File:Labrador, the country and the people (1909) (14778454971).jpg

Identifier: labradorcountryp02gren (find matches)
Title: Labrador, the country and the people
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Grenfell, Wilfred Thomason, Sir, 1865-1940
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York, The Macmillan co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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troughs that open seaward. The ponderousflood of ice was replaced by the restless sea, flooding aperfect labyrinth of channels, straits, broad sounds, islands,skerries, and headlands. There is evidence, too, to show that the solid, fresh rockitself was attacked by the overriding ice. All rock isintersected by more or less abundant cracks or planes ofweakness which divide it into blocks that may be riftedaway. Just as the quarryman uses these rifting planes toremove slabs of marble, granite, or schist, so the Labradorglacier with the wedge of the frost, with bottom frictionand shear, plucked out and carried off great blocks fromits firm, unweathered floor. The photograph of the ice-worn surface near Aillik Bay illustrates a singleexample of this process which had an important sharein the glacial remodelling of the topography. In theview, the smooth slope on the left represents theheavily scoured bed of the ice-sheet as it moved sea-ward from right to left. The pond fills a small rock-
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I GEOLOGY AND SCENERY OF NORTHEAST COAST 121 basin produced by the glacial plucking away of manyblocks of the fresh rock (gneiss) frozen into the ice, and solifted and freighted off by the moving glacier. In the faceof the low cliff can be discerned the planes of rifting andthe outlines of several blocks that were in the very act ofbeing plucked away as the ice disappeared from the country.It is an instructive case of natural quarrying. Ten thou-sand other examples on the coast would show quite asclearly that a glacier works with crowbar and crane aswell as with gouge and chisel. Using all its powers, theice-cap strongly modified the details of relief on the plateauof southern Labrador. In so reaching a principal conclusion from the glacialstudies, let it not be forgotten that normal stream-cuttingin pre-Glacial times produced the grand features of thesculpture. The energy of glacial attack is manifested not alone in theremodelling of plateau and valley; its power leaves enduringrecor

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