Boulders, chiefly of granite, stranded by ice on the coast of Labrador, between lat. 50° and 60° N. (Lieut. Bowen, R. N.)
The accompanying drawing ([fig. 19]), for which I am indebted to Lieut. Bowen, R. N., represents the ordinary appearance of the Labrador coast, between the latitudes of 50° and 60° N. Countless blocks, chiefly granitic, and of various sizes, are seen lying between high and low-water mark. Capt. Bayfield saw similar masses carried by ice through the Straits of Belle Isle, between Newfoundland and the American continent, which he conceives may have travelled in the course of years from Baffin's Bay, a distance which may be compared in our hemisphere to the drifting of erratics from Lapland and Iceland as far south as Germany, France, and England.
It may be asked in what manner have these blocks been originally detached? We may answer that some have fallen from precipitous cliffs, others have been lifted up from the bottom of the sea, adhering by their tops to the ice, while others have been brought down by rivers and glaciers.
The erratics of North America are sometimes angular, but most of them have been rounded either by friction or decomposition. The granite of Canada, as before remarked (p. 221 ), has a tendency to concentric exfoliation, and scales off in spheroidal coats when exposed to the spray of the sea during severe frosts. The range of the thermometer in that country usually exceeds, in the course of the year, 100°, and sometimes 120° F.; and, to prevent the granite used in the buildings of Quebec from peeling off in winter, it is necessary to oil and paint the squared stones.
In parts of the Baltic, such as the Gulf of Bothnia, where the quantity of salt in the water amounts in general to one fourth only of that in the ocean, the entire surface freezes over in winter to the depth of 5 or 6 feet. Stones are thus frozen in, and afterwards lifted up about 3 feet perpendicularly on the melting of the snow in summer, and then carried by floating ice-islands to great distances. Professor Von Baer states, in a communication on this subject to the Academy of St. Petersburg, that a block of granite, weighing a million of pounds, was carried by ice during the winter of 1837-8 from Finland to the island of Hockland, and two other huge blocks were transported about the years 1806 and 1814 by packed ice on the south coast of Finland, according to the testimony of the pilots and inhabitants, one block having travelled about a quarter of a mile, and lying about 18 feet above the level of the sea.[302]
More recently Dr. Forchhammer has shown that in the Sound, the Great Belt, and other places near the entrance of the Baltic, ground-ice forms plentifully at the bottom and then rises to the surface, charged with sand and gravel, stones and sea-weed. Sheets of ice, also, with included boulders, are driven up on the coast during storms, and "packed" to a height of 50 feet. To the motion of such masses, but still more to that of the ground-ice, the Danish professor attributes the striation of rocky surfaces, forming the shores and bed of the sea, and he relates a striking fact to prove that large quantities of rocky fragments are annually carried by ice out of the Baltic. "In the year 1807," he says, "at the time of the bombardment of the Danish fleet, an English sloop-of-war, riding at anchor in the roads at Copenhagen, blew up. In 1844, or thirty-seven years afterwards, one of our divers, known to be a trustworthy man, went down to save whatever might yet remain in the shipwrecked vessel. He found the space between decks entire, but covered with blocks from 6 to 8 cubic feet in size, and some of them heaped one upon the other. He also affirmed, that all the sunk ships which he had visited in the Sound, were in like manner strewed over with blocks."
Dr. Forchhammer also informs us, that during an intense frost in February, 1844, the Sound was suddenly frozen over, and sheets of ice, driven by a storm, were heaped up at the bottom of the Bay of Täarbeijk, threatening to destroy a fishing-village on the shore. The whole was soon frozen together into one mass, and forced up on the beach, forming a mound more than 16 feet high, which threw down the walls of several buildings. "When I visited the spot next day, I saw ridges of ice, sand, and pebbles, not only on the shore, but extending far out into the bottom of the sea, showing how greatly its bed had been changed, and how easily, where it is composed of rock, it may be furrowed and streaked by stones firmly fixed in the moving ice."[303]