Vague reports of some of Captain Penny's people having seen sledge-marks on the eastern shores of "Erebus and Terror Bay," induced one of the officers of the "Pioneer" and myself to arrange with Captain Penny to take a walk in that direction. Landing on the north shore of Union Bay, at the base of the cliffs of Cape Spencer, we were soon pointed out a deep sledge-mark, which had cut through the edge of one of the ancient tide-marks, or terraces, and pointed in a direct line from the cairn of meat-tins erected by Franklin, on the northern spur of Beechey Island, to a valley which led towards the bay between 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.