Fig. 1. General Section, showing the Relations of the Laurentian and Palæozoic Rocks in Canada. (L.) Laurentian. (1.) Cambrian, or Primordial. (2.) Lower Silurian. (3.) Upper Silurian. (4.) Devonian and Carboniferous.
The Laurentian rocks, associated with another series only a little younger, the Huronian, form a great belt of broken and hilly country, extending from Labrador across the north of Canada to Lake Superior, and thence bending northward to the Arctic Sea. Everywhere on the lower St. Lawrence they appear as ranges of billowy rounded ridges on the north side of the river; and as viewed from the water or the southern shore, especially when sunset deepens their tints to blue and violet, they present a grand and massive appearance, which, in the eye of the geologist, who knows that they have endured the battles and the storms of time longer than any other mountains, invests them with a dignity which their mere elevation would fail to give. ([Fig. 2.]) In the isolated mass of the Adirondacks, south of the Canadian frontier, they rise to a still greater elevation, and form an imposing mountain group, almost equal in height to their somewhat more modern rivals, the White Mountains, which face them on the opposite side of Lake Champlain.
The grandeur of the old Laurentian ranges is, however, best displayed where they have been cut across by the great transverse gorge of the Saguenay, and where the magnificent precipices, known as Capes Trinity and Eternity, look down from their elevation of 1500 feet on a fiord, which at their base is more than 100 fathoms deep (see frontispiece[** insert link in PP]). The name Eternity applied to such a mass is geologically scarcely a misnomer, for it dates back to the very dawn of geological time, and is of hoar antiquity in comparison with such upstart ranges as the Andes and the Alps.
Fig. 2. Laurentian Hills opposite Kamouraska, Lower St. Lawrence.
The islands in front are Primordial.