236 THE LABRADOR PENIXSULA. CHAP. xv. 



did it unfold ! A history of continental glacial ice, wear- 

 ing down rocks and grinding out lake basins - - a history 

 of deep seas, bearing boulder-ladened floes of ice, drop- 

 ping their burdens as they floated over a history of 

 stranded icebergs and irresistible currents - - a history of 

 gradually emerging land, of changing coast lines, and of 

 continual change in the position of the travelled rocks- 

 a history of frosts, snows, swollen lakes and rivers of 

 long dreary winters, short scorching summers and, 

 finally, a dreadful conflagration. 



But most bewildering of all reflections was the age 

 the infinite age of the rocks of the Labrador Peninsula. 

 What exposure to elemental warfare ! what a lonely ex- 

 perience of the changes which this world has undergone ! 

 The earliest known continent, the longest above the sea, 

 dry land during the countless ages which formed the 

 great Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous periods. 

 First, ice-covered for ages, during which frozen epoch it 

 underwent that change in surface to which Greenland 

 is now being subjected ; then, possibly, dry land, when 

 all the south and west was deeply covered with the 

 ocean, and the immense Secondary deposits were being 

 elaborated all the way from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf 

 of Mexico, slowly sinking and submerging during part 

 of the Tertiary and post-Tertiary periods to the depth 

 of many thousand feet, slowly rising subsequently fully 

 3,000 feet above the ocean level, yet preserving still the 

 same old front, though far more worn but much less 

 troubled than in those dim and distant ages at the close 

 of the Laurentian period, when it emerged fresh and new 

 from a Laurentian sea. 



