;i28 APPENDIX. No. XV. 



Palaeozoic Rocks. — The ancient fundamental gneiss and 

 crystalline rocks, that have been described by so many 

 observers as fringing the coasts of Greenland, and underlying 

 the synclinal of palaeozoic rocks of the Parry Archipelago, 

 continue northwards, and form the shores of Smith Sound 

 on either side, occupying the entire coast of Ellesmere Land 

 from Cape Isabella to Cape Sabine, rising to a height of 

 2,000 feet. 



At Port Foulke the syenitic and gneissic rocks are overlaid 

 by sandstone and conglomerate, the former largely rippled, 

 and probably of Miocene age, overlaid by sheets of basalt, 

 which have altered in some cases into porcellanite. 



Gape Rawson Beds. — A vast series of azoic rocks, 

 newer than the fundamental gneiss, and probably unconform- 

 able to it, but older than the fossiliferous Silurians, occupy 

 the country between Scoresby Bay and Cape Cresweil, in 

 lat. 82° 40' N., and probably represent in time the Huronian 

 of North America, but formed possibly in a different basin, 

 a 3 they are not present in the Arctic Archipelago. 



At Cape Eawson the strata are thrown into a series of 

 sharp anticlinal folds, which range W.S.W., are abruptly 

 terminated by sea-clitfs, as at Black Cape, Cape Union, and 

 other prominent headlands, and exhibit line sections of jet- 

 black slates, in strong contrast to the frozen sea beneath and 

 the snow-clad slopes above. 



Associated with the slates are beds of impure limestones 

 frequently traversed with veins of quartz and chert ; the 

 slates are sometimes exceedingly well cleaved, the planes of 

 cleavage being generally inclined at high angles, and more 

 rarely horizontal, their strike being N.N.E. to S.S.W. The 

 true dip of the slates is almost invariably at very high angles. 

 These beds give place further north to a vast series of 

 quartzites and grits, which commence in latitude 82° 33' : 

 they rise in Westward Ho ! Valley to ridges 3,000 feet in 

 height. An anticlinal axis passes through this valley and 

 carries down these strata beneath the carboniferous limestones 

 of Feilden Peninsula. 



