60 CRUISE OF THE NEPTUNE 
fresh fish. They returned loaded in an hour, having made but 
four casts of the net, in which over a thousand splendid fish 
were taken, varying in weight from three to ten pounds and 
aggregating at least 5,000 pounds. 
A strong gale from the eastward blew until the evening of 
the 21st, with thick banks of fog covering the hills and filling 
the narrows, while the weather about the ships remained fine 
and clear. The Diana broke adrift during the gale and lost an 
anchor and thirty fathoms of chain. During our detention 
landings were made, and some trips were taken inland over the 
high, terraced plain, which extends far to the south and west- 
ward. The lowest terrace is two hundred feet above the sea. 
The surface of the plain is uneven, and deeply cut by the val- 
leys of several small streams. The higher terraces flank the 
rocky hills to the eastward, the highest being fully six hundred 
feet above sea-level. On the plain and in the valleys there is 
considerable Arctic vegetation, from which a very interesting 
collection of plants was made by Dr. Borden. 
A number of partly underground houses, similar to those 
already described, were found at the mouth of a small stream 
close to the anchorage. From several ancient graves along 
the banks of the stream a short distance from the houses a good 
collection of skulls was obtained. 
When the gale abated, we started down the inlet for Erik 
harbour, accompanied by the other ships; the narrows once 
passed, we had to literally feel our way to the harbour through 
the dense fog, and anchored at its head alongside the Whalers 
Balaena and Albert. 
A landing was made to collect specimens of the granites and 
their associated rocks, which form the hills surrounding the 
harbour, and to visit the glacier which fills over two-thirds of 
its head. The glacier is a mile wide where it empties into the 
harbour, the ice along the front being about a hundred feet 
