“Upon this coast, which during the summer of 1864 was lined with a belt of floe-ice and bergs probably two hundred miles broad, and which extended from the Gulf of St. Lawrence at Belles Amours to the arctic seas, this immense body of floating ice seemed _directly_ to produce but little alteration in its physical features. If we were to ascribe the grooving and polishing of rocks to the action of floating ice-floes and bergs, how is it that the present shores far above (500), and at least 250 feet below, the water-line are often jagged and angular, though constantly stopping the course of masses of ice impelled four to six miles an hour by the joint action of tides, currents, and winds? No boulders, or gravel, or mud were seen upon any of the bergs or masses of shore-ice. They had dropped all burdens of this nature nearer their points of detachment in the high arctic regions.” ... “This huge area of floating ice, embracing so many thousands of square miles, was of greater extent, and remained longer upon the coast, in 1864, than for forty years previous. It was not only pressed upon the coast by the normal action of the Labrador and Greenland currents, which, in consequence of the rotatory motion of the earth, tended to force the ice in a south-westerly direction, but the presence of the ice caused the constant passage of cooler currents of air from the sea over the ice upon the heated land, giving rise during the present season to a constant succession of north-easterly winds from March until early in August, which further served to crowd the ice into every harbour and recess upon the coast. It was the universal complaint of the inhabitants that the easterly winds were more prevalent, and the ice ‘held’ later in the harbours this year than for many seasons previous. Thus the fisheries were nearly a failure, and vegetation greatly retarded in its development. But so far as polishing and striating the rocks, depositing drift material, and thus modifying the contour of the surface of the present coast, this modern mass of bergs and floating ice effected comparatively little. Single icebergs, when small enough, entered the harbours, and there stranding, soon pounded to pieces upon the rocks, melted, and disappeared. From Cape Harrison, in lat. 55°, to Caribo Island, was an interrupted line of bergs stranded in 80 to 100 or more fathoms, often miles apart, while others passed to the seaward down by the eastern coast of Newfoundland, or through the Straits of Belle Isle.”[151]