cii GEOLOGY. 



of character in the forms of the land on the two sides of the passage which includes 

 Barrow's Strait and Prince Regent's Inlet. It will immediately be seen, that on the 

 American shore, the limestone skirts the bases of chains of hills which consist chiefly, 

 or, to our observation at least, most conspicuously of granite, including some portions 

 of the primary stratified rocks, which might have been more extensive than I had the 

 means of ascertaining. Now, the same exact character of outline and general aspect 

 pervaded the interior of James's Island, as far as that was visible ; where a range of 

 mountains possessing the same conical in-egular forms as those on the American shore, 

 rose at the back of the assignable limestone hills. I could not but conclude that their 

 geological nature was the same ; while some specimens of gneiss, of green compact 

 felspar, and of granite, picked up on the beaches where our boats landed, served to 

 confirm this conclusion : and the more so, from their absolute identity with the ana- 

 logous rocks which I had collected along the shore from Fury Beach to the isthmus of 

 Boothia. 



If I have thus referred to my first and far more detailed observations on the geolo- 

 gical structure of the American shore, I may commence at Cape Northeast, being the 

 north-eastern part of America, sufficiently noted in the chart appended to this work. 



At this place, the forms of the land alone might, to a practised eye, have 

 disclosed the nature of the fundamental rocks ; since the hills present those out- 

 lines, so well known, by which this limestone is characterized ; the stratification 

 equally indicating the mineral constitutions of the rock, in those chffs and ravines, 

 where it is peculiarly exposed ; as the examination of specimens at more leisure, with 

 the long continued contact which I could command throughout a space of many miles, 

 could leave no doubt of the truth of these conclusions, from the point in question, as 

 far as Fury Beach. 



I must now observe, that from Northeast Cape onwards to Adelaide Bay, I could 

 obtain no sight of any interior hills, of the same conical and irregular character as I 

 had become so well acquainted with on the more southern parts of this shore. Every 

 visible hill was flat-topped, so as to convince me that it was a part of the same cal- 

 careous range. But at the bottom of Cresswell Bay, I first began to see a range of 

 interior hills, of a very diflerent character : and subsequent observation, accompanied by 

 a long experience of the nature of the rocks, which I could examine at hand, having 

 taught me that the hills of this character consisted of primary rocks, and far most 

 extensively, of granite, it is at this point that I must first note my assurance of the 

 existence of a range of granitic and its associated rocks, on this coast ; forming the 

 fundamental structure of this country, and covered, or rather skirted, as is usual, 

 by a range of the secondary, and, for the most part, calcareous series. 



