OF LABRADOR AND MAINE. 



227 



they present the best evidence we have, to determine how far above its present level the 

 glacial sea stood. These rock terraces could only have been formed so fully as seen here 

 during a vast period, and the ice-foot of Dr. Kane, to which their formation is probably 

 due, must have remained on the shore during the entire year. Fine examples of similar 

 terraces are described and figured in Kane's "Explorations," Vol. ii. p. 81. At various 

 points along the coast the joint action of frost, the waves, and floating ice, can even now 

 be seen building up these steps in the slopes of trap and syenitic rocks, by taking advan- 

 tage of the jointure and cleavage planes which cross at nearly right angles. At Straw- 

 berry Harbor the syenitic rocks have broken off into huge cubical blocks of many tons' 

 weight. The rock abounds in cracks and fissures, into which the ice has entered wed°-e- 

 like, and burst them asunder, while the fragments have been borne away by shore-ice. 

 Thus for a height of 500 feet the shore consists of a series of steps ten to thirty feet 

 high, forming broad shelves on which the sea-birds build, and where a little vegetation 

 lodges. Where the shore consists of trap rocks, as at Domino Harbor and Tub Island, 

 the steps are much smaller and more numerous. At Domino there are regular steps 

 in the quartzites, which lend a very peculiar feature to the shores of the harbor, as at a 

 little distance the rocky slopes descending by hundreds of steps to the water, appear 

 like a lofty beach of boulders. At Sloop Harbor these rocky steps are of vast extent, 

 their tops shelving inland, and in profile the rocky promontory presents a strange serrated 

 outline when viewed from the sea. The lofty sugar-loaf syenitic island a few miles south 



Figure 3. 

 View just north of Sloop Harbor, Kyueartarbuck Bay: (A) gneiss terraces, 500 to 800 feet high; (B) raised beach at 

 the head of a small bay; (C) a headland of Domino quartzite ( ?) intersected by trap dykes. 



of Hopedale, noticed previously, and which is 700 feet high, has its surface divided into 

 four terraces of rock, which reach two-thirds of the distance up its sides from the water, 



Figure 2. 

 Rock terraces on a conical promontory near Hopedale, Labrador. 



thus affording a means of estimating the different heights at which the land paused in its 

 oscillations upwards. We must again refer to Mr. Hind's work for an account of similar 



MEMOIRS BOST. SOC. NAT. HI3T. Vol. I. Ft. 2. 



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