90 LABRADOR 
It would be tedious and not very profitable to the general 
reader to describe all the different types of rock found in 
the Basement Complex; yet a few principal considerations 
will serve to indicate the kind of material which goes 
to form the bed-rock of the coast, and serve, also, to 
outline the grand march of events that gave us modern 
Labrador. 
With but rare exceptions the rocks of the Basement 
Complex are allied to that most familiar rock, granite. 
Like granite they are aggregates of common minerals like 
quartz, feldspar, mica, hornblende, augite, magnetite, ete. 
These are always crystalline, though rarely does any mineral 
show crystal facets to the eye. The minerals interlock 
in the intimate way characteristic of granite. Further- 
more, these rocks bear witness to one common fact of origin 
with granite. They formed, crystallized, under the press- 
ure of overlying rock which has long since been swept away 
— eaten away by the weathering and decay of ages, eroded 
by the “tooth of Time.’ Many of the individual rock- 
masses are known to have resulted from the crystallization 
of once molten rock-material, cooled slowly as its heat was 
conducted through the heavy cover of rock above. Such is 
believed to have been the origin of all granites. Others of 
the Labrador rocks seem to have crystallized at a tempera- 
ture high enough to allow of the rearrangement of their 
ultimate particles from former quite different associations, 
yet at a temperature too low for actual fusion of the rocks. 
Such are the conditions within the heart of a mountain- 
range as it grows, its rocks crumpling together, piling up, 
fracturing, and making way before great bodies of the 
molten matter erupted from the interior of the earth; such 
