192 BOOTHIA 



We were now indisputably on our scene of future 

 action, the coast of America ; and it only remained for 

 us to follow minutely the line of shore in continuation 

 from Repulse Bay." 



During a stay at Gore Bay red snow was brought off 

 to the Fury, its colour being much fainter than that 

 found in the Isabella voyage at Crimson Cliffs in 

 Greenland ; " the appearance of the mass was not un- 

 like what is called raspberry ice, in a far better climate, 

 where cold is made subservient to luxury." The colour- 

 ing of this is due to one of the Algae, Protococcus 

 nivalis, and not as Peter Paterson said in 1671 ninety 

 years before De Saussure to the rocks being " full of 

 white, red, and yellow veins, like marble ; upon any 

 alteration of the weather, these stones sweat, which, 

 together with the rains, tinges the snow red." The 

 day on which this snow was found, the 30th of August, 

 was so warm that the party were glad to pull off their 

 coats and waistcoats. " The valleys were fertile in 

 grasses and moss ; and the fineness of the weather had 

 drawn forth a number of butterflies, spiders, and other 

 insects, which would, by their gay colours and active 

 motions, have almost deceived us into an idea that we 

 were not in the Arctic regions, had not the Frozen 

 Strait, filled with huge masses of moving ice, reminded 

 us but too forcibly, that we were in the most dangerous 

 of them." 



Early in October the ships took up their quarters at 

 Winter Island on the coast of Melville Peninsula in 

 66 32', and there, during the cordial intercourse with 

 the Eskimos, Parry heard of the way through further 

 north which led him on his release in the following 



