NOTES FROM AN ARCTIC JOURNAL. 417 
eyelid fleshy, and of a brick-red colour; tip of the bill gamboge- 
yellow, merging into ashy-grey on the culmen and base of both 
mandibles; legs and feet black. Their note is very shrill, 
approaching more to that of the Arctic Tern than to the harsh 
note of the Glaucous Gull. The stomach of the individual pro- 
cured was full of red flesh, probably seal-meat. Eider Ducks were 
nesting numerously on Brevoort Island; three to four were the full 
complement of eggs; these were all deeply incubated by this date. 
A pair of Ravens wheeled overhead, and pounced down on the 
eggs of a duck that had been disturbed from her charge. A few 
Black Guillemots were fishing in the open pools; these, with a 
Snow Bunting found dead on the shore, completed the list of birds 
observed at Payer Harbour. 
On the 4th August, Cape Sabine was rounded, and making our 
way to the westward through Buchanan Strait, we coasted for 
some miles along the north shore of Ellesmere Land, finally 
anchoring in a small bay, which was named Alexandra Haven. 
The rocks in that neighbourhood were gneiss, syenite and schists, 
with garnets. Not far from our anchorage a valley of considerable 
size debouched on the shore with a fine glacier at its head some 
three miles inland. A watercourse ran down the valley, issuing 
from the glacier; at the time of our visit it was a clear rapid 
brook, but during July, in the height of the thaw, it must be a 
large torrent, judging from the size of the channel, on the sides of 
which patches of Epilobium latifolium were in bloom, with yellow- 
blossomed Vesicaria arctica. Nowhere in Smith Sound did we 
find a better supply of grasses than in this valley, which accounted 
for our picking up numerous cast-horns of Reindeer, whilst the 
foot-marks of Musk-oxen were common, the long soft wool of these 
latter animals being observed sticking to the sides of the boulders, 
under which they had been sheltering themselves. In the pellets 
ejected by some bird of prey—no doubt the Snowy Owl—I found 
the bones and skulls of Lemmings, Myodes torquatus. Sections of 
the bank showed that the stream from the glacier had cut through 
thin strata of sand and mud, which were in parts much crumpled 
up—evidence that at the time of deposition they had been disturbed 
by grounding ice, pushed on shore, whilst the numerous shells of 
Mya truncata and Savicava rugosa, scattered through the strata, 
were plain evidence of their submarine deposition. 
Buchanan Strait, or Hayes Sound, was at this period of the 
: 3H 
