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16  Thursday Sept. 2nd/80 contd.

finer grained deposit of clay with less vegetable matter and the layers were waved as if the deposit had been affected by current action while going on. In these places especially, was noticed the most unexpected facts connected with the whole formation (which was however by no means confirmed to these spots; - namely a strong peculiar smell as of rotting animal matter, burnt leather and stable manure combined. This odor was not quite the same at all places but had the same general character.
On the other hand there was a large part of the clay which had no such smell. At the points where the smell was strongest it was observed to emanate particularly from darker pasty spots in the clay though permeating the whole, leading to the supposition that these might be remains of the soft parts of the mammoth and other animals whose bones are daily washed out by the sea from the clay talus. In those places or near them where the smell was strongest a rusty red soft lichen or lichenlike fungus grew on the wer clay of the talus in extensive patches. Some of
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these and some of the bad smelling deposit was secured, also as many bones of the fossil elephant fossil buffalo &c as we could carry including a mammoth tusk five and a half feet long, six inches in diameter but with both ends gone.
Dwarf birches, alders seven or eight feet high with stems three inches in diameter, and a luxuriant herbage, producing among other things numerous very toothsome berries, grew with the roots less than a foot from perpetual solid ice.
The formation of the surrounding country showed no rocky hills from which a glacier might have been derived and then covered with debris from their sides. The continuity of the mossy surface showed that the ice must be quite destitute of any motion and the circumstances all appeared to point to one conclusion, that there was a ridge of solid ice, rising several hundred feet above the sea, and higher than any of the land about it. The ice in this instance taking the function of a regular stratified rock upon itself.