The only difference, as far as
I could see, was that this was dug out of a snowbank, instead of being
built upon the surface and afterward buried by the drift.
The country over which we travelled this day was like all the rest we
had seen in King William Land--broken and jagged clay stone, with
intervening marshes. Little patches of brown and green moss, covered
with delicate purple flowerets, peep up occasionally from among the
piles of dry stones, though there is apparently no vestige of earth or
mould to sustain their delicate lives. These flowers appear as soon as
the snow melts from off the moss, and are most welcome to the eye of
the traveller in this desolate country. How glad we will be to see the
grass and trees of the temperate zone once more, after living so long
in this void! To-day, for the first, time I saw a few delicate little
daisies, and the sight of them carried me in imagination to the woods
and fields of New Jersey. I forgot the salt marshes and red "Jersey
mud;" but even the marshes there would look like flower-gardens after
the clay-stone deserts of King William Land.
[Illustration: CURIOUS FORMATION OF CLAY-STONE.]
We left Irving Bay on the 13th of July, after erecting a monument over
the grave of Lieutenant Irving, and marking a stone to indicate the
object of the cairn.
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