PACIFIC AND BEERING’S STRAIT. 
257 
spears, and a large knife strapped to their thigh : but so far from this CHAP, 
being the case, they readily consented to an arrangement, that only one 
baidar at a time should come alongside to dispose of her goods, and then 
make way for another : the proposal was made while the baidars were 
assembled round our boat, and was received with a shout of general 
applause. 
Blue beads, cutlery, tobacco, and buttons, were the articles in 
request, and with which almost any thing they had might have been 
purchased : for these they sold their implements, ornaments, and some 
very fine salmon ; also a small caiac very similar to those of Greenland 
and Hudson's Strait. 
^Vhile the duties of the ship were being forwarded under my first 
lieutenant, Mr. Peard, I took the opportunity to visit the extraordinary 
ice-formation in Escholtz Bay mentioned by Kotzebue, as being 
“ covered with a soil half a foot thick, producing the most luxuriant 
grass,” and containing an abundance of mammoth bones. We sailed 
up the bay, which was extremely shallow, and landed at a deserted 
village on a low sandy point, where Kotzebue bivouacked when he 
visited the place, and to which I afterwards gave the name of Elephant 
Point, from the bones of that animal being found near it. 
The cliffs in wdiich this singular formation was discovered begin 
near this point, and extend westward in a nearly straight line to a rocky 
cliff of primitive formation at the entrance of the bay, whence the 
coast takes an abrupt turn to the southward. The cliffs are from 
twenty to eighty feet in height; and rise inland to a rounded range 
of hills between four and five hundred feet above the sea. In some 
places they present a perpendicular front to the northward, in others a 
slightly inclined surface ; and are occasionally intersected by valleys and 
water-courses generally overgrown with low bushes. Opposite each of 
these valleys, there is a projecting flat piece of ground, consisting of the 
materials that have been washed down the ravine, where the only good 
landing for boats is afforded. The soil of the cliffs is a bluish-coloured 
mud, for the most part covered with moss and long grass, full of deep 
furrows, generally filled with water or frozen snow. Mud in a frozen state 
forms the surface of the cliff in some parts ; in others the rock appears. 
I, L 
