No. I.] 



GEOGNOSTICAL OBSERVATIONS. 



531 



foggy weather, which permitted us to have a very indistinct view of the shore ; 

 but we landed on several parts near the pitch of the cape, and found the rocks 

 to consist of a beautiful admixture of red and grey granite, forming very steep 

 craggy, and acute peaks, rising abruptly from the water to the height of one 

 thousand five hundred feet. The granite is traversed by large veins of red 

 felspar running from N. to S., intersected at right angles by smaller veins. 

 In one or two places, the larger veins were filled with greenstone. The 

 granite hills terminate abruptly, or recede from the coast at Detention Har- 

 bour, and give place to much less elevated strata of gneiss, enclosing some 

 beds of red granite. A vein of galena was traced for two hundred yards, run- 

 ning through the gneiss at Galena Point. This vein, about two inches in 

 diameter, was entirely filled with galena, without the slightest appearance of 

 any sparry substance. A few miles to the eastward of Galena Point, the 

 gneiss recedes from the shore, and appears to enter into the composition of a 

 ridge which runs nearly in a straight line until it is cut by Hood's River, about 

 fifteen miles above its mouth. On the western point of Moore's Bay, there 

 is a precipice of indurated iron-shot slaty clay. The promontory which forms 

 the east side of the same bay is formed of trap rocks and clay stone porphyry, 

 whose mural precipices constitute the sides of very narrow valleys that open 

 at each end to the sea. Several species of carex grow in these wet and 

 spongy valleys, on which account the rein-deer seem to resort to them. Very 

 few lichens were observed. Some small fragments were found amongst the 

 debris of the porphyry, containing copper green and scales of native copper. 



From Moore's Bay to the entrance of Arctic Sound, an iron-shot clinkstone 

 porphyry prevails, having a columnar appearance. The eastern shore of 

 Arctic Sound, rising gently towards the ridge of gneiss lately mentioned, is 

 covered with grass, and presents little or no naked rock ; but on Banks's 

 Peninsula, the clinkstone porphyry re-appears along with an earthy-looking 

 greenstone, forming, as usual, parallel ranges of mural precipices. 



On the eastern point of Brown's Passage, the strata consist of light red 

 sandstone dipping slightly to the Westward, succeeded by bluish-grey slate 

 clay, and having lofty cliffs of greenstone, iron-shot amygdaloid and trap tuff 

 superimposed. On Barry's Island, which lies off this part of the coast, the 

 rocks consist of trap rocks, forming cliffs from fifty to one hundred and sixty 

 feet high, superimposed on thick beds of indurated clay or marl, variously 



