98 THE DAWN OF LIFE 



mained uncovered with newer sediments, or have had such as 

 were deposited on them washed away ; and being of a hard 

 and resisting nature, they have remained comparatively unworn 

 when rocks much more modern have been swept off by denud- 

 ing agencies. 1 



But the exposure of the old Laurentian skeleton of mother 

 earth is not confined to the Laurentide Hills, though these 

 have given the formation its name. The same ancient rocks 

 appear in the Adirondack mountains of New York, and in 

 the patches which at lower levels protrude from beneath the 

 newer formations along the American coast from Newfoundland 

 to Maryland. The older gneisses of Norway, Sweden, and 

 the Hebrides, of Bavaria and Bohemia, of Egypt, Abyssinia 

 and Arabia, belong to the same age, and it is not unlikely that 

 similar rocks in many other parts of the old continent will be 

 found to be of as great antiquity. In no part of the world, 

 however, are the Laurentian rocks more extensively distributed 

 or better known than in Canada ; and to this as the grandest 

 and most instructive development of them we may more 

 especially devote our attention. 



The Laurentian rocks, associated with another series only a 

 little younger, the Huronian, form a great belt of broken and 

 hilly country, extending from Labrador across the north of 

 Canada to Lake Superior, and thence bending northward to 

 the Arctic Sea. Everywhere on the lower St. Lawrence they 

 appear as ranges of billowy rounded ridges on the north side 

 of the river, and as viewed from the water or the southern 

 shore, especially when sunset deepens their tints to blue and 

 violet, they present a grand and massive appearance, which, in 

 the eye of the geologist, who knows that they have endured 

 the battles and the storms of time longer than any other moun- 



1 This implies the permanence of continents in their main features, a 

 doctrine the writer has maintained for thirty years, and which is discussed 

 elsewhere. 



