Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Volume 1 (2nd edition).djvu/250

222 diluvium; and the glacial facing, which was easily cut through, appeared to Captain Beechey to be occasioned either by the snow being banked up against the cliff or collected in its hollows in the winter, and converted into ice in the summer by partial thawings and freezings, or by the constant flow of water during the summer over the edges of the cliffs, on which, when converted into ice, the sun's rays operate less forcibly than on other parts. At Blossom Cape, in Kotzebue Bay, the ice, instead of merely forming a shield to the cliff, was imbedded in the indentations along its edges, filling them up nearly even with the point.

The bones found in this deposit of mud and gravel belonged to the elephant, the urus, the deer, and the horse. Some of the tusks examined by Professor Buckland possessed the same double curvature as the tusks of the great elephant in the museum at Petersburgh, from the icy cliff at the mouth of the Lena, in Siberia. The head of the musk-ox, brought home with the fossil bones, Professor Buckland says, cannot be considered as fossil. The horns of the deer were similar to those found in the diluvium of England; but there were also the cervical vertebræ of an unknown animal, and which must have differed essentially from any that now inhabit the polar regions of the northern hemisphere.



IND, or Sinde, extends on both sides of the river Indus, called by the Hindoos Sindh, which thus gives its name to the country. It resembles Egypt in the overflowing of the river, in its climate, in some degree in its soil, and also in being confined on one side by a ridge of mountains, and on the other by a desert. Being of classical celebrity, it has long attracted the attention of geographers; but from the opposition offered to research by the prejudices of its oriental possessors, and the predatory habits of its Nomadic tribes, it has remained until very lately quite unexplored. The views of Napoleon, however, on our Indian possessions, first pointed out the necessity of a better acquaintance with a country which forms their western barrier; and we are indebted to the impulse given by these precautionary measures for Colonel Pottinger's account of Sinde, and his subsequent exploration, with Captain Christie, of Belochistan, and a part of Persia. The final occupation of Cutch by the British troops in 1819, further brought our government in connexion with Sinde; and after an unsuccessful