OUTLETS OF THE ST. JOHN RIVER. 57 



ledges come to the surface in the intervening area, which 

 is occupied by Boulder clay and gravel ridges, Avith a 

 covering of Leda clay in the hollows. Every indication 

 points to the existence of a buried channel of the river 

 somewhere between the Asylum ridge and Robinson's 

 inn, on the St. Andrew's road. 



Four Outlets or Passages once Existed. 



The Glacial period was followed by a time of sub- 

 mergence when all the land around St. John was buried 

 beneath an icy sea. After a time these conditions were 

 reversed and the land rose again, so that the ridge dividing 

 the interior region from the Ba^^ of Fundy began to show 

 itself. The sea stood at a much higher level then than it 

 now does, and instead of the brackish-water basins within 

 the barrier at Indiantown, which now exist, there were 

 land-locked salt-water basins, sheltered like Passama- 

 quoddy 1)ay at the present day, from the ocean-swell 

 and the storms of the bay of Fundy. 



When the sea had retired so far as to leave bare the 

 tops of the hills which are now one hundred and fifty 

 feet above its present level, the existing outlet of the 

 St. John began to be defined by a wide estuary, extend- 

 ing from Logue's hill in Lancaster (600 feet high '^) to Mt. 

 Prospect (the " Cottage Hill ") in Simonds (440 feet high). 

 The inhabited part of the city was still beneath the waters 

 of the ba}' of Fundy when the opening of this estuary was 

 dotted with numerous islands, now the tops of hills, in the 

 peninsula between the harbor and the Kennebecasis, etc. 

 Beside tlie present outlet of the river there would at 

 this time have l)cen three others. The most westerly of 

 these passed out from Soutli Bay by way of the valley of 



* For the heights given in this paper I am indebted to Wm. Murdoch, C. E. 

 Engineer for the Board of Works of the city of St. John. 



