Page:The cruise of the Corwin.djvu/66

 On the twenty-seventh we sighted the Siberian coast to the north of the Gulf, snow-clad mountains appearing in clear outline at a distance of about seventy miles. Even thus far the traces of glacial action were easily recognized in the peculiar sculpture of the peaks, which here is as unmistakably marked as it is on the summits of the Sierra. Strange that this has not before attracted the attention of observers. The highest of the peaks seems to be perhaps four thousand feet above the sea. I hope I may yet have the chance to ascend them.

On the morning of the twenty-eighth we came to anchor near an Eskimo village at the northwest end of St. Lawrence Island. It was blowing and snowing at the time, and the poor storm-beaten row of huts seemed inexpressibly dreary through the drift. Nevertheless, out of them came a crowd of jolly, well-fed people, dragging their skin canoes, which they shoved over the rim of stranded ice that extended along the shore, and soon they were alongside the steamer, offering ivory, furs', sealskin boots, etc., for tobacco and ammunition.

There was much inquiry for beads, molasses, and most of all for rum and rifles, though they willingly parted with anything they had for tobacco and calico. After they had procured