GEOLOGY AND SCENERY OF NORTHEAST COAST 129 



directness and with lavish proofs this ground principle of 

 geology is illustrated on the Labrador. 



The memorials of post-Glacial uplift are as diverse as 

 the kinds of shore-line form which the waves of to-day are 

 impressing on the hard rocks of the coast. Boulder beaches, 

 gravel beaches and terraces, plains and pointed spits of wave- 

 laid sand, sea-cliffs, splendid sea-caves and long chasms, 

 even the dunes of sand blown up on these prehistoric shores, 

 remain to tell us of just such activities as wind and wave dis- 

 play on the present shore, the lowest of all those which the 

 Atlantic has stormed and battered since the Glacial Period. 



Ocean waves are like rivers and glaciers in their ways of 

 working. They destroy or erode bed-rock ; they transport 

 the eroded debris; they deposit their freight of rubbish 

 where the force of wave- and wind-driven current is lowered. 

 Thus, in a sense, the gnawed and riven sea-cliffs correspond 

 to the scoured glacier-bed or washed, abraded floor of the 

 river-canyon; the beaches and spits, the bedded sand and 

 mud of the sea-bottom correspond to moraines and to the 

 deltas and alluvial plains of rivers. As the outer coastal 

 belt of the Labrador slowly, with the deliberation of mil- 

 lenniums, and urged by the mysterious, colossal, internal 

 energy of a planet, rose out of the sea, the ocean-billows 

 rolled in upon the changing shores, destroying where they 

 could, constructing where they must. The visible signs of 

 the submergence belong, therefore, to two classes of land- 

 scape forms which give a real fascination to this most recent 

 geology on the coast. 



The most widespread evidence of the destruction wrought 

 by the waves on the old shore-lines can be found at almost 

 any landing-place between St. John's and Cape Chidley. 



