SUTHERLAND, DAVIS' STRAIT AND BArFIN'S BAY. 355 



Lancaster Sound to Cumberland Sound [from 74° to 64° N. 

 lat.] — On the opposite shore of Lancaster Sound, at Cape Walter 

 Bathurst, the crystalline rocks are again recognised, and from t|;iis 

 point they occupy the whole coast southward to Cumberland Strait,* 

 and probably considerably beyond it. To this, however, I believe 

 there is one exception at Cape Durban, on the 67th parallel, where 

 coal has been found by the whalers ; and also at Kingaite, two 

 degrees to the south-west of Durban, where, from the appearance 

 of the land as viewed from a distance, tiap may be said to occur 

 on both sides of that inlet. Graphite is found abundant and pure 

 in several islands situate on the 65th parallel of latitude in Cum- 

 berland Straits, on the west side of Davis' Straits. 



Silui'ian District of the Georgian Islands, ^c. — The above-men- 

 tioned extensive development of crystalline rocks is flanked to the 

 westward by an equally, if not much more, extensive tract of 

 Silurian rocks, the limits of which as yet we have been unable to 

 ascertain. The chief, indeed, it may be said, the only navigable 

 channel through which this Silurian district has yet been reached 

 is Lancaster Sound ; it is probable, however, we may find it con- 

 tinuous to the westward with the American series of the same 

 rocks. Through the labours of Prof. Jameson and Mr. Konig, 

 thirty years ago, and of Mr. Salter only very recently, some of the 

 numerous Silurian fossils peculiar to North-Somerset, North-Devon, 

 and the North- Georgian Islands, have been described from the 

 fragmentary specimens brought home by the ships engaged in the 

 discovery of these places during the last thirty years.j 



Drift Deposits. — On Cornwallis and Beechey Islands in Barrow 

 Straits, west of Lancaster Sound, deposits containing existing 

 arctic sea-shells occur at every elevation up to nearly 1,000 feet, — 

 the greatest height attained by any part of that district. On the 

 undulating slopes and along the raised beaches of this Silurian dis- 

 trict of the North- Georgian Islands, &c. occur travelled materials, 

 such as fragments of anthracite, greenstone, quartz, serpentine, 

 gneiss, and granite, but all of such small size that their mode of 

 conveyance to their present position is clearly referable to the 

 action of coast-ice (previous to the elevation of the land), such as 

 at the present day occupies the comparatively shallow seas in the 

 inlets and channels of that district. 



On the Greenland side of Davis' Strait, on the contrary, we find 

 immense travelled boulders of gneiss and granite resting on the 

 islands and the coast, which have been brought there at former 

 periods by floating icebergs, previous to the elevation of the coast 

 above the sea-line. The probable causes of these differences of 



* " Cumberland Straits " of Baffin, its original discoverer at the end of the 

 sixteenth century ; " Hogarth Sound " of Capt. Penny, who rediscovered it in 

 1839 ; and "Northumberland Inlet" of Capt. Wareham in 1841. 



f See Appendix to Sutherland's Journal of Capt Penny's Voyage, 1852, 

 2 vols. 8vo. See also Mr. Salter's Paper, infra, p. 312. The Rev. Mr. Long- 

 muir, of Aberdeen, found numerous specimens of the genus Rhynchonella in 

 the ballast of the " Prince Albert," a ship recently returned from Batty Bay, 

 Prince-Regent's Inlet, on the eastern shore of North Somerset. 



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