CAPE ISABELLA. 421 



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, ren- 

 dered 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 gla- 

 ciers 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 



