GEOLOGY AND SCENERY OF NORTHEAST COAST 83 



fail to rouse a very ardour for exploration. In England, 

 France, or Germany, the peoples, the culture, cities, rail- 

 roads, institutions, must claim the traveller first, and the 

 primitive, the soil, the ground of Europe, only second. 

 In most of Labrador, Nature, supreme in her loneliness, 

 calls first, last, and always. 



Like every science, earth-science is the result of restless, 

 eternal questioning, much of it answered, infinitely more 

 unanswered. He thinks especially in questions who thinks 

 at all in Labrador geology ; it forms a mass of problems for 

 the most part unsolved. Yet some of these have such 

 importance that the mere statement of them has value, and 

 when further exploration has given the solutions, it will be 

 found that the scientific study of Labrador will have brought 

 a rich store to man's knowledge of the whole earth. Rather, 

 therefore, to erect finger-posts pointing the way to wide 

 fields of research than to indicate that much is known of 

 the Labrador coast, the pages of this chapter have been 

 written. 



So far geologists and geographers have accomplished 

 nothing more than a rapid reconnaissance of the coast. 

 That stage of exploration has a borrowed name, and in some 

 respects explorers are compelled to regard the new land as 

 an enemy to be conquered at some cost. More or less 

 " roughing it," almost always a degree of hard though repay- 

 ing toil, the bite of the sun or the bite of the polar wind 

 all form " part of the game," a kind of war-game. An expe- 

 dition to the Labrador has assuredly to meet with such 

 troubles and a few special ones besides. In early summer a 

 sailing craft must meet with the wide fields of pan-ice which 

 unite with the " Labrador" ocean-current and prevalent 



