445 
NOTES FROM AN ARCTIC JOURNAL. 
By H. W. Ferrpen, F.G.S., C.M.Z.S. 
(Continued from p. 418.) 
Cape Victoria is a fine headland of Silurian limestone, some 
1000 feet high, resting on a base of conglomerate. I was fortunate 
enough during the few minutes we were on shore to extract a few 
fossils, one of them being an example of Maclurea magna,* which 
has proved extremely useful in fixing the geological age of these 
rocks. The flora on this hard limestone is much scantier than on 
the granitoid rocks, which disintegrate freely and form patches or 
pockets of soil. I only noticed a single species of Salix and Sazi- 
Jraga oppositifolia growing. There again on the beach just above 
the ice-foot we found the lichen-covered remains of native encamp- 
ments, with several fox-traps, and fragments of animals’ bones. 
At mid-day there was a fall of snow, which, freezing as it reached 
the water, converted the pools and lanes between the floes into a 
tenacious sludge, through which it was almost impossible to move 
a ship. At this juncture our vessel narrowly escaped being pushed 
on shore by the ice; but at flood-tide the pack eased somewhat, 
and enabled a course to be made to Franklin Pierce Bay, which 
we reached on the 9th August, where we obtained a certain amount 
of protection from the ice, in the vicinity of Norman Lockyer 
Island. 
Landing at Cape Harrison, the western extremity of the bay, 
we found a series of old sea-margins rising in terraces to a height 
of about 300 feet, or to the base of the cliffs, which are composed 
of a grey limestone similar to that of Cape Victoria. These terraces 
are a very marked natural feature of most of the bays and inlets of 
Smith Sound, and show that oscillations in level are constantly 
progressing in that part of the globe. At some points summer 
torrent-courses had cut away the terraces, or else at these 
particular spots the banking up had not taken place. I was very 
much surprised to find that at these places where the basement 
rock was exposed it exhibited well marked ice-scratchings, and as 
there was no appearance of any glacier having existed at the spot 
I was at a loss to account for the phenomenon, until subsequently 
we became better acquainted with the power of grounded floe-ice 
* Etheridge, ‘ Quarterly Journal Geol. Soc.,’ 1878, p. 605. 
