GEOLOGY AND SCENERY OF NORTHEAST COAST 111 
tion more helpful in giving one an accurate and significant 
idea of the landscape can be applied. From the deck of 
schooner or steamer coursing several miles offshore, the 
hundred visible hills of the coast-belt are seen to accord so 
closely in elevation that the general sky-line is notably flat. 
The flatness would scarcely be more pronounced if some 
miraculous shovel were to fill in the valleys. Such magic 
filling would give a land-surface quite similar to that which 
explorers have found sweeping westward over the wide 
interior of Labrador and beyond to Lake Winnipeg. It is 
the last ‘almost-plain”’ to which the Archean mountain- 
system has been reduced by the wasting of the ages. Since 
the plain was formed, it has been bodily elevated some hun- 
dreds of feet, and especially on its edges, as on this southern 
half of the Labrador, new valleys have been etched out by 
weather and running water. So numerous are these valleys 
that the relief along the coast is wonderfully diversified, 
but it belongs none the less to an old-mountain plateau 
cut in intaglio. 
Before we take the next step in declaring the develop- 
ment of scenery on the Labrador, it is well to review the 
ground over which we have come. The limited explora- 
tion of the Labrador has led to the recognition of several 
distinct units in its topography, all to be related directly 
or indirectly to an ancient mountain-system represented 
to-day in the much-worn Basement Complex. The south- 
ern half of the coast represents a part of the greatest single 
element in the relief of British North America — the 
Archean plateau. The Torngat Range of the extreme 
north forms the ‘‘ Alps”’ of eastern America, — true moun- 
tains, as shown not only in the folded and crumpled struc- 
