On the Transition Rocks of the Cataraquu 239 



whilst the shore is bounded by tremendous mural precipices, hun- 

 dreds of feet in perpendicular altitude, and the country appears bro- 

 ken and disrupted into every imaginable form that the most awful 

 idea of earthquake could suggest. 



The highest mountain known in this portion of Canada, has been 

 ascertained to be three thousand seven hundred feet above the sea ;* 

 but as the country has never been much explored, it is not improba- 

 ble there are others yet higher. 



During a tour, in 1831, to the Labrador coast, Anticosti, the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence, the Bay of Chaleurs, and the Restigoucbe River, 

 undertaken by His Excellency Lord Aylmer for scientific purposes, 

 as well as for administrative information, I was much struck by the 

 volcanic appearance of the extensive regions which are opposite to 

 the island of Anticosti, on both sides of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 



The island itself is not without much geological interest, but ac- 

 cess to it is difficult, owing to the horror with which sailors look 

 upon its desolate shores, particularly since the melancholy wreck of 

 the Granicus, when from mismanagement the passengers and crew 

 were compelled to become anthropophagi, and out of a numerous 

 company but one unmutilated or undevoured corse was found, which 

 had been once the last surviving relic of a mortality unprecedented 

 in the annals of maritime adventure. 



In my visit to Anticosti, I certainly saw no very striking features 

 of igneous agency in the rocks, which were chiefly fossiliferous, ex- 

 cepting that at the south west point or provision post, at the mouth 

 of the Jupiter River, where there is a high range of coast, visible 

 at a great distance at sea, and called the White Cliffs, which have 

 an appearance, although they consist of limestone, of vertical strati- 

 fication. On landing, however, and examining them as near as they 

 could be got at, (for there is a great mass of debris at their foot, and 

 they are perfectly perpendicular,) I had reason to think that the 

 stratification was horizontal, and the vertical or pilastre appearance, 

 which is very marked and almost basaltically well defined, arose 

 from cleavage, and certainly may have been caused, although the 

 inference is not very conclusive, by the undoubted volcanic or Plu- 



* By Captain Bayfield, R. N. \ and on the opposite coast of Labrador, Mount 

 Thoresby, an island south of Kiglapyed, was found by the officers of H. M. ships 

 Medusa and Thalia to be two thousand seven hundred and thirty three, whilst 

 the Kiglapyed, the Kaumayok, and Nachwak, were much higher. 



