OBSERVATIONS ON SHORE. 185 
minutes on a rocky point, named Cape Lister, 
after a reverend friend, lying in latitude 70° 30', 
and longitude 21° 30' W. The coast here having 
changed its mountainous character, and become 
more level towards the south and west, we were 
enabled to reach the top of the cliff, which was 
only 300 or 400 feet high, and to travel along its 
brow to the westward. The rocks we ascended 
consisted chiefly of hornblende, in sharp, angular, 
irregular masses, much broken, with some of the 
same rock, of the slaty kind, containing much 
mica, and veins of feldspar. The brow of the 
cliff, instead of soil and verdure, presented either 
a naked or lichen-clad pavement of loose angular 
stones. Most of these, consisting principally of 
white quartz, with intermixed masses of sienite 
and hornblende-rock, had suffered so little from 
exposure to the atmosphere for numerous ages, 
excepting as to fracture, that their angles were 
as sharp as if they had been newly broken. Bor¬ 
dering the sea, these stones were almost enveloped 
in a covering of black lichens ; but on ascending 
over a sheet of snow to a superior eminence, the 
lichens became much less abundant. The almost 
total want of soil was an effectual preventive to 
verdure; the vegetation was therefore confined 
to a few hardy lichens, with an occasional tuft of 
the Andromeda tetragona, Saxifraga oppositifo- 
