EUITISH COLUMBIA AND ADJACENT REGIONS 



281 



sented by the wide stretch, of flat land before alluded to. Several 

 of the fiords here open together into a large sheet of water forming 

 the upper part of Masset Inlet, which communicates with the sea to 

 the north by the long narrow passage known as the Masset Sound. 

 The fiords are heavily glaciated, bordered in most places by steep 

 rocky shores, deep and free from drift deposits, and contrast in these 

 respects markedly with the low-shoal eastern shores of the Masset 

 expansion into which they open. 



The composition of the low land to the east and north-east is 

 best shown in the cliffs forming its eastward-facing margin. A few 

 miles north of Skidegate a low cliff or bank shows deposits which 

 are evidently of glacial age, cut off above by a gently undulating 

 surface of denudation, above which is 10 or 15 feet of material 

 which shows no sign of blending with that below. The upper de- 

 posit consists of sand and well-rounded gravel in regular and often 

 nearly horizontal layers. It has here become in many places quite 

 hard, being apparently cemented by ferruginous matter. Its lower 

 layers hold small boulders, a few of which are from 18 inches to 2 feet 

 in diameter. The lower deposit in oue place is a typical Boulder- 

 clay, with many half- rounded or subaugular stones and occasional 

 boulders of some size. The matrix is bluish grey, hard, and some- 

 what arenaceous, the whole being irregularly mingled, and having 

 no distinct bedding. At a short distance this Boulder-clay begins 

 to show bedding, and to become interleaved with hard clayey gravels 

 composed of well-rounded pebbles. The stratification of these is 

 undulating and rather irregular, and there is some local unconformity 

 by erosion between the different layers. A few paces still further 

 on these become interbedded with, and are eventually replaced by, 

 hard, bluish-grey, arenaceous clays, which hold some pebbly layers 

 and an abundance of broken specimens of mollusks, among which 

 Leda fossa is the most common. A small Cardium-l\ke shell and 

 fragments of a Balanus were also observed. 



Further north on this coast the clays, with the overlying sandy 

 deposit in greater or less thickness, form long ranges of cliffs ; and 

 though locally irregular, their general character continues the same. 

 The clays are, in some places, very hard, and were observed to hold 

 fragments of trees quite brown in colour, but not mineralized. 

 These deposits, as a whole, very closely resemble those previously 

 described as occurring at Yictoria, on the south-eastern extremity 

 of Yancouver Island. 



Lying like Masset Inlet near the junction of the hilly and low 

 countries is Naden Harbour, and between this and Masset Inlet are 

 two large freshwater lakes, which doubtless occupy an analogous 

 position, but have so far not been visited by any but Indians. 

 Southward there is reason to believe that there are one or more 

 basins in a similar relation between Masset Inlet and Skidegate. 



Boulders are very numerous on the coast of some parts of the 

 northern portion of Graham Island ; and these and the beach- 

 gravel are in many cases" formed of rocks which must have been 

 transported from the mainland to the north or east, and quite unlike 



