Dr. R. Bell visited the north shores of Hudson strait in 1884 and 1885, and again in 1897, when he made a close examination of the coast from the neighbourhood of Big island to Chorkbak inlet near Gordon bay. Dr. Bell describes the prevailing rocks of the southern shore of Baffin island as consisting of well stratified hornblende and mica-gneiss, mostly gray in colour, but sometimes reddish, interstratified with great bands of crystalline limestones, parallel to one another and conformable to the strike of the gneiss, which in a general way may be said to be parallel to the coast in the above distance. The direction, however, varies somewhat in different sections of the coast.
‘The distinguishing feature in the geology of the southern part of Baffin land is the great abundance, thickness and regularity of the limestones associated with the gneisses. At least ten immense beds, as shown on the accompanying map, were recognized, and it is probable that the two others, discovered in North bay, are distinct from any of these. There would, therefore, appear to be twelve principal bands as far as known, to say nothing of numerous minor ones, between Icy cape and Chorkbak inlet. The limestones are for the most part nearly white, coarsely crystalline, and mixed with whitish feldspar.————The limestones usually contain scattered grains of graphite, and among the other minerals which commonly occur in the various bands are mica, garnet, magnetite, pyrite and hornblende.’
‘Although white is the prevailing colour of these limestones, this, in some localities, is replaced by light-gray and occasionally by mottled varieties.’
‘The limestone bands have not suffered greater denudation than the gneisses, and they form hill and dale alternately with the latter.————Owing to the scantiness of vegetation in Baffin land, the white colour of the limestones on the sides and tops of the hills and ridges renders them very conspicuous in the landscape. Seen from a hill-top at a distance of fifteen or twenty miles, they might be taken for glaciers.’
‘As to the total thickness of the twelve bands of crystalline limestone which have been mentioned as occurring in this part of Baffin land, the available data on the subject are not sufficient to form a correct estimate, but on adding together their probable approximate widths it seems to be no exaggeration to place their possible total volume, great as it may appear, at about 30,000 feet, or on an average of 2,500 feet for each of the principal bands, taking no account at all of the smaller ones.’
From his observations made along the coast to the eastward of Big island in 1885, and from the finding of crystalline limestone fragments by Hall in Frobisher bay, Dr. Bell concludes that the crystalline limestones extend eastward to Resolution island, giving a very extensive development of the Grenville series of the Laurentian in the southern part of Baffin island.
At present we know that the limestones of the typical Grenville series are only the highly crystalline equivalents of some of the Huronian limestones. This probably is the case in Baffin island, where these rocks with some of the accompanying gneisses represent a highly metamorphic phase of portions of the Huronian, while other of the gneisses are the foliated state of the granite masses which caused the alteration of the limestones. This would correlate the rocks on the north side of Hudson strait with the altered Huronian rocks of northern Labrador, where in places similar crystalline limestones occur.
Cape Haven Harbour.
The Huronian rocks of Labrador are marked by the number of repetitions of the strata caused by thrust faults in all the areas examined, and this repetition of measures by similar faults may account for the number of bands of limestone found in the southern part of Baffin island.