‘If the different points where coal was found be laid down on a map, we have, in order, proceeding from the southwest, Cape Hamilton, Baring island; Cape Dundas, Melville island, south; Bridgeport inlet and Skene bay, Melville island; Schomberg point, Graham-Moore bay, Bathurst island; a line joining all these points is the outcrop of the coal-beds of the south of Melville island, and runs E.N.E. At all the localities above mentioned, and indeed in every place where coal is found, it was accompanied by the grayish-yellow and yellow sandstone, already described, and by nodules of clay-ironstone, passing into brown hematite, sometimes nodular and sometimes pisolitic in structure.’
Dr. Armstrong, of the Investigator, referring to the northern part of Banks island, states that outliers of Carboniferous limestone are found at Cape Crozier and near Mercy bay, along with the sandstones and shales with coaly streaks.
It is doubtful if the Carboniferous rocks occur on the northwest part of North Devon, though placed there by De Rance and Dawson. Schei found only Silurian and Devonian on the northern part of that island explored by him, and the Carboniferous rocks do not show on the west coast of Ellesmere until Store Bjornekap is reached. If a line were carried from the outcrops of these rocks on Bathurst island northward to Store Bjornekap it would cross the western part of Grinnell (island) peninsula, but there is no reason to suppose that the outcrop would follow such a line.
The Carboniferous rocks of western Ellesmere appear to be isolated areas resting upon the underlying Devonian, and in turn covered by Mesozoic rocks. Schei describes the area at Store Bjornekap as consisting in its lowest part of beds of brownish-gray, hard, fossiliferous limestone; higher up, of a white pure limestone, flinty limestone and pure flint strata, richly fossiliferous, among the fossils being Lithostrotion sp., Fenestella sp., Streptorhynchus crenistria, Rhynchonella (Pugnax) sp., Spirifer cfr. ovalis, cuspidatus, mosquensis, Productus cfr. semireticulatus, costatus, punctatus, cora, &c.
The extreme northeast part of Axel Heiberg island is marked as Carboniferous by Schei, but there are no notes concerning this locality in his geolocigal summary.
The Carboniferous sandstones have not been found in the northeast part of Ellesmere island, but limestones of that age were found in several localities to the west of Dana bay, and there is every likelihood that rocks of this age extend across the northern part of the island to join those of the western shore and the northern part of Axel Heiberg island.
MESOZOIC.
The discovery of the Sverdrup group of islands has greatly extended our knowledge of the Mesozoic rocks of the Arctic basin. The Franklin search parties discovered rocks of this age on the northern shores of the Parry islands; at Point Wilkie, in Prince Patrick island; Rendezvous Hill, near the northwestern extreme of Bathurst island and at Exmouth island and places in the vicinity, near the northwest part of North Devon. The explorations from the Fram now show that these are but the southern edge of a wide basin of these rocks which form the islands of King Oscar, Ellef and Amund Ringes, while they constitute the lowlands of Axel Heiberg and the western shores of Ellesmere along both sides of Eureka sound. There they consist largely of sandstones with shales, schists and limestones.
As before stated, Schei hints that their eastern extension to the shores of Kennedy channel may be marked by the tilted and folded strata, classed by De Rance as the Cape Rawson Series, of supposed Cambrian age.