Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/474

450 who came swooping down at us, passing within twenty or thirty feet of our heads. The other bird sat on the nest, which was placed on an inaccessible ledge. Dovekies were tolerably abundant, and were nesting in the cliffs, flying down to the pools between the floes for food, which they took to their young. I noticed that they seldom missed capturing a fish, Gadus Fabricii, at the first dive; this they held in their bills by the head as they flew back to the cliffs, but they did not carry more than one fish at a time.

On the 19th August the ships got to the northward of Cape Frazer, and on the evening of the same day Mark ham and I landed on Cape John Barrow ; he ascended the heights to obtain a view of the offing, whilst I devoted the time to geological enquiry. The strata I examined at Cape John Barrow were nearly horizontal, with a slight dip to the N.N.W., true. The limestone split into slates, which were highly fossiliferous ; but the fossils were very badly preserved, though specimens of Orthoceras, Strophomena, and Rhynchonella might be detected. Mr. Etheridge,* in referring to these specimens has fallen into a slight error — probably my own in want of care in labelling — by supposing these specimens obtained at Cape John Barrow and Hayes Point were drifted rocks. This was not the case ; they were obtained in situ, and their strati- graphical position ascertained.

To the northward of Cape Barrow the ice was not so closely packed as we had hitherto experienced in Smith Sound, and on the 22nd August we entered into a long expanse of open water, which enabled us to reach without difficulty as far north as latitude 81°. There, in the broad extension of the channel called Hall Basin, we were again stopped by the ice, and took shelter at the mouth of Bessels Bay, waiting for a lead. The sixty miles of comparatively open water which we passed through between Cape Collinson and Hall Basin was almost devoid of animal life. About a dozen Black Guillemots were seen, and a single Seal, but no Gull, Walrus, or Narwhal.

Bessels Bay is a fiord cut by ice-action out of the limestone ; its perpendicular sides rise to a height of over a thousand feet at the entrance. Further inland numerous glaciers pour down its sides, the overflow of the mer-de-glace of Washington Land, which uniting in the fiord form one discharging glacier. Owing to the

Quarterly Journ. Geol. Soc, 1878, p. 603.