48 CKUISE 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, Avhere 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 



