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THE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENTS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

FOR THE SECOND SESSION OF THE FORTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS.

IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES.

VOLUME 23.

CRUISE OF THE REVENUE-STEAMER CORWIN IN ALASKA AND THE N. W. ARCTIC OCEAN IN 1881.

NOTES AND MEMORANDA: MEDICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL; BOTANICAL; ORNITHOLOGICAL.

WASHINGTON: GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 1883.

LETTER FROM THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY, IN RESPONSE TO

MARCH 3, 1883.--Referred to the Committee on Commerce and ordered to be printed.

SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of resolution of the House, dated March 3, 1883, requesting that the Secretary of the Treasury furnish, as soon as convenient, to the Speaker of the House copies of documents in the possession of the Treasury Department containing observations on glaciation, birds, natural history, and the medical notes made upon cruises of revenue-cutters in the year 1881.

In reply, I transmit herewith the observations on glaciation in the Arctic Ocean and the Alaska region, made by Mr. John Muir; notes upon the birds and natural history of Bering Sea and the northwestern region, by Mr. E. W. Nelson; and medical notes and anthropological notes relating to the natives of Alaska and the northwestern Arctic region, made by Dr. Irving C. Rosse.

All these notes were made upon the cruise of the revenue-cutter Corwin in 1881.

Very respectfully,

BOTANICAL NOTES ON ALASKA.

BY JOHN MUIR.

BOTANICAL NOTES.

INTRODUCTORY.

The plants named in the following notes were collected at many localities on the coasts of Alaska and Siberia, and on Saint Lawrence, Wrangel, and Herald Islands, between about latitude 54? and 71?, longitude 161? and 178?, in the course of short excursions, some of them less than an hour in length.

Inasmuch as the flora of the arctic and subarctic regions is nearly the same everywhere, the discovery of many species new to science was not to be expected. The collection, however, will no doubt be valuable for comparison with the plants of other regions.

In general the physiognomy of the vegetation of the polar regions resembles that of the alpine valleys of the temperate zones; so much so that the botanist on the coast of Arctic Siberia or America might readily fancy himself on the Sierra Nevada at a height of 10,000 to 12,000 feet above the sea.

There is no line of perpetual snow on any portion of the arctic regions known to explorers. The snow disappears every summer not only from the low sandy shores and boggy tundras but also from the tops of the mountains and all the upper slopes and valleys with the exception of small patches of drifts and avalanche-heaps hardly noticeable in general views. But though nowhere excessively deep or permanent, the snow-mantle is universal during winter, and the plants are solidly frozen and buried for nearly three-fourths of the year. In this condition they enjoy a sleep and rest about as profound as death, from which they awake in the months of June and July in vigorous health, and speedily reach a far higher development of leaf and flower and fruit than is generally supposed. On the drier banks and hills about Kotzebue Sound, Cape Thompson, and Cape Lisbourne many species show but little climatic repression, and during the long summer days grow tall enough to wave in the wind, and unfold flowers in as rich profusion and as highly colored as may be found in regions lying a thousand miles farther south.

To the botanist approaching any portion of the Aleutian chain of islands from the southward during the winter or spring months, the view is severely desolate and forbidding. The snow comes down to the water's edge in solid white, interrupted only by dark outstanding bluffs with faces too steep for snow to lie on, and by the backs of rounded rocks and long rugged reefs beaten and overswept by heavy breakers rolling in from the Pacific, while throughout nearly every month of the year the higher mountains are wrapped in gloomy dripping storm-clouds.

Nevertheless vegetation here is remarkably close and luxuriant, and crowded with showy bloom, covering almost every foot of the ground up to a height of about a thousand feet above the sea--the harsh trachytic rocks, and even the cindery bases of the craters, as well as the moraines and rough soil beds outspread on the low portions of the short narrow valleys.

Almost the entire surface of the valleys and hills and lower slopes of the mountains is covered with a dense spongy plush of lichens and mosses similar to that which cover the tundras of the Arctic regions, making a rich green mantle on which the showy flowering plants are strikingly relieved, though these grow far more luxuriantly on the banks of the streams where the drainage is less interrupted. Here also the ferns, of which I saw three species, are taller and more abundant, some of them arching their broad delicate fronds over one's shoulders, while in similar situations the tallest of the five grasses that were seen reaches a height of nearly six feet, and forms a growth close enough for the farmer's scythe.

Not a single tree has yet been seen on any of the islands of the chain west of Kodiak, excepting a few spruces brought from Sitka and planted at Ounalaska by the Russians about fifty years ago. They are still alive in a dwarfed condition, having made scarce any appreciable growth since they were planted. These facts are the more remarkable, since in Southeastern Alaska lying both to the north and south of here, and on the many islands of the Alexander Archipelago, as well as on the mainland, forests of beautiful conifers flourish exuberantly and attain noble dimensions, while the climatic conditions generally do not appear to differ greatly from those that obtain on these treeless islands.

Wherever cattle have been introduced they have prospered and grown fat on the abundance of rich nutritious pasturage to be found almost everywhere in the deep withdrawing valleys and on the green slopes of the hills and mountains, but the wetness of the summer months will always prevent the making of hay in any considerable quantities.

The agricultural possibilities of these islands seem also to be very limited. The hardier of the cereals--rye, barley, and oats--make a good vigorous growth, and head out, but seldom or never mature, on account of insufficient sunshine and overabundance of moisture in the form of long-continued drizzling fogs and rains. Green crops, however, as potatoes, turnips, cabbages, beets, and most other common garden vegetables, thrive wherever the ground is thoroughly drained and has a southerly exposure.

Saint Lawrence Island, as far as our observations extended, is mostly a dreary mass of granite and lava of various forms and colors, roughened with volcanic cones, covered with snow, and rigidly bound in ocean ice for half the year.

Inasmuch as it lies broadsidewise to the direction pursued by the great ice-sheet that recently filled Bering Sea, and its rocks offered unequal resistance to the denuding action of the ice, the island is traversed by numerous ridges and low gap-like valleys all trending in the same general direction, some of the lowest of these transverse valleys having been degraded nearly to the level of the sea, showing that had the glaciation to which the island has been subjected been slightly greater we should have found several islands here instead of one.

The region about Saint Michael's is a magnificent tundra, crowded with Arctic lichens and mosses, which here develop under most favorable conditions. In the spongy plush formed by the lower plants, in which one sinks almost knee-deep at every step, there is a sparse growth of grasses, carices, and rushes, tall enough to wave in the wind, while empetrum, the dwarf birch, and the various heathworts flourish here in all their beauty of bright leaves and flowers. The moss mantle for the most part rests on a stratum of ice that never melts to any great extent, and the ice on a bed rock of black vesicular lava. Ridges of the lava rise here and there above the general level in rough masses, affording ground for plants that like a drier soil. Numerous hollows and watercourses also occur on the general tundra, whose well-drained banks are decked with gay flowers in lavish abundance, and meadow patches of grasses shoulder high, suggestive of regions much farther south.

The following plants and a few doubtful species not yet determined were collected here:

Linnaea borealis, Gronov.

Cassiope tetragone, Desv.

Andromeda polifolia, L.

Loiseleuria procumbeus, Desv.

Vaccinium Vitis Idaea, L.

Arctostaphylos alpina, Spring.

Ledum palustre, L.

Nardosmia frigida, Hook.

Saussurea alpina, Dl.

Senecio frigidus, Less. palustris, Hook.

Arnica angustifolia, Vahl.

Artemisia arctica, Bess.

Matricaria inodora, L.

Rubus chamoe morus, L. arcticus, L.

Potentilla nivea, L.

Dryas octopetala, L.

Draba alpina, L. incana, L.

Entrema arenicola, Hook?

Pedicularis sudetica, Willd. euphrasioides, Steph.

Langsdorffii, Fisch, var. lanata, Gray.

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