50 cruise OF THE NEPTUNE 
in the evening, when a number of small islands showed our posi- 
tion to be off Cape Horsburg, the northeastern point of Philpot 
island, on the northern side of the entrance to Lancaster sound; 
we had therefore passed across the mouth of Jones sound with- 
out a sight of the land on either side. 
LANCASTER SOUND. 
Short glimpses of the land on the north side of Lancaster 
sound were obtained when the fog lifted at intervals during the 
night. These showed a high country, with many moderately 
sharp peaks rising in the foreground above the white mantle 
of ice of the great glaciers of the valleys. Discharging glaciers 
were particularly numerous along the head of the wide Croker 
bay. 
At eight o'clock in the morning we arrived at the mouth of 
Cuming creek, a long narrow bay a few miles west of Croker 
bay. Being short of fresh water, and the weather promising to 
be bad, we proceeded ten miles up the bay before finding a place 
sufficiently shallow to drop anchor, but this was finally done on 
the edge of a bank formed by the material brought down by a 
small river flowing into the head of the bay. We remained at 
anchor here until the next evening, the wind during that time 
blowing strongly from the eastward, accompanied with thick fog 
and occasional flurries of snow. 
The crystalline rocks, which occupy the eastern part of the 
great island of north devon, are overlaid by nearly flat-bedded 
limestones, in the western part commencing on the west side of 
Croker bay. This change of rock is accompanied by a change 
in the physical character of the coast as the ragged irregular 
granite hills of the eastern land are replaced by a flat tableland 
which rises in nearly perpendicular cliffs directly from the sea 
to elevations varying from 800 to 1,200 feet. Behind these the 
land rises in steps to nearly 2,000 feet, where it is lost beneath 
