Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/308

278 season, and, crossing the ice, bring forth their young upon the islands, where they are more secure than on the continent.

The wind having fallen on the 29th, and left a practicable channel, we at last doubled the rugged and rocky Cape Barrow. On the top of rocks, upwards of a hundred feet aboye the sea, clam-shells were found, and some small specimens of that round prickly sort of shell called the "sea urchin," which must have been carried by birds to such an elevation. These, with cockles, muscles, periwinkles, and seaweed, abounded here, and in many other places on the beach. I am therefore astonished that Franklin's party should have seen shells in one spot only—the day they left the Coppermine River. The ice on Coronation Gulph being still perfectly solid, we were compelled to coast along the southward, till we should find a passage across Bathurst Inlet. We shot a deer and a pair of swans; and between 9 and 10 P.M. encamped at the entrance of Moore Bay, where the snow dissolving on the rocks furnished us with pure water, and the contiguous shores with some drift timber.

New ice of considerable thickness formed during the night, and cost us some trouble to break it next morning. The old ice for its part led us