Everyone was differently impressed by the great store of mineral wealth that lay before us. “What a pity we cannot get up a company and issue shares!” said one. “How comfortably we might winter alongside of this!” thought another; and a third, making a free use of the scientific imagination, pictured to himself the conditions which must have existed when this coal was waving forest, and wondered how the trees managed to live through the long darkness of winter. That they did live and flourish on this spot there was abundant proof. Mere drift-wood has before now been mistaken for evidence of Arctic vegetation, but here there could be no such error. It was only necessary to cross the stream a little lower down, and split open the soft, dark slates of the opposite cliff, to find the leaves of ancient forests as perfect as when they fluttered down from the stems that bore them. The commonest were those of a cone-bearing tree allied to the great Wellingtonias of Western America, but leaves like aspen and poplar were not unfrequent. How different the climate must have been when these trees grew! Now, there is no forest within a thousand miles, and in the whole land the nearest approach to a tree is the dwarf willow, not three inches high, sheltering its tiny stem in the crevices amongst the stones. Though the discovery of this coal-bed was most important in a scientific point of view, it was of no practical use to us. If any other expedition ever passes through Smith’s Sound, we may be sure it will not be forgotten. There it remains, an inexhaustible reservoir of force, ready for anyone who can invent a new method of travelling to the Pole.