AND TRANSPORTING AGENT PREST. 335 



subsidence and elevation, the annual stream of Arctic ice has 

 washed and scoured until every vestige of lighter material has- 

 been slowly but surely swept into the ocean. 



Elevation of Land. 



A condition that has influenced, somewhat, ice erosion ia 

 Labrador, is the elevation now in progress in that region. The 

 resulting raised beaches and escarpments on the Straits of Belle 

 Isle and elsewhere, are the most marked of the minor features 

 of that coast. These evidences of former subsidence extend from 

 the valley of the St. Lawrence around the whole coast of 

 Labrador and Arctic America. The subsidence reached its 

 greatest development in the St. Lawrence Valley and on the 

 shores of Hudson Bay, where ancient shore lines are seen at 

 heights of 600 to 875 feet The highest of the shore lines of 

 south-eastern Labrador are between 150 arid 180 feet above the 

 sea level. They are four to seven in number, of which the 

 second is the most prominent and shows the longest period of 

 rest for the elevating agencies. Then follows the third, while 

 the fourth and fifth are barely traceable in some places. These 

 escarpments do not mark the full number of pauses in elevation 

 on the Labrador coast, but only the principal ones. Mr. Low, of 

 the Canadian Geological Survey staff, noticed 14 small terraces 

 within a few yards at the mouth of the Northwest River, 

 Hamilton Inlet. This process is also shared in by the west 

 coast of Newfoundland, the evidence of which can be seen 

 almost to Cape Ray. On this coast, however, there appears to 

 be a pivot or centre of oscillation, as the south coast of New- 

 foundland is sharing in the subsidence now general from Prince 

 Edward Island to New Jersey. 



The rise in Labrador does not seem to have been gradual, but 

 to have proceeded in a series of pulsations which, apparently, are 

 still going on. In fact the recent rise of " Mad Moll," a ledge of 

 Sandwich Bay, seems to indicate the present as another period 

 of elevation. The oldest inhabitants claim to remember when 

 this ledge was visible only at low water. Now it is seldom 



