96 LABRADOR 
to be applied, the minerals of the existing rock should 
show the crushing and granulation due to the strain of 
the later mountain-building. Such has been the fate of 
great masses of this gabbro in other parts of Labrador 
and in Quebec, but, so far as known, the coast gabbros 
have escaped extensive crushing. 
The same remark applies to a quite different class of 
intrusive rocks which leap to the eye of every observer on 
the coast. Toward the close of the epoch of mountain- 
growth in the Basement Complex, perhaps at or near the 
date of the great gabbro intrusion, the base of the entire 
range from Belle Isle to Chidley was fissured and, in a 
sense, shattered. To that event there contributed the 
irregular contraction of the granites and highly heated 
schists as they cooled, and doubtless, also, a general settling 
down of the ridged-up crust after the earth’s paroxysm 
was over. Countless cracks and fissures were thus formed 
far down below the lofty, rugged surface of the range. The 
fissures were seldom, if ever, left gaping. Sosoon as formed 
and in the very act of forming, they were filled with highly 
molten basaltic rock which then froze or crystallized. 
Thus the range was strongly knitted together again. So 
firm was the new cementation of the shattered formations 
that the rocks filling the ancient fissures now form so many 
ribs strengthening the mountain-chain against the attack 
of the weather. All up and down the coast the gray sea- 
cliffs and mountain-slopes are seamed with these thousands 
of basaltic fissure-fillings, the so-called “dikes” of “trap.” 
Wonderfully fine examples occur on the north side of the 
entrance to Hamilton Inlet. From the anchorage in Ice 
Tickle one should mount any one of the higher hills on either 
