Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/406

EXPANSION OF SMITH SOUND. that Grinnell Land extends beyond the limit of my explorations. I hold, as Inglefield did before me, that Smith Sound expands into the Polar Basin. Beyond the narrow passage between Cape Alexander and Cape Isabella, the water widens steadily up to Cape Frazer, where it expands abruptly. On the Greenland side the coast trends regularly to the eastward, until it reaches Cape Agassiz, where it dips under the glacier and is lost to observation. That cape is composed of primitive rock, and is the end of a mountain spur. This same rock is visible at many places along the coast, but is mostly covered with the deposit of sandstone and greenstone, which forms the tall cliffs of the coast-line, until it crops out about thirty miles in the interior into a mountain chain, which, (in company with Mr. Wilson), I crossed, in 1853, to find the mer de glace hemmed in behind it. Further to the north the mer de glace has poured down into the Polar Sea, and pushing its way onward through the water, it has at length reached Washington Land, and swelled southward into Smith Sound. That the face of Humboldt Glacier trends more to the eastward than is exhibited on Dr. Kane's chart, I have shown; and that Washington Land will be found to lie much farther in the same direction, I have sufficient grounds for believing. According to the report of Morton, it is to be inferred that this island is but a continuation of the same granitic ridge which breaks off abruptly at Cape Agassiz, and appears again above the sea at Cape Forbes, in a line conformable with the Greenland range. It is probable then that at some remote period this Washington Land stood in the expansion of Smith Sound, washed by water on every side,—that lying to the