4 A Canadian Arctic Expedition, 19 13-1918 



or at a sufficiently high elevation to be out of the reach of the sea, although to 

 this they plainly owe their origin. Some of the larger lakes were quite fresh 

 and probably of glacial origin, but others, which must at one time have had 

 connection with the sea, probably contained some salt or brackish water in 

 their deeper parts although their surface water was quite fresh. 



The shallow lagoon ponds owe their water content partly to melted snow 

 but principally to the influx at high tide. The sandy or gravelly beach surround- 

 ing them is saturated with sea water; and the more shallow and smaller of them 

 completely dry out by the end of summer. The presence of salt in the lagoon 

 ponds is thus easily accounted for. The ponds are frozen solid for nine months 

 of the year and thaw in summer at the same time as the ice along the seashore. 



Of especial interest are two brackish ponds which belong to the second type 

 mentioned above, viz.: (1) a tundra pond between a large lake and the sea at 

 Teller, Alaska (Port Clarence bay), and (2) a more open pond situated at the 

 end of the bay at Bernard harbour, N.W.T. 



The tundra pond represents a remnant of the outlet which in earlier times 

 at high tide connected the large lake nearby with Grantley harbour (Port Clarence 

 bay). The bed of this outlet, except for a deep hole which is now the tundra 

 pond, filled with sand and in. the course of time became overgrown with a swamp 

 vegetation. The locality was visited by the expedition for two weeks in August, 

 1913, and the pond was then quite free of ice. Its brackish nature was deter- 

 mined simply by tasting the water. In the collections from the pond, excluding 

 diatoms, there were 14 species of freshwater algae. 



The large lake, referred to in the previous paragraph, represents a former 

 lagoon connected with Grantley harbour. Its surface and marginal waters were 

 tested and found to be quite fresh, although its deeper parts were probably 

 brackish. Marine diatoms were found in the deposits from the bottom of this lake. 



The brackish pond at Bernard harbour is situated out of reach of the sea 

 at an elevation of about 10 feet and about 25 yards inland from high-tide marks 

 on the beach, and on a gravel flat. The pond proper is represented by a deeper 

 hole, which is 3 to 4 feet deep in the middle and rises rather abruptly to a broad 

 belt of shallow marginal water not exceeding one foot in depth. The bottom of 

 the hole contains mud which smells strongly of sulphuretted hydrogen. The 

 bottom of the shallower margin is composed of light brown mud and stones 

 with many green thread algae {Enteromorpha crinita and E. intestinalis) . When 

 the melting of the pond begins, water is formed on the surface and the shallow 

 marginal water becomes ice-free, whilst the deeper part (over 1 foot) is solid ice 

 (May 5, 1916). By the middle of June (1916) the pond was completely ice-free 

 and had considerably increased its expanse owing to the inflow of fresh water 

 produced from the snow which had melted on the tundra slopes behind. The pond 

 still overflowed into a nearby bay of the sea by means of a small creek. Toward 

 the second week of July (1915), owing to evaporation, the horizontal expanse 

 of the pond had diminished, and all that remained of the overflow were a few small 

 waterholes in the creek bed. A month later, this evaporation had progressed 

 still further and the pond was practically limited to the deeper hole in the centre, 

 the rest being flats and swamps with a Carex subspathacea vegetation. At the 

 end of September (1915), the ice had become more than 1 foot thick. At this 

 time, therefore, the marginal water was completely frozen. The temperature of 

 the water beneath the ice was found to be 30-2° F. at 2 p.m. September 23, 1915 

 (atmospheric temperature 26-8° F.). 



It is an interesting fact that, in spite of the limited size of these two ponds 

 (Teller, Alaska, and Bernard harbour) and of the great influx of melting fresh 

 water in the early summer, the water in the ponds keeps distinctly brackish. 

 Mr. Johansen gives the following reasons for this: (1) the ponds actually repre- 

 sent bays of the sea, isolated by an elevation of the beach line in comparatively 

 recent times, so that the surrounding soil is impregnated more or less with saline 

 matter; and (2) in the spring a large volume of melting water spreads out over 



