Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/472

448 captured were Icelus hamatus (Kroyer), Cyclopterus spinosus (Mull.), Liparis Fabricii (Kroyer), Triglops pingellii (Reinh.), Gymnelis viridis (Fabr.), and Gadus Fabricii (Rich). The Echino- dermata were more abundant, and a crinoid, Antedon Eschrichtii (Müller), was a conspicuously beautiful object, clinging to the meshes of the trawl by its dorsal cirri.

On the 12th August a favourable breeze opened a water-way along the shore, and our ships managed to round Cape Hawks, and to find shelter amongst the floes in Dobbin Bay. Our progress northwards from this point until rounding Cape Frazer, the meeting-place of the Polar and Baffin Bay tides, was dis- tressingly tedious and harassing. As a rule the atmosphere was clear, and we were still enjoying the midnight sun, but the sameness of the scenery became monotonous. The coast-line is a series of headlands rising to a height of a thousand or twelve hundred feet, with abrupt mural precipices, a steep talus stretching, as a rule, about half way up the cliff's from the shore. The in- dentations between the headlands are valleys debouching abruptly on the sea. In nearly every valley the old lines of sea-margins were distinctly marked by series of terraces, showing the con- tinuous elevation of the land. To seaward the sound was packed with floe-ice moving north and south with the tides and winds, but with a general set to the southward. At the changes of the tides small pools of water would open, but hardly ever a continuous water-way of a quarter of a mile. Our leader was always on the watch to lake advantage of the slightest change in the ice ; but on many occasions part of our hard-earned progress had to be relinquished, and a timely retreat from between two closing floes saved the ship from destruction. The bumping of the ship charging against the ice, the creaking of her timbers when squeezed or nipped, the incessant quickly-given words of command, and the ever-present chance of shipwreck, with the difficulty of getting sleep, were very trying to the nerves, and it was with a feeling of thankfulness and relief that, owing to the ships at times being closely hemmed in by the ice, we were able to have a run on shore.

Washington Irving Island, at the entrance of Dobbin Bay, was visited, and afforded a collection of Silurian fossils, but all corals. In one strata the rock appeared to be entirely composed of Favosites gothlandicus and F. alveolaris, the former species greatly preponderating.