
brought down the rivers from the interior of America. Did it come 
by sea from the southward, we could scarcely have failed seeing some 
of it in our passage from Petrapaulski, and during our cruises to the 
northward of Beering’s Strait ; but scarcely any was observed between 
Kamschatka and St. Lawrence Island ; none between that place and 
