Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/413

Rh could be found with thirty-five fathoms of line; and the cerulean blue colour of the water, especially in the bays, indicated a profound depth.

On the 7th and 8th we crossed two magnificent bays, named after his Royal Highness of Cambridge, and the illustrious Duke of Wellington. At the bottom of the first stands Mount Pelly, an enormous perpendicular mass of rock, fronted by a low beach, which led to my mistaking the mount, when seen from the continent in 1838, for a cape, and the bay for a strait, separating Victoria Land from a nearer island. Wellington Bay, twenty-two miles wide, and apparently running an equal distance inland, stretches northward to 69° 30′, the highest latitude of this voyage. It is crowned by a range of snowy mountains, which received the name of his Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex. Its eastern cape (where we breakfasted) is formed of huge blocks of red sand-stone, amongst which was discovered a small cavern, entered by the sea. But what rendered the place still more interesting, was my finding, as I walked along the bay, the site of two or three old snow-huts on the banks of a little lake, under shelter of some overhanging rocks. Not far distant were deposits of oil, a wretched sledge, whalebone