48 cruise OF THE NEPTUNE 
It took little time to attend to the duties of the landing at 
Cape Herschel, Where a document taking formal possession in 
the name of King Edward VII., for the Dominion, was read, 
and the Canadian flag was raised and saluted. A copy of the 
document was placed in a large cairn built of rock on the end 
of the cape. 
The return to the ship was made at half past six in the morn- 
ing, when, steaming southward, the heavy dangerous ice from 
Smith sound was soon left behind. We continued southward 
all day, passing as close to the land as the ice would allow, so 
as to make a chart of this badly surveyed coast. The survey 
was carried to a point about fifteen miles to the south of Cape 
Isabella, where the weather became foggy, and progress through 
the ice was only possible by following leads of open water 
running southeast or diagonally away from the coast. 
The ice met with during the crossing of Smith sound and for 
a few miles southward of Cape Sabine was chiefly large masses 
of thick Arctic ice, lately brought south by the northern current 
from Kennedy channel, where the fast ice appeared to have 
broken loose only a short time previous to our arrival, and was 
quickly emptying out of the great channel leading direct to the 
Arctic sea. All of this ice was solid, and from twenty to forty 
feet in thickness, and could not be of the previous winter's 
formation as no ice of that thickness can be formed in one 
season. the greater part of it probably had been formed on the 
surface of the Arctic ocean, during one or more years' drift 
across the polar regions before -it entered the northern part of 
Kennedy channel, where it had remained during the past 
winter, and was now passing south to mingle with the other ice 
of the ' middle pack ' of Baffin bay. Much of the ice met with 
to the southward was composed of large sheets of similar heavy 
Arctic ice cemented together by thinner ice of one season's 
formation, evidently drifted out of some bay to the southward 
