Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univ).pdf/356

ice action, with the exception of the highest part of the Nucleus—the mountains of the Labrador coast—which, except toward the base, are still "softened, eroded and deeply decayed."^[1] This extensive denudation served to remove all but mere remnants of any Paleozoic strata originally deposited on the Archean of this area, while the deep decay of the Archean rocks themselves would account for the immense numbers of gneiss bowlders in the drift, which in all probability are but smoothed cores of "bowlders of decomposition." That an immense amount of material was removed from the surface of the area during the glacial age is shown by the immense quantities of Archean material which occurs scattered over the surface of the Nucleus itself, as well as in the drift to the south. The glaciation, with the depression and uplift which succeeded it, was the last episode in the evolution of this "original" Laurentian area and one which impressed upon it its present surface characters and type of landscape.

It is now an immense uneven plateau, comparatively slightly accentuated except along the Labrador coast. The surface is covered with glaciated hills and bosses of rock with rounded, mammilated, flowing contours interspersed with drift covered flats and studded with thousands upon thousands of lakes great and small. A country which in the far north is often bleak and desolate, but to the south, where it is covered with luxuriant forest, is often of great beauty, especially when clothed with the brilliant foliage of autnmn. Even now, however, it is passing into a further stage of its history, the smooth or polished glaciated surfaces are becoming roughened by decay, the softer gneissic and limestone strata are again commencing to crumble into soil, and a new epoch has been inaugurated in which the marks of the ice age are being gradually effaced.