Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/442

418 year filled with one season's ice, which had separated from the land and was now ready to drift to the eastward into the main channel. It was very interesting to note how many of these ice-rafts were covered with heaps of gravel, débris, and angular fragments of stone which had fallen from the cliffs when the floe-ice was in close proximity to the land. Whilst returning through this ice to the eastward we landed for a couple of hours on the north shore of Ellesmere Land. The coast-line, and to a height of seven hundred or eight hundred feet, is a schistose, rock thickly studded with garnets; but the tops of the range are capped by a grey unfossiliferous limestone which weathers yellow. Along the shore line are the ruins of many Eskimo settlements ; they appeared to be very ancient, and the numerous bones of animals lying around were lichen-covered. The skull of a Musk-ox and many of its bones showed that this animal had been utilized for food by the former inhabitants of the place. We found there a specimen of a gay-coloured butterfly, Colias Hecla, flying about, and we noted afterwards the same species ranged three degrees farther north. A single Ptarmigan, Lagopus rupestris, was secured whilst our party was on shore. We made our way out of Mayes Sound under steam and sail, a fresh wind blowing from the south-west. Many Black Guillemots and Little Auks were fishing in the lanes of water along which we sailed. We passed near enough to the southern shore of Bache Island to observe that at the water's edge red syenite or gneiss appears ; but above it rises a grand mural cliff of limestone, which extends almost unbroken along its eastern shore as far as Victoria Head.

After leaving Hayes Sound and entering Smith Sound once more, our troubles with the ice recommenced, and a couple of days' unceasing battles, ramming and charging the floes, varied on more than one occasion by the imminent prospect of destruction to our ships, brought us close to Cape Victoria, where the ships lay for an hour or so in a pool of water. Captain Markham being despatched on shore to obtain an observation from an elevation, 1 was allowed to accompany him. It being low-water at the time of our visit, we found some difficulty in getting up the ice-foot, which at that stage of the tide presented a wall of ice some twelve feet above the water.