Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Volume 1 (2nd edition).djvu/234

206 only five feet water at half flood. The shoal extends eight miles off the land, and is very dangerous, as the soundings give very short warning of its proximity. Cape Krusenstern is a low tongue of land, intersected by lakes, lying at the foot of a high cluster of hills, not in any way remarkable. The coast here takes an abrupt turn to the northward, and the current sets strong against the bend. To the north, plains extend from the hills to the sea, composed of elastic bog earth, intersected by small streams, on the edges of which the buttercup, poppy, blue bell, pedicularis, vaccinium, saxifrage, and some cruciform plants, throve well. In other parts, however, the vegetation was stinted, and consisted only of lichens and mosses. Cape Mulgrave of Captain Cook is a range of hills, which terminate in a plain intersected by lakes near the beach, and probably not observed by that navigator. The next cape northward was named Cape Thomson. It is a bold promontory, 450 feet in height, and marked with differently coloured strata. A cape close to this has been named Cape Ricord, by the Russians. Low land was observed stretching out from Cape Thomson to the W.N.W., as far as the eye could reach: Captain Beechey named it Point Hope. The farthest land in sight to the northward answered to Cape Lisburn of Captain Cook. The mountain above the cape attained a height of 850 feet above the sea. The basis of this mountain was limestone, with beds of flinty slate. There was little soil in the valley, and the stones were covered with a thick swampy moss. The !and here turns to the eastward towards a cape, which was named Beaufort. The land northward was low and swampy, covered with moss and long grass. Cape Beaufort is situated in the depth of a great bay, formed between Cape LiBburn and Icy Cape, and is the last point where the hi|Is come close down to the sea, by reason of the coast line curving to the northward, while the range of hills continues its former direction.

The Cape is composed of sandstone traversed by narrow seams of coal, and from these sandstone hills there is an uniform ascent to the rugged mountains of limestone and flint at Cape Lisburn; the range is, however, broken by extensive valleys, intersected by lakes and rivers. Icy Cape. the farthest point reached by Cook, is very low, and has a large lake at the back of it, which receives the water of.a considerable river, and communicates with the sea through a narrow channel much encumbered with shoals. The main land on both sides of Icy Cape, from Wainright Inlet on one side to Cape Beaufort on the other, is fiat and covered with swampy moss. It presents a line of low mud cliffs, between which and a shingly beach that everywhere forms the coast line, there is a succession of narrow lakes capable of being navigated by baidars or small boats. The farthest tongue of land which Mr. Elson