GLACIATION OF NEWFOUNDLAND. 73 
grooves, not so deeply marked, which cross the former at an acute angle, the bearing 
being 185°. 
“ At the lower end of Lake Temiscaming, two sets of parallel scratches cross one 
another in the direction, of 140° and 196. The gravel may once have been continuous 
across the lake, and may have been broken or worn down for the escape of the water, which 
now flows past in a gentle current through the gap. The mass is not unlike the remains 
of an ancient moraine, and combined with the smooth rounded surfaces, and parallel grooves 
and scratches, and the changes in their direction, the circumstances of the case may well 
suggest that this part of the valley of the Ottawa may have been the seat of an ancient 
glacier. A difficulty appears to stand in the way of the hypothesis, in the horizontality of the 
valley. There is little fall in it for seventy miles, and the total height of the lake is only 
612 feet. What descent there may be inthe valleys which lead into it on the north, having 
their origin in the water-shed about forty-five miles distant, in which the ice behind might 
press on the ice before, has not been ascertained, but it is not reported to be very great. But, 
as Prof. J. B. Forbes appears to have demonstrated, in his travels through the Alps, that in 
glaciers there is a flow, the particles of ice moving on one another, it must be the fact that uncounter- 
poised superincumbent pressure from unequal accumulation, would be a perfectly good cause of move- 
ment, and thus the horizontality of the valley would be no difficulty.” 
“ In the eastern bay at the head of the lake, near the mouth of the other river, parallel 
grooves were remarked running in the bearing 105°, which is the upward direction of the 
valley of that stream ; and about a mile westward of the Blanche, in the same bay, in the 
bearing 130°, partaking of the valley, bounded by the escarpment of limestone, described as 
running into the interior. The discrepancy between the bearings, and those lower down is 
considerable, but being in the general direction of the valleys joining the main one, the 
grooves may be the result of tributary glaciers. Accumulations of boulders, gravel, and 
sand obstruct the river and occasion rapids, which probably owe their origin to the 
same causes as those which produced the gravel hill at Fort Temiscaming.” 
It may be observed that the drift of the arguments advanced above is intended to 
suggest the probability or possibility of Newfoundland, together with a great area of the 
neighbouring continent, having been depressed rather than elevated, during the period of 
the accumulation of boulder-drift; but that the process of elevation was proceeding simul- 
taneously, and has continued to proceed, more or less, and at intervals, until the present time. 
This obviously implies the existence of glacial currents, one great stream or branch of which, 
flowed down the Gulf of St. Lawrence. But as the mass of ice which composed that glacier, 
must have been of vast thickness, and probably reached the bottom all along its course, 
whatever motion it may have acquired must have been due to its own inherent pro- 
perties, as inferred in describing the ice flow from Lake Temiscaming, and not to the slope 
of the ground over which it was passing. In short, it represented the flow of an oceanic 
current in a frozen condition. Supposing such a current to have existed, we can conceive 
that when the great mass of ice was impeded by any means in its course, particularly by 
irregularities such as bold and intractable rocks like those which constitute the islands 
of the Bay of Islands, a vast thickness would be piled up over the place of obstruction, 
which would constantly receive accessions of snow and ice, raising the accumulation higher 
and higher above the general surface which, by pressure from behind (westerly) and its 
Sec. IV., 1882, 10 
