66 ALEXANDER MURRAY ON THE 
waves without, meeting the tide, now on one side and then on the other, would reassort the 
coarse material and produce the boulder beaches, with a lagoon within, as we now find 
them. 
GRAVEL MOUND IN THE VALLEY OF THE BAY EAst RIVER. 
Brazil Pond of this system of water is 575 feet above the sea. The highest hill in its 
neighborhood is 977 feet, on the summit and sides of which are boulders, some of large size, 
while the plain below is strewed with blocks of various dimensions, chiefly of granite of 
the same quality as the surrounding hills. In the valley of a brook which flows from the 
south-west and falls into the southern extreme of Brazil Pond, a very remarkable long and 
narrow ridge of gravel was observed, which runs perfectly parallel with the course of the 
brook and is very straight, situated about a third of the way between the left bank and the 
mountain. On each side of the gravel bank or mound, which is about thirty feet high, the 
land is flat, the flat next the brook being the most depressed, both thickly strewed with 
granite boulders. The top of the gravel ridge is barely wide enough for a single foot-path, 
while its sides slope each way at an angle of about 40° to the flats below. No stratification 
was observable in the gravel, the material of which was small and mostly sub-angular, the 
pebbles of granite, quartz, and in lesser quantity, of slate ; nor were any of the stones large 
enough to be styled boulders seen in the deposit. The appearance of this isolated mound 
reminds one of an artificial earthwork; but it may be accounted for as a natural pro- 
duct, by supposing that, when the brook was flowing at a higher level and covered the 
flats upon both sides, the gravel was silted up by its action, and formed and island in its 
midst, while it washed away the sand and finer material from the moraine to the deeper 
water of the lakes below, leaving the blocks of granite where they still remain.* 
It has already been remarked that the northern end of the Grand Pond is thickly strewed 
with boulders, Seal Island opposite the outlet of the river being entirely composed of them ; 
while they form a barrier across the entrance and continue along the northern bank and off 
it in the water, in immense numbers, to the outlet from the lake, which is crowded and broken 
by huge blocks all along its course to the foot of the Junction Rapids. This mass of boulders 
I conceive to be the remains of a great moraine, from which the lighter portions have been 

* While surveying the lakes of the Bay East River, my attention was attracted by some curious effects pro- 
duced by the moyement of the ice of the previous season. The shores of Long Pond are of sand and gravel, and 
boulders are abundantly strewed over the bottom of the lake. Many of these boulders had been lifted from their 
beds and shoved high up upon the shelving shore, each leaving a deep groove in its track between its final resting 
place and the water’s edge. These furrows were perfectly parallel to each other, whether the boulders were large 
or small. Some of the larger boulders might be several tons in weight, others not larger than a man’s head, but 
all were deposited at about equal distances from the edge of the water, viz: from thirty to forty yards. Lord Dun— 
raven mentions haying observed a similar phenomenon in New Brunswick, in a paper published some time ago 
in the Nineteenth Century magazine. I account for the occurrence thus: When the lake was frozen over at the 
beginning of winter, it was probably at its normal height, or possibly somewhat lower, and when the severe frosts 
set in, it became a solid mass of ice to the bottom. The freshets of spring, which invariably raise these lakes 
many feet over their normal level, would lift the icy sheet with the boulders clinging to it, which, when breaking 
up, was forced by a strong wind on to the shore where it deposited its load. The ice then gets entirely broken up, 
and finally disappears, the lake gradually settles once more to its usual state, which, when reached, has left the 
stranded blocks high and dry at the end of each furrow ploughed into the sand, to mark the agency by which 
they had been transported. 
