1853.] GRAVE MOUNT. 287 



From these now demolished structures we constructed 

 a very substantial cairn, seven feet in diameter by nine 

 in height, stripping the pseudo-graves to their bases, 

 which we found to be excavated out of the solid rock. 

 But from whence these heavy, durable slabs were ob- 

 tained still remains a mystery, as the rock composing 

 the surface of this mount was chiefly of a loose, rubbly, 

 fossiliferous limestone, hardly cohering sufficiently for re- 

 moval in tolerably sized plates for constructing our pile, 

 and between the laminse abounding in Terebrafula, En- 

 troclti, etc. None of the supposed grave-slabs were of 

 this very loose character, and although we visited two 

 other stations on this same range, the stone was found 

 to be still more rotten and rubbly, exhibiting however 

 columnar bits of two feet in length by about four to six 

 inches square. Nothing at the base favoured any forma- 

 tion of solid stone, and the only position not examined 

 was on the north steep incline, where it appeared to have 

 a slaty structure ; but that would require great labour 

 to transport up at least a hundred feet of hill, and tools 

 also to work withal. By trigonometric measurement the 

 height of this hill, to -which the name of Grave Mount 

 was given, was found to be fourteen hundred feet, and 

 our position at its base to be in latitude 70 23' north, 

 differing but ten miles in latitude from my position on 

 Cape Hogarth. Moving to the eastern summit of this 

 range, which completely commanded all the features of 

 Prince Alfred Bay, stations were taken up, which com- 

 pletely confined its limits, reducing it somewhat from its 

 former dimensions. At this moment all our cairns were 

 purposely constructed to aid in any operations hereafter 



