Page:The cruise of the Corwin.djvu/146

 The glaciation of the coast here is recorded in very telling characters, the movement of the ice having been in a nearly south-southwest direction. There is also a considerable deposit of irregularly stratified sand and gravel along this part of the coast. For fifteen or twenty miles it rises in crumbling bluffs fifty feet high, and makes a flat, gently sloping margin, from one hundred yards to several miles in width; in front of the mountains. The bay, moreover, is nearly closed by a bar, probably of the same material. The weather is delightful, clear sunshine, only a few fleecy wisps of cloud in the west, and the water still as a mill-pond.

June 28. Anchored an hour or two this fore noon at the west Diomede, and landed a party to make observations on the currents and temperature of the water that sets through Bering Strait. Then proceeded on our way direct to Tapkan to seek our search party. The fine weather that we have enjoyed since the day before our arrival at St. Michael ended in the old, dark, gloomy clouds and drizzling fog on reaching the Diomedes, though the coast above East Cape has until now been in sight most of the time up to a height of about a thousand feet. The glaciation, after the melting of the