CHAPTER XI 



ANTICOSTI AND LABRADOR 



THE island of Anticosti proved to be mightily interesting to us, 

 and as we spent the summer along its shores it merits a brief 

 general description. It is about one hundred and twenty miles 

 long, with a maximum width of about forty miles ; it has nearly 

 the land area of Connecticut. The whole of the field is composed 

 of strata of the Ordovician and Silurian age, practically alto- 

 gether of rather thin-bedded limestones or limy shales, which 

 lie in less disturbed altitudes than any equally extensive de- 

 posits of that age. They have not indeed yielded perceptibly 

 to compressive strains or been otherwise disturbed by organic 

 action since they were laid down. So far as I have been able to 

 find, there are no dykes on this area, and the trifling local dis- 

 colorations or departures from horizontality can be explained 

 by slight dips in the sea-bed on which they were formed, or by 

 the solution of the strata by the action of underground waters, 

 in some instances perhaps when the sea was lower than it is at 

 present. The surface of this field is singularly regular in con- 

 tour; along the south coast it is prevailingly low, none of the 

 cliffs rising above a few feet in height and much of the front 

 being marked by recent ice installations. From this face, the 

 land rises rather gradually at the rate of five to ten feet to the 

 mile to the northward, so that on the north shore the island is 

 continuously bordered by cliffs which have a height of from two 

 to three hundred feet. 



The greater part of this surface of Anticosti is covered with 

 a dense, rather low forest of spruces and firs; we saw no trees 

 over sixty feet in height, though we did not succeed in pene- 

 trating more than three miles from the shore. Along the south 

 coast there is frequently a broad belt of swamps composed 



