124 LABRADOR 



"The mountains around Nachvak are steep, rough- 

 sided, peaked, and serrated, and have no appearance of 

 having been glaciated, excepting close to the sea-level. 

 The rocks are softened, eroded, and deeply decayed. . . . 

 Throughout the drift period, the top of the coast-range of 

 the Labrador stood above the ice and was not glaciated, 

 especially in the high northern part." An exploration more 

 prolonged than any permitted to either of the two geologists 

 mentioned was carried on by the writer in 1900, and his 

 observations entirely corroborate their conclusion. 



In the northern Torngat Mountains, all signs of general 

 glaciation cease at the level of about 2000 feet above the 

 sea. Above that level, the ledges are thoroughly shattered 

 into angular fragments by the frost, and weathered to a 

 deep brown colour strikingly different from the gray tints 

 of the rounded ledges and boulders which have been 

 scoured by the ice lower down the slope. The decompo- 

 sition of the rock is doubtless something like that which 

 affected all the ledges of the Labrador in pre-Glacial 

 time. The 2000-foot contour also marks the upper limit 

 at which " erratic" boulders, namely, those which have 

 been surely carried from their parent ledges by ice, can 

 be found. 



Thus in the Nachvak region the ice-sheet at its maximum 

 during the Glacial Period was not more than one-third as 

 thick as in southeastern Labrador, and rilled these northern 

 valleys to a height of about 2000 feet above the present 

 level of the sea, but no higher. The ice of the local Nachvak 

 Glacier was in largest part derived from the main interior 

 ice-cap which flowed through a deep transverse cleft in 

 the Torngat Range. Branch glaciers growing in the moun- 



