350 THE GREAT ICE AGE 



ice and boulders up the river from the north-east, the latter 

 show evident signs of the movement of locial glaciers down 

 the valleys of the Laurentide hills to the south, and on the 

 continuation of the Appalachians south of the river similar 

 evidence of the movement of land ice to the north. Thus 

 we have evidence of the combined action of local glaciers and 

 floating ice. To add to all this, we can find on the flat tops 

 of the hard sandstone boulders on the beach the scratches 

 made by the ice of last winter, often in the same north-easterly 

 direction with those of the Pleistocene time. 



In addition to the ice formed in winter in the St. Lawrence 

 itself, the snow- clad hills of Greenland send down to the sea 

 great glaciers, which in the bays and fiords of that inhospitable 

 region form at their extremities huge cliffs of everlasting ice, 

 and annually "calve," as the seamen say, or give off a great 

 progeny of ice isla'nds, which, slowly drifted to the southward 

 by the arctic current, pass along the American coast, diffusing 

 a cold and bleak atmosphere, until they melt in the warm 

 waters of the Gulf Stream. Many of these bergs enter the 

 Straits of Belle-Isle, for the Arctic current clings closely to 

 the coast, and a part of it seems to be deflected into the 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence through this passage, carrying with it 

 many large bergs. The voyager passing through this strait 

 in clear weather may see numbers of these ice islands glisten- 

 ing in snowy whiteness, or showing deep green cliffs and 

 pinnacles sometimes with layers of earthy matter and stones, 

 or dotted with numerous sea birds, which rest upon them 

 when gorged with the food afforded by shoals of fish and 

 others marine animals which haunt these cold seas. In early 

 summer the bergs are massive in form, often with flat tops, 

 but as the summer advances they become eroded by the sun 

 and warm winds, till they present the most grotesque forms 

 of rude towers and spires rising from broad foundations little 

 elevated above the water. 



