CHAPTER VIII. 



A summer's cruise to northern LABRADOR. 



in. FROM CAPE ST. MICHAEL TO HOPEDALE. 



Cape St. Michael rises from the sea in the boldest, 

 most vertical cliffs we had yet seen ; they are perhaps 

 from two to three hundred feet high and pierced by 

 five caves, one very large and deep, and another oven- 

 like. In one of the bights indenting this promontory 

 there are four irregular but well-marked rock-terraces in 

 the gneiss cliffs. On a following headland the syenite 

 is seen to be interstratified with much-distorted gneiss 

 strata, and penetrated by a deep fissure with remarkably 

 fresh and angular sides. At the head of the bight is 

 quite a forest of spruce. We are now off St. Michael's 

 Bay, at the mouth of which is Square Island, with Sugar 

 Loaf Island just beyond, and now the contours of the 

 land-surface again begin to be rough and broken. 



We run in here to make a harbor, and as we enter it 

 a pleasant breeze blows off shore ; it is refreshing in its 

 warmth and in the balsamic flavor of the spruce and 

 firs of the interior. We are now in a completely land- 

 locked little box of a harbor in Square Island, the three 

 "tickles" or narrow passages leading into it not in sight 

 from where we were to lie moored. 



While our vessel, which had come in by the wrong 

 tickle, was, by a process of towing, and at times by 

 taking advantage of slight puffs of mind, slowly work- 



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