58 BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



remembrance of those places in Ireland, near which his boyhood had 

 been passed. The accompanying map is based partly on Mahood's 

 original plan, partly upon others, with many corrections based on 

 angles taken by compass by myself. Though still far from accurate, 

 it is yet much nearer the truth than any other of that region known 

 to me. The depths were measured by me. 



The Mahood Lakes lie in an undulating country, near the summit 

 of a minor watershed, from 550 to 600 feet above sea level. They 

 drain eastward through the Lepreau, but interlocking with them are 

 streams which now north, west, and south. The country is built of 

 granite, heavily glaciated, and across it run trains of immense, and 

 often angular, boulders. It is to these trains of boulders that the 

 lakes owe their very existence, for in all cases the outlet is over a dam 

 of this kind, a dam so hard to erode and so impossible to remove that 

 the waters have not been able to cut their way through it. The lakes 

 are all shallow, even the deepest part of Long Lake not exceeding 

 sixty feet. We have here all of the conditions and characteristics of 

 a land of bad drainage. Mr. Chalmers, simply from an inspection of 

 the maps, has described this region with perfect exactness, and I cannot 

 do better than to quote his words, especially since they contain the 

 only printed scientific reference to these lakes : 



" The great number of small lakes which dot the surface of the region 

 about the head-waters of the Musquash, Lepreau and New rivers is a somewhat 

 remarkable feature. The region here would seem to be a comparatively un- 

 drained one. The small volume of the rivers, their consequent feeble erosive 

 power, and the hardness of the I'ocks, are such that the rivers have been unable, 

 since the glacial period, to cut channels sufficiently deep to drain off these 

 lakes. These rivers and lakes are therefore in much the same condition as in 

 their early post-glacial history, and will necessarily remain so for a long time 

 owing to the slow wearing processes going on." — (Geological Survey Report, 

 1890, X, 1.").) 



The lakes may be reached by a foot-path from South Oromocto 

 Lake, or by an extremely bad wood-road from MacDougal Lake ; and 

 by the latter route we were portaged in with canoes and baggage. 

 Formerly there was a winter road from Lepreau Village to Lake 

 Victoria, but with the passing of lumbering this was abandoned. In 

 1839 a road, locally called the "Old Magaguadavic " or "Military 

 Road," was surveyed from St. George Village to the Nerepis, and 

 passed among these lakes by the route shown on the map. Its coarse is 

 shown full}' on Wilkinson's map. It was little more than a track through 

 the woods, was soon abandoned, and now not a trace of it remains. 



