Page:The cruise of the Corwin.djvu/202

 July 23. Clear and calm. Weighed anchor at eight in the morning and ran close inshore, anchored, and landed with instruments to make exact measurements for latitude and longitude, and to observe the dip. I also went ashore to see the vegetation, and Nelson to seek birds and look for Eskimo specimens. Found only four plants in bloom—saxifrage, willow, artemisia, and draba. This is the bleakest and barest spot of all. Well named Icy Cape. A low bar of sand and shingle shoved up by the ice that is crowded against the shore every year. Inside this bar, which is only a hundred yards wide, there is a stretch of water several miles wide; then, low gravelly coast. Sedges and grasses, dwarfed and frost-bitten, constitute the bulk of the flora.

We noticed traces of Eskimo encampments. There was blubber in abundance from a dead whale that had been cast up on the shore. They had plenty of food when they left. But before this they must have been hungry, for we found remains of dogs that they had been eating; also, white foxes' bones, picked clean. Found a dead walrus on the beach beyond the wreck of the whale.

At one in the afternoon we weighed anchor and turned north, crossing inside of Blossom Shoals, which are successive ridges pushed up