Page:The cruise of the Corwin.djvu/127

 years old. She had light-brown hair, regular European features, and was very fair and handsome. Her mother, a Chukchi, died in child birth, and the natives killed her father. She is plump, red-cheeked, and in every way a picture of health. That in a Chukchi hut, nursed by a Chukchi mother-in-law, and on Chukchi food, a half-European girl can be so beautiful, well-behaved, happy, and healthy is very notable. On the twelfth of June we had snow, rain and sleet nearly all day. The view up the inlet was very striking—lofty mountains on both sides rising from the level of the water, and proclaiming in telling characters the story of the inlet's creation by glaciers that have but lately vanished. Most of the slopes and precipices seemed particularly dreary, not only on account of the absence of trees, but of vegetation of any kind in any appreciable amount. No bits of shelf gardens were to be seen, though not wholly wanting when we came to climb, for I discovered some lovely garden spots with a tellima and anemone in full bloom. [The vegetation was] very dwarfed, and sparse, and scattered. No green meadow-hollows. The rock was fast disintegrating, and all the mountains appeared in general views like piles of loose stones dumped from the clouds. Plover