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12 Thursday Sept 2nd. cont. sea against the foot of these banks and the undermining that follows, causes them to fall down and the rough irregular talus that results, is mingled with turf and bushes from the surface above. A little further on a surface of ice was noticed. It appeared to be solid and free from mixture of soil except except on the outside Further on the same phenomenon was encountered again on a larger scale and this continued about two miles and a half to Elephant Pt. and there the higherland turns to the S & W and we followed it no further. For a considerable distance the "cliffs" were double. That is there was an ice face exposed near the beach, with a small talus in front of it, and covered with a coating of soil two or three feet thick on which a luxuriant vegetation was growing. All this might be thirty feet in height, and climbing to the brow of the bank the rise from that brow proves to be broken, hummocky, and full of crevices and holes, in fact a second talus on a larger scale, ascending to the foot of a second ice face above which [[end page]] [[start page]] 13 was a thin (1 - 2 1/2 feet) layer of soil covered with herbage. The brow of the second bluff might be eighty feet or more above the sea. Thence the land rose slowly and gradually to a rounded ridge, reaching a height of three or four hundred feet only at a distance of several miles from the sea and with no mountains or other high land about it whatever. At the highest part of this ridge within a quarter to a half a mile from the sea perhaps 250 feet above the sea, at a depth of a foot we came to a solidly frozen stratum, consisting chiefly of sphagnum and vegetable mould but containing goodsized lumps of clear ice. There seemed no reason to doubt that the extension of the digging would have brought us to the solid clear ice such as was visible at the face of the bluff below. That is that the ridge itself was chiefly composed of solid ice overlaid with clay and vegetable mould. It was noticeable that there was much less clay other the top of the upper iceface than was
