96 BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



When the regions first settled below high tide level, the salt water 

 would creep around the sturdy beeches and pines, and while depositing 

 the food for plants yet to grow, would kill off the old and hardy race 

 of trees. Ice would break off the tops of these trees, and the water 

 bear them away, or the elements would rot the tops down, and only 

 the lower part, encased in the solid mud, would remain to tell the story 

 of the old upland valleys now under the marsh. The land nearest the 

 Basin would at first be submerged, but as the depression went on the 

 salt water would make its way further and further up the valleys. It 

 would seem from an examination of these regions that neither moss nor 

 grass made any perceptible growth until the subsidence ceased. At 

 points down the Bay there is evidence of different surface soils of the 

 marsh that were formed in the process of settlement. On Cobequid 

 Bay near Onslow several turfs are plainly seen, each separated by a foot 

 or more of deposited mud. A canal, fifteen feet deep at the mouth with 

 a grade of two feet to the mile, is now being dug up the Point do 

 Bute marsh, and in no place throughout the ihree miles already dug 

 is there any evidence of vegetable remains below the present surface. 

 . In the marsh soil vegetable remains would be very readily detected by 

 the presence of the surrounding blue mud. The same absence of blue 

 turf or peaty surfaces is seen wherever canals have been dug in the 



marsh soil. 



The marsh rivers are constantly changing their beds. After the 

 depression first occurred they may have kept their channels for some 

 time, but by the rush of mud-laden water every curve becomes greater- 

 as the stream rushes against the opposite bank one side wears oil' and 

 the other builds on. 



In the memory of men now living, marked changed have been 

 made in the position and direction of some of the rivers. Off Pros- 

 pect Farm at Point de Bute, the Aulac has, in the last two hundred 

 years moved some three hundred feet nearer to Sunken Island. This 

 change is clearly proven by the old dykes. When it is remembered 

 that the Aulac has been abandoned for sixty years, it will be seen 

 how rapidly these changes are made. 



Marsh Improvements — Nature did much to make this a fertile 

 region, but it was necessary for man to make some exertion that he 

 tnight^reap the harvest. The French, settling herein the seventeenth 

 century, dyked the rivers and raised crops on the marshes. There are 

 records of their damming up the smaller streams in the firsl half of 



