XL THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



plorer who reaches their shores often finds that these lakes and rivers 

 are incorrectly placed and wrongly shaped. 



The maps available give, at first sight, no indication of mountains 

 in Gaspé. The blank interior might be nothing but a plain. A closer 

 look shows a few names of peaks and figures indicating elevations, 

 but no one would suspect that the highest mountains in eastern 

 Canada rise as an impassable range a few miles from the northern 

 coast. North of the St. Lawrence the Laurentides are famed in song 

 and story, but one scarcely hears of the Shickshocks to the south, 

 though they rise more than a thousand feet higher than the loftiest 

 known peaks on the other side of the river. 



The maps now obtainable are almost worthless for the explorer 

 of the interior of Gaspé, but careful enquiry at Ottawa will disclose 

 the fact that a real topographical map of the peninsula was made 

 many years ago by the Geological Survey and was published in 1884. 

 It was rough and by no means complete, but it shows at least the 

 northward curve of the mountain range which makes the stifï back- 

 bone of the country, and it is of far more use in exploration than the 

 modern maps. Unfortunately the draughtsman who prepared the 

 map has misplaced one or two of the peaks, as one can see from 

 Logan's description. 



The Geological map gives names to six peaks on the main range 

 of the Shickshocks; but only one of them, Mt. Albert, is known to the 

 present inhabitants of the region, and this name has been transformed 

 into M'albert. On the other hand, a striking peak on the upper 

 waters of Chat River is called Mt. Nicolabert by the river men, 

 though this name does not appear on any map. A lower peak on the 

 opposite side of the river is called economically Le Frere de Nicolabert. 

 These three names and one other, "Couvert de Chaudron," are the 

 only ones heard during two summers field work; and usually enquiry 

 as to the names of mountains is answered merely by a scornful "Des 

 Shickshocks," since the habitant has no use for these barren ridges. 



My own interest in the range arose from a study of the Labrador 

 ice sheet, whose boundaries and thickness have never been carefully 

 determined. The Shickshock range, including the highest peaks in 

 eastern Canada, might aflford an opportunity to gauge the thickness 

 of the great ice sheet, and so was briefly examined during two sum- 

 mers' geological work in Gaspé (1918-1919). All the highest points 

 were climbed and their elevation determined, and a map was made of 

 Tabletop, from which the most important summits rise. The moun- 

 tains proved to be higher than had been supposed. 



