THE JOCRXEY SOUTHWARD 555 



Fisher, in 81 . It was the same at Cape M'CHntock, at 

 our winter cabin, at the headland of columnar basalt 

 where we passed the night of August 25, 1S95, ^t Cape 

 Clements Markham, and at the sharp point of rock where 

 we landed on the night between August i6th and 17th. 

 The structure seemed to be similar, too, so far as we had 

 seen, on the south side of Crown Prince Rudolfs Land. 

 Wherever we had been to the northward I had kept a 

 sharp lookout for strata whose fossils could give us anv 

 information as to the geological age of this country. 

 According to what I here found at Cape Flora, it ap- 

 peared as if a great part at least of this basalt dated from 

 the Jurassic period, as it lay immediately above, and was 

 partly intermixed with, strata of this age. Moreover, on 

 the top of the basalt, as will presently appear, vegetable 

 fossils were found dating from the later part of the 

 Jurassic period. It thus seems as though Franz Josef 

 Land were of a comparatively old formation. All these 

 horizontal strata of basalt, stretching over all the islands 

 at about the same height, seem to indicate that there was 

 once a continuous mass of land here, which in the course 

 of tim.e, beinix exposed to various disinteo^ratino; forces, 

 such as frost, damp, snow, glaciers, and the sea, has been 

 split up and worn away, and has in part disappeared 

 under the sea, so that now only scattered islands and 

 rocks remain, separated from each other by fjords and 

 sounds. As these formations bear a certain resemblance 

 to what has been found in several places in Spitzbergen 



