232 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



gravel, and small boulders abound. Mr. Ford states that, after a heavy 

 snowstorm, as many as twenty or thirty avalanches may, in the suc- 

 ceeding twenty-four hours be expected to fall within sight or sound of 

 the Post. These slides always bring a greater or less amount of loose 

 rock with them which, in winter, will find a temporary resting place on 

 the frozen surface of the fiord, and gradually build a fringe of debris 

 resting on the ice parallel to the shores. As might be expected, the 

 number of these falls is greater in the spring than at any other time of 

 the vear. The marks made by the bounding boulders where they strike 

 soft ground were found to be in the month of August, extremely fresh, 

 and must have been formed only a few days previously. Mr. Palmer 

 saw one boulder six feet in diameter fall from the wall of the Tallek, and, 

 after its last rebound, leap fully a thousand feet before it struck the sur- 

 face of the water. As in the Alps, there is a certain element of danger 

 in travelling on these slopes. 



It is not to the credit of American geographical enterprise that the 

 Torngats are to-day unnamed, unmeasured, unknown in any scientific 

 sense ; yet they doubtless represent the highest land on the mainland of 

 the American Atlantic seaboard from Hudson's Strait to Cape Horn. 

 Lieber stated that " they are not less than 6,000 feet high, and some 

 peaks may be 10,000 feet high." Koch later remarked that " the highest 

 points of this range are opposite the island of Aulatsivik, and reach 

 elevations of from 8,000 to 9,000 feet." 1 



One short fortnight w T as quite insufficient to permit of any exhaustive 

 •work on the determination of altitudes, especially as there were other 

 and more important problems which engaged our attention while the 

 " Brave " lay anchored at Kipsimarvik. Partly for this reason, only a 

 few of the lower and nearer mountains were ascended. (Plate 12.) 



Immediately back of the Hudson's Bay Post, on the northeast, a 

 rounded knob was found, with the aid of two standard compensated ane- 

 roids, to be twenty-eight hundred feet above high water. It was called 

 by our party " Mt. Elizabeth," after the young daughter of the Hudson's 

 Bay agent. This mountain is separated by a profound notch from " Mt. 

 Ford," named after the agent himself. It lies still farther to the north- 

 eastward ; its altitude, determined again by the barometers, is thirty- 

 nine hundred feet. From the summit a superb panorama is obtained 

 on all sides. Due north, two conspicuous peaks some four miles distant 

 across a deep east-west valley, cut off some of the view. The western- 

 most was ascended by Professor Delabarre and Mr. Adams and deter- 



1 Quoted by Packard, " The Labrador Coast," p. 228. 



