IVTCLURE IN BANKS LAND 173 



Enclosing a record of the visit in a cairn, M'Clure 

 returned to the ship, from which in the spring three 

 sledge parties were sent out Cresswell's to the north- 

 west finding that Banks Land was an island, Wynniatt's 

 to the north-east reaching Reynolds Point on the north 

 of Wollaston Land, and Haswell's down Wollaston 

 Land to within forty miles of where Rae turned back 

 about a week later this being the only attempt at 

 searching for Franklin that the expedition undertook 

 after sighting Nelson Head. Released in July, the 

 Investigator retreated down the strait and attempted to 

 circumnavigate Banks Land, finding to the west a 

 coast as precipitous as a wall, the water deep fifteen 

 fathoms close in, with the yardarms almost touching 

 the cliffs on one hand and the lofty ice on the other 

 and the pack drawing forty feet of water, rising in 

 rolling hills a hundred feet from base to summit. On 

 shore the hills were as remarkable. Many of them 

 were peaked and isolated by precipitous gorges, about 

 three hundred feet deep. And all the way up them 

 were numbers of fallen trees, in many places in layers, 

 some protruding twelve or fourteen feet, one of these 

 trunks measuring nineteen inches in diameter. Says 

 M'Clure : " I entered a ravine some miles inland, and 

 found the north side of it, for a depth of forty feet 

 from the surface, composed of one mass of wood 

 similar to what I had before seen. The whole depth 

 of the ravine was about two hundred feet. The 

 ground around the wood or trees was formed of sand 

 and shingle; some of the wood was petrified, the re- 

 mainder very rotten and worthless even for burning." 

 And this forest bed is on the shore of the Beaufort Sea 



