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(17
1861 Aug 11 +
3d Enc  3d Day out

a Strait as it is called;  or with the full determination that this Water is a Bay, which I believe it to be from what the Innuits have told me.
I now resume recording the incidents of this day.
A few minutes succeeding Koo-ou-le-arny's arrival to the Coal heap, I proceeded to investigate more searchingly into the probable time it had been there.  I 1st dug down in the centre to ascertain its depth;  found it to be 1 foot in the thickest part & thinning off to an edge at a distance of 10 to 5 feet from centre.  On walking around, found that the winds had scattered the coal (mostly small pieces) over a great extent of ground mostly winds from N.E. - N. & N.W.
In fact wind from the opposite points would carry such Coal as it could lick up into the Water of [[underlined]] Countess of Warwick's Sound, [[/underlined]] as Frobisher denominated the Water at the N.W. N. & N.E. of Nioun-te-lik - for the coal deposit is close by the bank bordering the Sound.
To satisfy myself fully that this coal must have been where it is for a great many years, I dug around

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& [[underlined]] beneath [[/underlined]] clods of thickly matted grass - around & beneath stunted willows, & "Crowberry shrubs" - around & beneath Mosses.  Wherever I made these excavations, I found coal!  Many places overgrown with grass, I examined - digging down a depth of several inches & overturning sods exhibiting coal at the base - then a layer of sand & coal - then another layer of 2 & 3 inches of sand - overtopped by interlocked roots [[strikethrough]] of grass [[/strikethrough]] whence extended thrifty grass.  The roots of the stunted willows, half an inch in diameter at the base of the trunk & pierced down into sand & [[underlined]] thence into Coal! [[/underlined]]  On examination of many pieces of Coal bedded - some in grass - some in sand & some in moss, the upper side exposed to the air, I found to be covered with pellicles of [[underlined]] black moss, [[/underlined]] such as one finds upon the rocks of ages.
I am convinced from [[underlined]] what I have seen to-day [[/underlined]] that that Coal deposite has been there for centuries!  If it was placed there by Frobisher [[underlined]] (& I have no doubt that it was) [[/underlined]] then the time of its deposite was but Eighty Five Years after the discovery of America by Columbus!!