226 A. S. PACKARD, Jr., ON THE GLACIAL PHENOMENA 



It is to be regretted that from want of time and proper instruments we were unable to 

 measure the heights of these beaches and their respective terraces. Those given are 

 simply approximative, with the exception of the one noticed as occurring upon Henley 

 Island. The mass of basalt was rudely measured by Lieut. Baddeley, and estimated to be 

 255 feet high. The terraces rise to the base of the pillars, which he estimated to be 180 

 feet above the sea. 



I believe it will ultimately be found that all these beaches rise above the present level 

 of the sea at uniform heights, and will be found generally to agree in this respect with 

 similar beaches in the St. Lawrence River and the coast of the British Colonies and New 

 England, after making due allowances for local oscillations of the land. At Chateau Bay 

 it could easily be seen that all the terraces composing the different beaches were of 

 the same height ; and, so far as memory would show, in the absence of actual measurement, 

 all those beaches observed farther northward presented terraces which very generally 

 corresponded in height with those of Chateau Bay. 



I am informed by Captain Ichabod Handy of New Bedford, Mass., who has spent sev- 

 eral years in Hudson's Baj r engaged in the whale fishery, who is a close observer, and has 

 coasted in a whale-boat the whole shore from Nain to Resolution Island in lat. 62°, that 

 there are several very high raised beaches near Hebron, and also near Nain, one of which 

 he roughly estimated to be 300 feet high. He observed that the beaches north of Nain 

 increased in height. There were also beaches on Button Island. He noticed one on 

 Resolution Island, about 200 feet high, which was composed of three terraces. On the 

 Lower or East Savage Island he described to me a plain of soft clay elevated fifty feet 

 above the sea, into which " he sank knee-deep," and perceived in it numerous " clams and 

 mussels," and also the skeleton of a whale, the "boar-head" whale, (Balaena boops) stranded 

 upon the surface. This ancient sea bottom was flanked by a raised beach from thirty to 

 forty feet in height. 



At Sir Thomas Roe's Welcome, he describes the beaches as being higher than any 

 observed southwards, and he also noticed clay-banks, containing shells, raised above the 

 present level of the sea. 



Prof. Hind has noticed some remarkable beaches far in the interior of the southern part 

 of the Peninsula, and at a great height above the present level of the sea. Though this 

 author does not refer to their rearrangement by the currents and waves of the sea, his 

 description of the immense deposits of rounded and water-worn boulders, agrees precisely 

 with similar raised beaches both upon, and a mile back from, the coast, observed by myself, 

 where they are covered by moss and Empetrum, or stunted spruces. At " Burnt Portage," 

 upon the river Moisie, one hundred miles from its mouth, and 1857 feet above the level of 

 the sea, this author describes a " hill of boulders or erratics, all water-worn and smooth, 

 without moss or lichen upon them, and piled two or three deep, and, for aught you know, 

 twenty deep." ..." The well-worn masses of all sizes, from one foot to twenty feet in 

 diameter, and from one ton to 10,000 tons in weight, are washed clean." . . . "I could 

 without difficulty see three tiers of these ' travelled rocks,' and in the crevices the charred 

 roots of trees which had grown in the mosses and lichens which formerly clothed them." 



Another feature of great interest in this connection are the rocky terraces or steps which 

 have been hewn out of the solid rocks along the coast for a height of 500 feet above the 

 present level of the sea, and mark the oscillations of the old coast line ; and, as there occur 

 in the interior of the country 1000 feet above the present coast line, similar lines of erosion, 



