T2 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



passes through the Cabot Straits between Cape Ray in Newfoundland 

 and St. Paul's Island off Cape North of Nova Scotia. Continuing 

 onward far out to sea for other 200 miles it divides the banks off the 

 Cape Breton shores from those oiï the south coast of Newfoundland and 

 until it reaches the deep water of the Atlantic. 



How far up the St. Lawrence the depression extended is not known 

 for the upper reaches are silted up with Pleistocene deposits but it evi- 

 dently at one time drained the gorge of the Saguenay which soundings 

 even now show to be 800 feet below the surface of the river. The mag- 

 nitude of the stream must have been immense. In Cabot straits it 

 has a width of 60 miles and a depth where narrowest of 1600 feet, and 

 on issuing from between the Capes it expanded and against the New- 

 foundland shore cast up as by an eddy a bank or lisan of many miles 

 in length. 



In the embajmient formed by the sharp turn which the edge of the 

 continental shelf here takes between Cape Breton and Newfoundland the 

 deeper bed of the valley contracted its width, and had at its exit into 

 the abyss on the sides and directly in front shoals and bars which are 

 fairly comparable with the lateral bars and the delta features of a 

 flowing stream at its confluence with the sea. Can it be doubted that 

 a depression so strongly defined and possessed of such suggestive features 

 was once, as it has long been thought to have been, the bed of a 

 great river that flowed along this course to the ocean and at a time 

 when this part of the continent stood sufficiently elevated to enable the 

 pebbles and silt of a flowing stream to erode the rocks in its bed. To 

 effect this it may be taken as proven that the general level of the 

 country must have then been not merely the 500 feet higher, as the map 

 assumes, but probably was not less than 2000 feet or even 2500 feet 

 greater than it is at present. It may even be questioned whether this 

 latter elevation is suftioient to account for some of the condlitions ex- 

 hibited by the ancient river. When a stream enters the sea its current 

 spreads out, its force is lost and it ceases to be erosive, its sediments in 

 suspension are deposited about its embouchure in fliatsi and bars and as 

 a delta. Fluviatile action is conclusive proof that the surface display- 

 ing it was at the time of activity above sea level. Wliere the 80 fm. line 

 adopted on the map turns from the sea front intoi the river soundings 

 show the ancient river bed at a depth of 2010 feet, but also seaward of 

 the deposits about this neighbourhood, a greater bank lying at a still 

 greater depth, even at 1500 fm. for a distance of 40 miles 'dn the direc- 

 tion of an embayment still more profound. However, soundings in 

 much of this region- have been comparatively few and so far apart that 



