Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/469

 has caused a slight error in the axis of the Sound. His Victoria Head is the eastern cape of my Bache Island, and his Cape Albert is the eastern cape of Henry Island.

The view up the Sound from Cape Isabella was truly magnificent. The dark, wall-sided coast, rendered more dark in appearance by the contrast with the immense cloak of whiteness that lay above it, was relieved by numerous glaciers, which pour through the valleys to the sea. The mer de glace is of great extent, and, rising much more rapidly and being more broken, gives a picturesque effect not belonging to the Greenland side, and adds much to the grandeur of its appearance. The mountains are lofty, and are everywhere uniformly covered with ice and snow; and the glacier streams which descend to the sea convey the impression almost as if there had once been a vast lake on the mountain-top, from which the overflowing waters, pouring down every valley, had been suddenly congealed.

Off Cape Sabine there are two islands, which I name Brevoort and Stalknecht; and another, midway between them and Wade Point, which I name Leconte. A deep inlet running parallel with the Cadogen Inlet of Captain Inglefield, fringed all around with glaciers set into the dark rocks like brilliants into a groundwork of jet, opens between Wade Point and Cape Isabella. I leave the naming of it until I see whether Inglefield has not a bay set down there, as I have not with me the official map of his explorations.

Cape Isabella is a ragged mass of Plutonic rock, and looks as if it had been turned out of Nature's laboratory unfinished and pushed up from the sea while it was yet hot, to crack and crumble to pieces