8 THE I^HYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF LABRADOR. 



Mr. Lieber, the geologist of the expedition, shows it to 

 be rounded by glacial action, while lofty, " wild volcanic- 

 looking mountains form a water-shed in the interior, 

 whose craggy peaks have evidently never been ground 

 down by land-ice into domes and rounded tops." 



While the highest elevations have never been meas- 

 ured, the height of three of the lesser mountains along 

 this part of the coast appears to have been roughly as- 

 certained. Professor Bell states that the mountains on 

 either side of Nachvak Inlet, about 140 miles south of 

 Cape Chidley, "rise to heights of from 1,500103,400 

 feet, but a few miles inland, especially on the south side,, 

 they appear to attain an altitude of 5,000 to 6,000 feet, 

 which would correspond with the height of The Four 

 Peaks, near the outer coast line, about midway between 

 Nachvak and Cape Chudleigh." The mountains around 

 Nachvak, he adds, "are steep, rough-sided, peaked, and 

 serrated, and have no appearance of having been glaci- 

 ated, excepting close to the sea-level." These mountains 

 are formed of Laurentian gneiss, " notwithstanding their 

 extraordinary appearance, so different from the smooth,. 

 solid, and more or less rounded outlines of the hills 

 composed of these rocks in most other parts of the 

 Dominion." The height of these mountains was [evi- 

 dently roughly estimated from that of an escarpment on 

 the south side of the inlet at the Hudson Bay Company's 

 port, which "rises to a height of 3,400 feet, as ascer- 

 tained by Commander J. G. Bolton" (p. 14 DD). 



According to the British Admiralty chart and the 

 Newfoundland Pilot, Cape Chidley rises to a height 

 of 1,500 feet above the sea, and the highest point of the 

 Button Islands has an equal elevation (Bell, p. 17 DD). 



