THE LAURENTIAN ROCKS. 283 



compared favorably with specimens from the Ural 

 Mountains. 



As the rock weathers, the greenish hornblende crystals 

 project in masses sometimes two inches in diameter. This 

 rock easily weathers, and large masses are detached by 

 frosts and readily crumble to pieces. The gneiss rests 

 on the south side of the hill. From the top of the hills 

 here can be seen huge gneiss mountains at least two 

 thousand feet high, rising in vast swells at a distance of 

 fifteen to twenty miles in the interior, while the bay is 

 filled with innumerable skiers and islets of gneiss. 



At Cape Webuc or Harrison the gneiss again appears 

 upon the coast as a lofty headland faced with steep preci- 

 pices of syenite. From off this cape are seen in the 

 interior lofty mountains, of which the central and high- 

 est peak is called Mount Misery, which in this clear 

 climate can be plainly seen in pleasant weather by fisher- 

 men at a distance of seventy-five miles in an air Ifne. 

 At Strawberry Harbor on the south side of Thomas Bay 

 are lofty syenite hills. This point is fifty-five miles 

 north of Cape Webuc. It is a small, deep hole in the 

 coast, like a "purgatory," and an amphitheatre of rock 

 rises around it in huge steps, affording a striking illustra- 

 tion of the power of the frost and waves on this exposed 

 coast. The rock is a hard, tough, flesh-colored syenite, 

 with deep vertical and horizontal fissures resulting from 

 the decomposition of thin trap dykes, thus causing huge 

 blocks of syenite to be detached and fall down. In sail- 

 ing twenty-five miles up this bay, the gneiss rises on 

 each side from the ocean into hills eight hundred to one 

 thousand feet in height. About Hopedale, which is in 

 latitude 55° 30', the rocks are gneiss. Behind the Mis- 



