Leaving Cape Blossom upon the 24th of July we stood out of Kotzebue sound for the northward, running the greater part of the time in a heavy fog. We passed Point Hope on the 25th, Cape Lisburne on the 26th, and anchored off Cape Sabine early in the morning of the 27th of July. Near by was a very wide vein of lignite coal, from which the Thetis had been coaled the previous year and to which the name of "Thetis coal mine" had been given. This had been worked during the present summer, also, and a party of natives who were encamped near by had furnished coal to some of the whalers.
Being now in the vicinity of a stream known to the natives as the Pitmegea, I went in a whaleboat to examine its mouth and entrance, as this stream was unknown to but few whites and did not exist upon any charts or maps. It was found to have but three feet of water on the bar at its entrance, but after crossing this a depth of six feet was found. The stream was found so full of bars and shoals that we could ascend but a short distance after entering it. The river and its narrow valley were very winding, the general course being northwest from its source to the coast. After the spring thaw, and the rains that follow, the stream rises to a depth sufficient for the natives to ascend and descend it with their light-draught skin-boats for a distance of about forty miles. Its length is estimated to be over one hundred miles. The river had been explored the previous year by John W. Kelly, who was this summer employed on board the Thetis as the official interpreter, and to him I am indebted for the following description of the ice-cliff existing upon the banks of the Pitmegea, and also of a peculiarly built stone hut near the source of one of the tributaries.
ICE-CLIFF ON THE PITMEGEA.
This ice-cliff is about twenty-five miles from the mouth of the Pitmegea, at a place where the hills run their spurs out to the banks of the river, closing the picturesque valley that stretches away to the sea-coast in an almost unbroken width of a mile. A glacier faces southward, and receives the full benefit of the sunlight during the short polar summer. Gales have deposited particles of soil and débris of plants, along with their seeds, upon the surface of the ice to a depth of from four inches to a foot. The snow-fall of winter soon vanishes before the June sun, while the light covering above the glacier preserves it intact. Vegetation is warmed into life in a remarkably short time, and the brown coat left by the receding snow is almost miraculously transformed to a robe of green and studded here and there with bright polar flowers, there being buttercups, dandelions, yellow poppy, bright astragals, gentians, daffodils and marguerites. The latter are small and unobtrusive, making a showing in a modest way as if they wished to apologize to their sister flowers for their appearance among them. Like beautiful orphan girls, one cannot resist a compassionate tenderness of feeling toward them. But these innocent little flowers, chaste as the ice field upon which they grow, bloom in the polar garden with as much right as the glacier's gentian. Besides flowers, there are the hardy grasses whose roots penetrate the light covering of soil to the ice-bed, whence they derive their nourishment. A few Arctic willows are to be seen, but they only grow about a foot in length, and trail upon the ground. The Pitmegea river is gradually cutting into the glacier, receding from its opposite bank and leaving a bed of gravel behind. During the summer the ice melts away, leaving the protruding soil above it like the eaves of a house; when it protrudes too far for the strength of the grass roots, it topples over into the river. At the freezing in September, icicles freeze from the overhanging sod to the river ice below, forming a narrow portico four miles in extent.
OLD STONE HUT.
On the highest peak at the source of Ikuk creek, a southerly tributary of the Pitmegea, are the ruins of a hut and smaller outhouse, the like of which has never been met with in Northwestern Alaska. Above the grass line, past perpetual beds of snow, up where wild storms sweep away ice, snow, and soil, where only a few gray lichens are to be seen, man, at some former time, has placed a habitation. On the crest of the mountain there is a ragged limestone comb twelve feet high, cracked and shattered into flakes by the vigor of the polar winters. On the south side of this comb, sheltered from the prevailing north winds, excavations have been made into the rock. Taking the comb of rock for one side of the house, the other side of the semicircle has been built up with flat stones, laid up like bricks in masonry, but without mortar. Moss and soil have been in all probability used here instead of mortar, but years of fierce winds have blown it out from the crevices. The structure is conic in shape, after the manner of a Greenlander's snow-hut. This one is about seven feet in diameter. Facing its entrance is a smaller house of similar construction, most likely used as a shelter for game. Winter storms have crumbled away the roofs of both so that they have fallen in, and the fragments of stones are partially covered with soil. The whole bears the impression of age, and no natives have been found who have ever heard of it. From the summit of this peak a splendid view is obtained of the surrounding country, the Arctic ocean, and herds of passing reindeer.
Gold has been found near the Pitmegea, at the head of the same creek and tributary, it being contained in sulphurets of iron, which exist in large quantities in that vicinity, there being from $3.50 to $8.00 worth of gold in a ton; the country is all but impassable, however, and this, together with the shortness of the season, would prevent any mining with profit.
Our party returned from the Pitmegea with a few ptarmigan and ducks, and upon our arrival the ship was at once gotten under way and we stood to the northward for Point Barrow. Drift-ice was constantly passed, but fortunately so scattered as not to form any obstruction to free navigation.
On the next day we enjoyed a superb Arctic summer's day, and began to fall in with the whaling fleet on the way north to Point Barrow. Fifteen vessels were sighted and passed, most of them vessels under sail. Rounding the dangerous Blossom shoals and the Icy cape of Captain Cook, we stood to the northeast, finding generally clear water, with scattered drift-ice. Upon the floes we found great quantities of walrus, in some cases stretched at full length, sound asleep. One huge fellow remained so undisturbed at our approach that he was supposed to be dead, but a well aimed Irish potato aroused him so rudely that he quickly slid off the floe and disappeared beneath the water.
Pushing on we passed Pt. Belcher at 9.30 in the evening, in the fog and rain, and came to heavy masses of ice over which a low fog had settled. With some delay and difficulty we worked out of both the fog and the ice and at five o'clock in the morning sighted four vessels—steamers—at anchor off the village of Ootkavie at Cape Smyth, 8 miles from Point Barrow, and the site of Captain Ray's Signal Service meteorologic station of some years ago, the house that sheltered the party being still standing. One of the steamers proved to be our old friend the "Bear," which had passed to the northward when we had returned southward from the Arctic with the survivors of the "Little Ohio." The other vessels were made out to be steam-whalers, and at seven o'clock we anchored near them, off the site determined upon for the house of refuge.