462 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



the island. The air came out from the northwest cold and chilly, 

 and snow and ice were on the hill-sides and in the gulh'es. The 

 sloping sides and summits of these hills were of a grayish, russet 

 tinge, with deep-green swale flats running down into the lowlands, 

 which are there more intensely green and warmer in tone. A 

 pebble-bar formed by the sea between Cape Upright and Waterfall 

 Head is covered with a deep stratum of glacial drift, carried down 

 from the flanks of Polar and Cub Hills, and extending over two 

 miles of this water-front to the westward, where it is met by a simi- 

 lar washing from that quarter. Back, and in the centre of this 

 neck, are several small lakes and lagoons without fish ; but empty- 

 ing into them are a number of clear, lively brooks, in which were 

 salmon-parr of fine quality. The little lakes undoubtedly receive 

 them ; hence they were land-locked salmon. A luxuriant growth 

 of thick moss and grass, interspersed, existed almost everywhere on 

 the lowest ground ; and occasionally strange dome-like piles of peat 

 were lifted four or five feet above marshy swales, and appeared so 

 remarkably like abandoned barraboras that we repeatedly turned 

 from our course to satisfy ourselves personally to the contrary. 



As these lowlands ascend to the tops of higher hills, all vegeta- 

 tion changes rapidly to a simple coat of cryptogamic gray and light 

 russet, with a slippery slide for the foot wherever a steep flight or 

 climbing was made. Water oozes and trickles everywhere under 

 foot, since an exhalation of frost is in progress all the time. Some- 

 times these swales rise and cross hill-summits to the valleys again 

 without any interruption in their wet, swampy character. The ac- 

 tion of ice in rounding down and grinding hills, chipping bluffs, 

 and chiselling everywhere, carrying the soil and debris into de- 

 pressions and valleys, is most beautifully exhibited on St. Mat- 

 thew. The hills at the foot of Sugar-loaf Cone are bare and liter- 

 ally polished by ice-sheets and slides of melting snow. Rocks 

 and soil from these summits and slopes are carried down and 

 "dumped," as it were, in numberless little heaps beneath, so that 

 the foot of every hill and out on the plain around strongly put 

 us in mind of those refuse-piles which are dropped over the com- 

 mons or dumping-grounds of a city. Nowhere can the work of ice 

 be seen to finer advantage than here, aided and abetted, as it un- 

 doubtedly is, by the power of wind, especially with regard to that 

 chiselling action of frost on the faces of ringing metallic porphyry 

 cliffs. 



