OF LABRADOR AND MAINE. 213 



the large lakes in the interior are well stocked with fish, while the shallow lakes, and, in 

 fact, the deep ones communicating with the ocean, are in general very destitute of them. 



We must believe that the same causes that produced the deep fiords likewise account 

 for these deep fissures and depressions in the summit of the water-sheds. It is evident 

 that any amount of glacial action, however long sustained and vast in its operation, can 

 never account for these rude, irregular, often "geoclinal" troughs which follow lines of frac- 

 ture and faults, lying along the axis of elevation of mountain chains, or at nearly right 

 angles to them. 



The fiords on the Labrador coast are of great extent and depth. They are either orig- 

 inal lines of fracture and faults, or what Professor Dana terms geoclinal troughs, occurring at 

 the line of juncture of two rock formations. Thus Chateau Bay is a fissure at least 1200 

 feet in depth. The western shore rises 600 feet above the sea level, and the waters of the 

 bay at their deepest are 600 feet in depth. This fault must have been produced at the 

 time of the upheaval of the syenites of the coast. 



All the broad, deep bays and fiords on the Atlantic Ocean occur at the juncture of the 

 syenites and gneiss rocks, or juncture of quartzites and their trap overflows. There are 

 deep bays between Cape St. Lewis and Cape St. Michael's, where syenites rise through the 

 gneiss, producing faults and lines of dislocation. The large bay just north of Cape St. Mi- 

 chael's occurs at the junction of gneiss and " hyperite " rocks. Sandwich Bay and Hamil- 

 ton Inlet were formed by the denudation of the Domino Quartzites. Despari Harbor is a 

 deep fiord occurring at the juncture of the "Aulezavic Gneiss " of Lieber, with syenitic 

 rocks forming the coast line between this point and Hopedale. The irregular overflows of 

 trap and syenitic rocks which enclose the gneiss rocks, produce an immense number of 

 cross fiords and channels, from the presence of innumerable islands which line the coast, 

 and are composed of these eruptive rocks. 



These original fissures and depressions have been modified by glaciers, by frosts and 

 shore-ice and icebergs, and the waves of the sea. 



The shallow lakes, formed most probably by glaciers, lie in shallow troughs, upon a thin 

 bed of gravel and boulders. We only learn in some regions, especially in Southern Labra- 

 dor, that the country has been covered with boulders, by their presence on the banks and 

 in the centre of these pools. Clear examples of lakes partially surrounded by walls of rock, 

 with the banks at one end completed by a barrier of sand and gravel, are frequent. Such 

 barriers of drift have lost entirely their resemblance to glacial moraines, to winch they un- 

 doubtedly owe their origin, since the drift deposits have been remodelled into sea beaches 

 composed of very coarse gravel and boulders, while the finer materials have been swept 

 away by the powerful " Labrador Current " with its burden of icebergs and floe-ice that 

 has so effectually removed traces of the former presence of what we must believe to have 

 been extensive glaciers. 



Azoic Rocks of the Labrador Coast. 

 Laurentian Gneiss and Syenite. Between Little Mecatina Island and Henley Harbor, there 

 is a great uniformity in the rocks, which are either wholly gneiss, or more commonly a 

 syenitic gneiss, forming bold headlands. At Bradore are two lofty hills of gneiss, estimated 

 by Bayfield to be 1200 feet high. Between Belles Amours and Anse an Sablon, on the 

 northern side of the Straits of Belle Isle, occur the lower Silurian or Taconic rocks which 

 have been already fully described in the " Geology of Canada," published by the Canadian 



