OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
251 
largest ravine we had ever seen upon the island; its width at the part next 1820. 
the sea being above half a mile, and its sides, which are nearly per- 
pendicular, not less than eight hundred feet in height. In watching the 
little stream, not more than a yard or two wide and a few inches in 
depth, now trickling along the bottom of this immense water-course, it was 
impossible not to be forcibly struck with the consideration of the time 
which must have been required, with means apparently so inadequate, 
to hew out so vast a bed for the annual discharge of the winter’s snow 
into the ocean. We here met with no other mineral than sandstone ; the 
formation of the rocks, as far as we could see them in the ravines, here and 
there resembled large upright masses, or square pillars, standing amidst 
the debris which surrounded them ; in other places, a range of sandstone, in 
thin horizontal strata, was left in the same manner, having all the appear- 
ance of a wall artificially constructed, and on these a square part sometimes 
occurred, higher than the rest, not unlike chimneys, for which, in an 
inhabited country, they might easily have been taken at a little distance. 
In some of the higher parts of the land, upon the brink of the precipice 
which overlooks the sea, we remarked almost the first commencement of 
ravines, consisting of small channels a yard or two in depth, and which, as 
we then amused ourselves by reflecting, may one day resemble those im- 
mense beds which constitute the most sublime and picturesque feature 
that this island can boast. I have before remarked that, at the outlet of 
these ravines, there is always a small point of land, formed by the soil and 
stones which are there carried into the ocean ; I repeat this observation, for 
the sake of adding that, in cases of danger from the sudden closing of 
the ice, a ship may always be sure of meeting with one of these points, 
which are too small to be seen at a distance, or to be delineated on 
the chart, by steering for one of the ravines, the latter being easily distin- 
guishable when several miles from the land. 
The station at which the ships were now lying, and which is the westernmost 
point to which the navigation of the Polar Sea to the northward of the 
American continent has yet been carried, is in latitude 74° 26' 25", and 
longitude, by chronometers, 113° 46' 43 ".5. Cape Dundas is in latitude 
74° 27' 50", longitude 113° 57' 35", by which the length of Melville Island, in 
an E.N.E. and W.S.W. direction, appears to be about one hundred and thirty- 
five miles, and its breadth, about the meridian of Winter Harbour, from forty 
to fifty miles. 
