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APPENDIX. 
visited by the English expedition, the patches of ice upon the clilF in question 
were very few in number, and variable from one year to another ; that the “ masses 
of the purest ice of the height of a hundred feet,” which were seen by the Russian 
officers, had entirely vanished; and that nearly the whole front of the cliff, from 
the sea at its base to the peat that grew on its summit, presented a continuous 
mass of indurated mud and sand, or of under-cliffs formed by the subsidence of 
these materials. 
It seems quite certain therefore that there must have been a material change in 
the quantity of ice on the cliff in Eschscholtz Bay in the interval between the visits 
of Lieutenant Kotzebue and Captain Beechey ; and if we suppose that, during this 
interval, there was an extensive thawing of the icy front that was seen by Kotzebue, 
but which existed not at the time of Beechey’s visit, we find in this hypothesis a 
solution of the discrepancy between these officers ; since what to the first would 
appear a solid iceberg, when it was glazed over with a case of ice, would, after 
the melting of that ice, exhibit to the latter a continuous cliff of frozen diluvial mud. 
Whilst the ice prevailed all over the front of the cliff, any bones that had fallen from 
it before the formation of this ice, and which lay on the under cliffs or upon the 
shore, must, by an error almost inevitable, have been presumed to fall from the 
imaginary iceberg. 
This circumstance seems to suggest to us that it is worthy of consideration 
whether or not there may have existed any similar cause of error in the case of the 
celebrated carcass of an elephant in Siberia, which is said to have fallen entire from 
an iceberg in the cliffs near the Lena. The Tungusian who discovered this carcass 
suspended in what he called an iceberg may possibly have made no very accurate 
distinction between a pure iceberg and a cliff of frozen mud. 
It is stated by Lieutenant Belcher, that at a spot he visited on the S. E. 
shore of Eschscholtz Bay, on ascending what appeared at first to be a solid hillock, 
he found a heap of loose materials, unsafe to walk on, and having streams of liquid 
mud oozing from it on all sides through coarse grass ; that as the melting subsoil 
of this hillock sinks gradually down, the incumbent peat subsides with it ; so that 
at no very distant period the entire hillock w'ill disappear. In other mud cliffs, 
also, he observed similar streams of liquid mud, accompanied by a depression of 
the surface immediately above them. Thus, from the month of June to October 
these cliffs are constantly thawing, and throwing down small avalanches of mud, 
which, between Cape Blossom and Cape Kruzenstern, are so numerous that you 
can scarce stand there an hour without witnessing the downfall of some portion of 
the thawing cliffs. Hence originate a succession of ravines and gullies, which do 
not run far inland, and afford no sections, being covered with the debris of the 
