OF LABRADOR AND MAINE. 22ci 



upon the tops of the surrounding hills. One was about fifteen by forty feet in size. A 

 large proportion were well rounded, while others were angular. The greater proportion 

 were of syenite, a few small ones were of greenstone. 



Northward of this locality I did not have an opportunity of ascending the mountains 

 above the level of the ancient coast line. 



Professor Hind likewise found very few boulders at a distance from the bed of the Moisie, 

 for a distance of fifty miles from its mouth. But on ascending the water-shed, and penetrat- 

 ing farther inland they everywhere grew more numerous. A few miles beyond " Burnt 

 Portage " on this river, " huge blocks of gneiss, twenty feet in diameter, lay in the channel 

 or on the rocks which here and there pierced the sandy tract through which the river 

 flowed ; while on the summits of mountains and along the crests of hill ranges they seemed 

 as if they had been dropped like hail. It was not difficult to see that many of these rock 

 fragments were of local origin, but others had travelled far. From an eminence I could 

 discover that they were piled to a great height between hills 300 and 400 feet high, 

 and from the comparatively sharp edges of many, the parent rock could not have been 

 far distant." * 



Also at Caribou Lake, an expansion of the same river, he states, " the long line of 

 enormous erratics skirting the river looked like Druids' monumental stones ; for in many 

 instances they were disposed in such a manner as would almost lead one to suppose they 

 had been placed there by artificial means." — p. 229. 



Of this same expedition Mr. Cayley has published an account in the " Quebec Transac- 

 tions," where we have the statement of this observer that boulders are very thickly strewn 

 over the surface and on the summits of mountains 2214 feet high, and situated one hun- 

 dred and ten miles from the coast, being near the head waters of the Moisie. "Immense 

 numbers of boulders had for the last few miles strewn the sides of the mountains, in some 

 cases almost seeming to make up the very mountains themselves ; there being this differ- 

 ence, that whereas the rock itself in situ is granitic, the boulders in every case are of gneiss." 2 



Nowhere did I see on the coast of Labrador any deposits of the original glacial clay, 

 or " unmodified drift." Upon the sea-shore it has been remodelled into a stratified clay, and 

 the boulders it once contained now form terraced beaches. Professor Hind, however, notices 

 the occurrence of " drift clay, capped by sand " in precipitous banks rising seventy feet 

 above the level of the Moisie River, twenty miles from its mouth. 



Before giving an account of the marine clays and their fossils, which should naturally 

 come in at this place, I would draw attention to the numerous raised beaches that line 

 this coast. 



Raised Beaches. Some of the finest examples of raised beaches and rock-shelves repre- 

 senting ancient coast lines, about 400 feet above the present coast line, are seen in the 

 lowest Silurian rocks on both sides of the Straits of Belle Isle. The following notes and 

 sketches were made while coasting along the northern shore, which rises in high sandstone 

 and gritty bluffs, contrasting in their regular water-worn outlines most strongly with the 

 peculiar swelling curves of the Laurentian gneiss which rise near Bradore, according to 

 Bayfield's measurements, 1200 feet above the sea, — or the jagged, rough and hummocky 

 outlines of the rude syenitic hills, which rise 400 feet above the sea. At Anse au Loup, as 



1 Loc. cit., p. 227. Also, Quart. Journ. Oeol. Soc, Jan. 20, 1864, p. 122, On supposed Glacial Drift in the Labrador 

 Peninsula, &e. 



2 Up the River Moisie, loc. cit., N. S., vol. i. p. 88. 



MLMOIR3 BUST. SOC. MAT. HIST. Vol. I. Pt. 2. 57 



