GRAND FALLS. 49 



volume. The river is much higher at times and the fall must 

 be even grander, for while the party was there the ground 

 quaked with the shock of the descending stream, and the river 

 was nearly at its lowest point. At the bottom is a large pool 

 made by the change of direction of the river from south at and 

 above the falls to nearly east below. The canon begins at the 

 pool and extends as has been described, with many turns and 

 windings, for twenty-five miles through archaic rock. Above 

 the falls in the wide rapids, the bed was of the same rock, which 

 seems to underlie the whole plateau. In 1839, the falls were first 

 seen by a white man, John McLean, an officer of the Hudson 

 Bay Co., while on an exploring expedition in that "great and 

 terrible wilderness" known as Labrador. His description is very 

 general, but he was greatly impressed with the stupendous 

 height of the falls, and terms it one of the grandest spectacles 

 of the world. Twenty years later, one Kennedy, also an em- 

 ploye of the Hudson Bay Co., persuaded an Iroquois Indian, 

 who did not share the superstitious dread of them common 

 among the Labrador Indians, to guide him to the thundering 

 fall and misty chasm. He left no account of his visit, however, 

 and in fact, though one other man reached them, and Mr. 

 Holmes, an Englishman, made the attempt and failed, no full 

 account of the falls has been given to the world, until Cary 

 and Cole made their report. Above the falls as far as could be 

 seen, all was white water, indicating a fall of about one hundred 

 feet per mile. In the course of twenty-five or thirty miles there 

 is a descent of twelve hundred feet, nearly equal to the altitude 

 of the "Height of Land," as the interior plateau of Labrador 

 is called, which has probably been previously overestimated. 

 The next forenoon was spent in surveying and making what 

 measurements could be made in the absence of the instruments 

 lost in the upset. At noon, after having spent just twenty- 

 four hours at Grand Falls, the party turned back. The very fact 

 of having succeeded, made distance shorter and fatigue more 

 easily borne, so they travelled along at a rattling pace, survey- 

 ing at times and little thinking of the disaster that had befallen 

 them. Camp was made on the river bank, beneath one of the 

 terraces which lined both sides. 



