128 Report of the Broivn-Harvard Expedition. 



still greater. Gorges, chasms, sea caves, water courses, form 

 other elements in the total make-up, and all the elements 

 take on constantly differing groupings and variations. 



Except for the sometimes precipitous sea walls, the hill 

 slopes, more inland, are almost always gradual, though 

 broken, scarred and seamed, affording a footing for an abun- 

 dant low vegetation. The sky line is never jagged, angular, 

 and steep. From the summits one looks inland over a 

 country made up of elements similar to those on the shore, 

 except that the steeper cHffs are absent.* Wide valleys 

 stretch out, sometimes of considerable extent, their bottoms 

 covered over thickly with soft, varicolored moss and other 

 growths. Out of them rise low hills, their sides pitted and 

 knobbed with projecting rock and plant-covered hollow. 

 Often every little depression is filled with pools of reddish 

 boggy water; small lakes and swampy bottoms fill in large 

 portions of the valleys ; and occasional ice-cold rills trickle 

 or foam among the hills. Toward the north, owing probably 

 to some difference in the perviousness of the soil, these pools 

 become less numerous. The views from the hilltops are 

 enchanting, embracing always a picturesque combination of 

 the peaceful inland rolling country, the feeding-ground of the 

 caribou ; of distant mountain tops, row behind row, with 

 snowy patches on their sides; of bays and harbors, capes and 



* Compare the following description by Daly, on page 210 of his 

 report: "From any commanding hill on island or mainland, the eye 

 ranges far and wide over a surface showing everywhere the evidence of 

 universal and profound glaciation. Unobscured by forest, soil, or thick 

 drift, and singularly expanded because of the crystalline clearness of the 

 atmosphere, the view typifies that which may be had in the Laurentian 

 Highlands of Canada, or in the Archaean of the Scottish Highlands. It 

 is a great wilderness of innumerable rounded, ice-worn hummocks, gen- 

 erally gneissic in composition." 



