Homeward Bound. End of the Corwin's Cruise in the Arctic Ocean. Elephant Point-A Fossil Glacier and its Exuberant Vegetation. Shipwrecked Prospectors-An Alaskan Silver Mine and Oonalaska Scenery. (Special Correspondence of the Bulletin.) Steamer Corwin, Oonalaska, October 4, 1881.

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1881
• Subjects: Environmentalist; naturalist; travel; conservation; national parks; John Muir; history; pamphlets; journal articles; speeches; writing; annotation; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Elephant Point; Tundra
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/168; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmb/article/1167/viewcontent/133.pdf

Written Oct. 4, 1881 Pub. Oct. 31 TOM1B MII-TOMB) HOMEWMB BO0ND, !, i'ShipT-rresked 2?srospcotorn — Aa Alasliaa. Silvex Miae aad Qonalaslran Scenery. ISICIALOOKKSSPONDENCH OF THE BULLETIN.) I ,., Arctic Ocean. Eleplramt Point- A Fossil Glamor a-ad ris Eajteberan-t Vegetatiotfi 'A Steamett. Goswin, ."onalaska, October 4, 1SS1. f On the heme voyage, all the hard Arctic -work done, the Corwin stopped a week at the head of Kotzebue Sound, near Chamisso - Island, to seek a fresh supply of water, and make some needful repairs and observations, Written Oct. 4, 1881 ?-ub. Oct. 31 & - ,'.: (ft*;/ T 4 fl f ' with shaded sides like apples, put on in clusters at the ends of shining glossy sprays; huckleberries, with delicate blue bloom on their •cheeks black cranberries and arbutus berries, ptarmigan in large flocks, the young nearly full-' grown, wandering over the fruitful wilderness and reveling in abundance. s- I found the shore bluff towards the mouth of the Bucklacd Kiver-aboirt from forty to sixty feet high, with a regular slope of about thirty degrees, 35 covered with willows and aiders, soihe of them five or six feet high, and long grass* and- patches of ice here and there, but shewing, no large masses. The soil is a fine blue clay at/bottom, with water-worn quartz, pebbles and sand above it, like that of the opr posiic sideof tbe estuary, and evidently brought down by the river floods when the fee of the glaciers that occupied this river basin and that of the Ku-ukwas melting. ice foeSations in a jossil gl-acisk. The ice. that I found here and on the opposite side of the bay, especially where the tundra is low and ilat,r,say forty or fifty feet above the sea, and covered with pools and strips of water, is not glacier ice, but ice derived from water, freezing in pools and veins ancl hollows and overgrown with mosses, lichens, etc,', and afterwards exposed as fossil ice on the shore face of the tundra where it is being wasted by (he action of the sea. The tundra has been cracked in every direction, and in ...