DALY: GEOLOGY OF THE NORTHEAST COAST OF LABRADOR. 211 



typifies that which may be had in the Laurentian Highlands of Canada 

 or in the Archaean of the Scottish Highlands. It is a great wilderness 

 of innumerable rounded, ice-worn hummocks generally gneissic in com- 

 position. Among the roches moutonnees lie equally countless ponds and 

 bogs connected by the small streams of a most disordered drainage. 



In sheltered places and at the higher altitudes the snow lies through- 

 out the year. On Pomiadluk Point, two ravines, running from about the 

 four hundred-foot contour to the eight hundred-foot, a distance of four 

 hundred yards in each case, wei-e found to be occupied with snow to a 

 depth of from fifty to seventy-five feet. Tj-pical transverse crevasses 

 ten to twenty feet in depth and yawning widely at their mouths indi- 

 cated by their attitude and down-stream curvature that the snow was 

 moving, glacier-like, down the slope. No blue ice was seen, but it is 

 possible that such existed in the deeper parts. Though many such 

 banks were found on the coast, especially on the higher mountains of 

 the north, none of them so closely approximated a true glacier in look 

 as these on Pomiadluk Point. 



The existence of the coastal fringe suggests at once that the plateau 

 has been drowned by recent subsidence. Yet, in view of the evidence 

 derived from the study of hanging valleys and fiords in Norway, Alaska, 

 and elsewhere, it is open to question whether the same glacial erosion 

 which has so conspicuously moulded the mainland may not be as well re- 

 sponsible for the depressions on the plateau-border now occupied by salt- 

 water. In other words, the differential erosion of an ice-sheet extending 

 out beyond the island-zone may have excavated these depressions which 

 would permit of the entrance of the sea when the ice had left the coun- 

 try. It is significant that where, on this coast, north of Hebron, glacial 

 erosion was confined to the main valleys, the fiords corresponding to the 

 latter are magnificently developed but the islands largely fail. The 

 sounds and tickles do not now present the systematic relations of 

 drowned river-valleys ; such irregularity as is known to characterize the 

 ei-osive activity of valley glaciers is without doubt represented beneath 

 an ice-cap and might leave just such channels below sealevel as a 

 memorial of that fact. It cannot yet be asserted that differential.glacial 

 erosion has contributed more to the present outline of the Labrador coast 

 than simple drowning, but it has certainly affected the original pre- 

 glacial form of the plateau to a great extent. In any case, it is import- 

 ant to recognize in a systematic discussion of shore-lines, a type wherein 

 glacial erosion, independently of crustal movement, may produce an island- 

 zone similar to that of a "drowned coast." 



