GEOLOGY AND SCENERY OF NORTHEAST COAST 85 



strenuous outdoor work. If he be interested in bed-rock 

 geology, he finds conditions comparable to those that 

 favour observation in "The Paradise of geologists/' the arid 

 or subarid plateaus of the western United States. Here as 

 there the climate forbids the growth of the heavy forest- 

 cap which covers so much of the geological record in arable 

 lands, and in Labrador the intense glaciation of the last 

 Glacial epoch has left remarkably little rock-rubbish or 

 " drift" on the surface of the well-scoured and still rela- 

 tively unweathered, fresh rock. The geologist leaves the 

 coast, therefore, well content if he has had time to make 

 anything like an extended reconnaissance of the enemy; 

 there remains as well the stimulus to hope for a future 

 campaign. 



Labrador is the land of charm, whether it be among the 

 low, moss-covered islands of the south or on the superb 

 mountains of the north. But this charm hitherto de- 

 scribed in terms of impressions derived from visits to what 

 is really southern Labrador is a hundred fold greater in the 

 region north of Cape Mugford. 



Yet throughout the whole stretch from Belle Isle to 

 Hudson Strait the scenery is to be related, sooner or later, 

 to one great group of geological formations, all rocks of 

 the remotest antiquity; and perhaps no more fitting 

 introduction to the geology and geography of the coast 

 is to be found than to describe the extensive fundamental 

 terrane. It belongs for the most part to the Archean series, 

 offering like the Archean rocks of the world, problems of 

 extreme difficulty. Able and highly trained geologists, 

 specialists in the Archean, during the past thirty years have 

 solved some of these problems, but it is still fair to call this 



