CAPE RILEY. 155 
the ice last season in the neighhorhood of our own first 
imprisonment, off the Devil's Thumb. After a peril- 
ous drift, she had succeeded in entering Wolstenholme 
Sound, whence, after a tedious winter, she had only re- 
cently arrived at Port Bowen. 
They followed in our wake the next day as we push- 
ed through many streams of ice across the strait. We 
sighted the shore ahout five miles to the west of Cape 
Hurd very closely ; a miserahle wilderness, rising in 
terraces of broken-down limestone, arranged between 
the hills like a vast theatre. 
On the 25th, still beating through the ice off Rad- 
stock Bay, we discovered on Cape Riley two cairns, 
one of them, the most conspicuous, with a flag-staff and 
ball. A couple of hours after, we were near enough 
to land. The cape itself is a low projecting tongue of 
limestone, but at a short distance behind it the cliff 
rises to the height of some eight hundred feet. We 
found a tin canister within the larger cairn, contain- 
ing the information that Captain Ommanney had been 
there two days before us, with the Assistance and In- 
trepid, belonging to Captain Austin's squadron, and 
had discovered traces of an encampment, and other 
indications "that some party belonging to her Britan- 
nic majesty's service had been detained at this spot." 
Similar traces, it was added, had been found also on 
Beechy Island, a projection on the channel side some 
ten miles from Cape Riley. 
Our consort, the Rescue, as we afterward learned, 
had shared in this discovery, though the British com- 
mander's inscription in the cairn, as well as his offi- 
cial reports, might lead perhaps to a different conclu- 
sion. Captain Griffin, in fact, landed with Captain 
Ommanney, and the traces were registered while the 
two officers were in company. 
