away, and on the calm bright morning of August 12, 1881, the first
landing on Wrangel Island was accomplished!

On the beach, composed of black slaty shingle, we found the skeleton of
a whale from which the baleen was absent; also a quantity of driftwood,
some of it twelve inches in diameter; a wooden wedge; a barrel-stave; a
piece of a boat's spar and a fragment of a biscuit-box. The river, which
we named _Clark river_, was about one hundred yards wide, two fathoms
deep near the mouth, and rapid. From the top of a neighboring cliff,
four hundred feet high, it could be seen trending back into the
mountains some thirty or thirty-five miles. The mountains, devoid of
snow, were seen under favorable circumstances through a rift in the
clouds, and appeared brown and naked, with smooth rounded tops. During a
tramp of some miles over a muddy way, composed of argillaceous clay and
black pebbles, I observed fragments of quartz and granite. Several
specimens containing iron pyrites were also found. The cliffs in the
vicinity of our landing are composed of slate, and the land over which I
travelled seemed almost as barren as a macadamized road; but on
searching closely several species of hyperborean plants were found, such
as saxifrages, anemones, grasses, lichens and mushrooms. The mosses and
lichens were but feebly developed, and the phanerogamous plants were in
the same state of severe repression. The following plants were
collected; and I am indebted to Professor John Muir for their names:

_Saxifraga flegellaris_, Willd.
_stellaris_, L. var. _cornosa_, Poir.
_sileneflora_, Sternb.
_hieracifolia_, Waldst. & Kit.
_rivularis_, L. var. _hyperborea_, Hook.
_bronchialis_, L.