﻿1848. SACRED ISLAND. 233 



grains of quartz, mixed with chert from limestone. 

 Most of the quartz is opaque, and veined or banded, 

 but some of it is translucent. Some bits are 

 bluish, others black, and many pebbles are coloured 

 of various shades of mountain green. The latter 

 are collected by the Eskimos and worn by them 

 as labrets. The gravel covers the whole slope of 

 the point, which is so steep as to require to be 

 ascended on all fours. In one part a torrent had 

 made a section of a bed of fine brown sand, twenty 

 feet deep. On this bank I gathered the Bupleurum 

 ranunculoides, which grows in Beering's Straits, but 

 had not been found so far westward as the Mac- 

 kenzie before ; also the Seseli divancatum, which 

 had not been previously collected to the north of 

 the Saskatchewan. 



In latitude 68° 55' N. the trees disappeared so 

 suddenly, that I could not but attribute their ces- 

 sation to the influence of the sea-air. Beyond this 

 line a few stunted spruces, only, were seen struggling 

 for existence, and some scrubby canoe-birches, 

 clinging to the bases of the hills. Further on, 

 the Rein-deer Hills lowered rapidly, and we soon 

 afterwards came to Sacred Island, which, with 

 the islets beyond it, is evidently a continuation 

 of the sandy deposit noticed above. Had time 

 permitted, I should have gone past Sacred Island, 

 northwards, to deposit some pemican on Whale 

 Island, but at so advanced a period of the summer, 



