‘In one place near the cache on the west side of Hudson bay, a thickness of sixty feet of this quartzite, in a nearly vertical attitude, was seen almost in contact with the Laurentian gneiss, there being but a narrow, drift-filled gap between the two. This would indicate either the existence of a fault, or that here the quartzites are the base of the Huronian, or that the gneiss represents an eruptive rock which has risen through or into the Huronian subsequent to the deposition of the quartzite.’
‘Dark-green eruptive rocks, chiefly diabases, often very much squeezed and altered, are largely developed in the Huronian, composing a considerable proportion of the rocks of this system. On the west coast of Hudson bay these rocks are cut by many veins of white quartz, highly charged with iron and copper-pyrite.’
‘Associated with the massive diabases, and often indistinguishable from them except on close examination, are many beds of fine-grained, often schistose graywacke, or greenish quartzite, which appear to have been caught up in, or surrounded by the eruptive rocks.’
GEOLOGY OF ISLAND GROUP II.
This group is comprised of the great island of Baffin, with Bylot island lying off its northeast corner, and the many smaller islands which lie as a fringe around both.
Geological specimens from the east side of Baffin were collected by the expedition under Ross and Parry, and were described by Dr. McCulloch. They consisted of loose specimens collected in two localities, and give little information. Specimens collected by Parry on the same coast were described by Koning as gneiss and micaceous quartz rock, also some ambiguous granitic compound in which hornblende seems to enter as a subordinate ingredient.
Dr. P. C. Sutherland, in 1853, describes the east coast of Baffin island between Lancaster sound and Cumberland gulf as follows:
‘On the opposite shore (south) of Lancaster sound, at Cape Walter Bathurst, the crystalline rocks are again recognized, and from this point they occupy the whole coast south to Cumberland strait and probably considerably beyond it. To this, however, I believe there is one exception, at Cape Durban, on the 67th parallel, where coal has been found by whalers; and also at Kingaite, two degrees to the southwest of Durban, where from the appearance of the land as viewed from a distance, trap may be said to occur on both sides of the inlet. Graphite is found abundant and pure in several islands situated on the 65th parallel of latitude, in Cumberland strait, and on the west side of Davis strait.’
C. F. Hall brought home a considerable collection of rocks and minerals picked up during his explorations about Frobisher bay and the southeast coast of Baffin island. These were named by Prof. B. K. Emerson, and consist of ordinary Laurentian rocks, including granite, gneiss and schists. The minerals were magnetite, apatite, bornite and pyrite from Frobisher and Cyrus Field bays. Lower Silurian limestones were found in a small outlier at Silliman’s Fossil Mount near the head of Frobisher bay. This locality was visited in 1897 by a party from the Peary Arctic expedition of that year. In the course of a few hours they obtained fifty-four species of fossils from this locality, which were later named by C. Schuchert.
Dr. Franz Boas describes the nucleus of the mountain masses of Baffin island to be everywhere gneiss and granite, with Silurian limestones about the region of the large lakes of the interior and along the low lands of the west coast.