FORTEAU BAY. 209 



not keep up to the sled in spite of double drags, or huge rings of 

 thick rope, thrown over the runners, fall between them and the 

 snow and form a powerful resistance to the forward motion of the 

 sled, — yet we reached the bottom in safety. 



As this is another of the important indentations of the coast, it 

 may be well to give simply an outline of the principal points of inter- 

 est connected with it. If then we measure the distance between Point 

 Forteau on the western and L'Anse Amour on the eastern extremity 

 of the bay, we shall find a straight line between these two places to 

 run in a northeast by easterly direction for a distance of nearly four 

 miles. The outline of the bay itself is triangular ; the apex from 

 the centre of the mouth of the bay lies inland in an almost ex- 

 act northwesterly direction. The western side of the bay is nearly 

 straight, while the eastern represents the figure 5 with the dash at 

 the top off, and the curve at the bottom of the bulge not quite 

 reaching a point exactly below the straight line above as it neces- 

 sarily does in a well made figure of that character. Of course 

 there are many little irregularities of coast-line, but the general 

 form is quite as I have described it. At the extremity of Amour 

 Point stands Amour lighthouse, the other of the two lights on 

 the coast, and which will soon be described. Strange as it may 

 be, Forteau Bay basin shows still another of those plainly marked, 

 former extensions of the sea to some inland point ; and, as this 

 peculiar sandstone formation ends at the beginning of the bulge, 

 on the eastern side, the whole forms an even plateau from Blanc 

 Sablon to this point. A formation of more or less stratified lime- 

 stone then begins, whose eastern terminus I have not yet ascertained, 

 though it is said to extend under the sea and appear again like 

 the sandstone at L'Anse Claire, on the opposite Newfoundland shore. 

 The whole thus presents an interesting field for future investigators, 

 as it forms an additional link in the chain of points of interest, 

 whose combination forms a culmination of great geological import- 

 ance in reading the former history of the region. It was quite 

 fortunate that at about five o'clock in the evening we were so 

 near our journey's end, for it would have been an easy matter 

 14 



