Page:The cruise of the Corwin.djvu/193

 scarped face forms the Cape. I found it five hundred and fifty feet high, composed of calcareous slates, much bent and contorted, and a considerable portion was fossiliferous. Where hills of this rock have steep slopes, and so much drainage and wash that soil is not allowed to form, nor the usual moss mantle to grow, they bleach white and present a remarkably desolate aspect in the distance. Such hills are common back of Kotzebue Sound. These barren slopes, however, alternate with remarkably fertile valleys, where flowers of fifty or more species bloom in rich profusion, making masses of white, purple, and blue. Sometimes this occurs on a comparatively thin soil where the leaves do not veil the rocky ground; but at the bottom of the valleys there, usually is a green ground below the bloom. The slopes over which I passed in to-day's walk are planted chiefly with sweet fern—Dryas—with its yellowish-white flowers. A purple silene is also very abundant, making beautiful bosses of color. Phlox is present in dwarfed masses, only the stems and leaves being dwarfed, not the flowers. Anemones occur in fine patches, and buttercups, and several species of daisies and lupines. Dodecatheon I met here for the first time this season. Dwarf willows are abundant. There was one