144 A summer's cruise to northern LABRADOR. 



harbor and lakes, blocks of all sizes, angular or weather- 

 worn, fall down, disrupted by the frost. No boulders, 

 i.e. travelled rocks, were to be seen. The masses of 

 labradorite are translucent and opalescent, but still not 

 of the precious variety, of which, however, I afterward 

 purchased fine specimens from the Moravian missionaries 

 at Hopedale. No drift or glacial scratches were to be 

 seen about here, and none had yet been observed on the 

 coast, though they were of course always in my thoughts, 

 and I was disappointed at not finding any, attributing 

 their absence to the rapid weathering of the rocks on 

 this coast. 



The deep broad bay at whose northern entrance 

 Square Island is situated must have been filled with 

 glacial ice, as the skiers or low islets of gneiss dotting its 

 surface had evidently been ground down and moulded 

 into their present forms by land ice. 



The rock terraces observable here were interesting ; 

 they were ten or twenty feet high, with the vegetation 

 growing at the foot of the little vertical precipices. On 

 their upper third the hills about our harbor were bare, 

 where in similar situations in the Strait of Belle Isle the 

 rocks would be covered with a thick- and matted growth 

 of Empetrum and reindeer moss. The steep precipitous 

 sides of the hills facing the harbor plunge naked and 

 dark into the water, and from their summits we can look 

 directly down upon the decks of the vessels at anchor, 

 overlooking the " tilts" and "stages" on shore. 



In the afternoon the vicissitudes of a dredger in such 

 a harbor as this were well illustrated. I put my dredge 

 down at the depth of thirty fathoms at the mouth of a 

 " tickle," and the results were plenty of a little snail 



