ding the weather became very foggy, and the wind increased
to a heavy gale. The cliffs at our encampment consisted of slate-clay,
and bituminous alum-slate, and were six hundred feet high. The river,
whose mouth we passed, ran close behind them, having a course parallel
to the coast for some miles before it makes its way to the sea. It was
named Wilmot Horton River, in honour of the Under Secretary of State for
the Colonial Department. Its breadth is about three hundred yards, and
it seems, from the quantity of drift-timber that was piled on the shoals
at its mouth, to flow through a wooded country. The length of this day's
voyage was twenty-four miles, and the position of our encampment was in
latitude 69 degrees 50 minutes N., longitude 125 degrees 55 minutes W.
At high-water, which took place at a quarter past four in the afternoon,
the small slip of beach on which we had encamped was almost covered, and
we had to pile the baggage on the shelving cliff. A very showy species
of gromwell grew near our encampment, in company with the common
sea-gromwell, (_lithospermum maritimum_.)

[Sidenote: Friday, 21st.] On the 21st strong winds and foggy weather,
with a considerable surf on the beach, detained us until after eight
o'clock in the morning, when many large masses of ice coming in, took
the ground near the shore, and smoothed the water sufficiently to enable
us to embark. The fog was dense to seaward and over the land, but the
height of the cliffs left a space of about a mile from the beach, over
which it was carried by the violence of the wind.

About two miles from our late encampment, the bituminous shale was again
noticed to be on fire, giving out much smoke; and as we advanced, the
cliffs became less precipitous, appearing as if they had fallen down
from the consumption of the combustible strata. They gradually
terminated in a green and sloping bank, whose summit, about two miles
from the sea, rose to the height of about six hundred feet. For the
information of the general reader, I may mention that the shale takes
fire in consequence of its containing a considerable quantity of sulphur
in a state of such minute division, that it very readily attracts oxygen
from the atmosphere, and inflames. The combustion is rendered more
lively by the presence of bitumen; and the sulphuric acid, which is one
of its products, unites with the alumina of the shale to form, with the
addition of a small quantity of potass, the tripl