ween Capes Innis and Bowden. I conceived the trail
to be that of an outward-bound sledge, on account of its depth, which
denoted a heavily-ladened one.

Proceeding onward, our party were all much struck with the
extraordinary regularity of the terraces, which, with almost artificial
parallelism, swept round the base of the limestone cliffs and hills of
North Devon. That they were ancient tidal-marks, now raised to a
considerable elevation above the sea by the upheaval of the land, I was
the more inclined to believe, from the numerous fossil shells,
crustacea, and corallines which strewed the ground. The latter
witnesses to a once more genial condition of climate in these now
inclement regions, carried us back to the sun-blest climes, where the
blue Pacific lashes the coral-guarded isles of sweet Otaheite, and I
must plead guilty to a recreant sigh for past recollections and dear
friends, all summoned up by the contemplation of a fragment of
fossil-coral.

[Headnote: _SLEDGE TRAILS._]

The steep abutment of the cliffs on the north of "Erebus and Terror
Bay," obliged us to descend to the floe, along the surface of which we
rapidly progressed, passing the point on which the pike used by
Franklin's people as a direction-post had been found. At a point where
these said cliffs receded to the N.E., and towards the head of
Gascoigne Inlet, leaving a long strip of low land, which, connecting
itself with the bluffs of Cape Riley, forms the division between
Gascoigne Inlet and "Erebus and Terror Bay," a perfect congery of
sledge-marks showed the spot used for the landing-place, or rendezvous,
of Franklin's sledges.

Some of these sledge-marks swept towards Cape Riley, doubtless towards
the traces found by the "Assistance;" others, and those of
heavily-ladened sledges, ran northward, into a gorge through the hills,
whilst the remainder pointed towards Caswell's Tower, a remarkable mass
of limestone, which, isolated at the bottom of Radstock Bay, forms a
conspicuous object to a vessel approaching this neighbourhood from the
eastward or westward.

Deciding to follow the latter trail, we separated the party in such a
manner, that, if one lost the sledge-marks, others would pick them up.

Arriving at the margin of a lake, which was only one of a series, and
tasted decidedly brackish, though its connection with the sea was not
apparent, we found the site of a circular tent, unquestionably that of
a shooting-party from the "Erebu