XLVI THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



range was higher on the southern side than on the northern, and that, 

 while the softer rocks on the south were being rapidly eroded, the 

 two rivers were active enough to keep pace with the destruction, 

 eating their way down through the hard back-bone of eruptive rocks 

 and ancient schists to the north. 



The Higher Mountains 



Mt. Albert (3,660 feet), at the head of navigation on Ste. Anne 

 river, is the only high mountain easily reached and occasionally 

 climbed, the attraction being the caribou that make their home there. 

 One ascends 3,000 feet through forest, the latter part of the trail 

 being very steep, and suddenly one comes upon a snow bank at the 

 foot of a bare clifï. Scaling the very summit one is surprised to find, 

 not a peak, but a fiat plain stretching for miles to the west. Most of 

 the few square miles of tableland are a dreary waste of brownish 

 serpentine blocks; but toward the north there is a belt of swampy 

 meadow enclosing a pond and at the northern rim a higher ridge of 

 hornblende schist up whose sheltering slopes spreads a thicket of 

 spruce bushes. On the highest point of schist one may often see a 

 big caribou with branching horns silhouetted against the sky like a 

 figure in bronze, motionless, enjoying the breeze and the prospect. 

 On all sides except to the west the tableland drops off suddenly in 

 steep cliffs to valleys 1,000 feet or more below, all clothed in forest. 

 Across the deep valley of St. Anne river and eight miles away rises 

 the blue bulk of Tabletop; to the north the wooded hills sink toward 

 the gleaming sea twelve miles away, and to the south a hilly country 

 with here and there a lake fades into the distance. 



Tabletop 



The clumsy and inappropriate name of Tabletop was given by 

 the Geological Survey to the highest group of mountains in Canada 

 east of the Rockies. The name would have been suitable for Mr. 

 Albert, which is flat topped, but is quite amiss when applied to the 

 rounded summits and flaring valleys of this mass of granite, including 

 differences of level amounting to nearly a thousand feet. 



Tabletop is hard to reach and is very seldom visited, so that even 

 the people of the region know nothing of it except as a part of the 

 Shickshocks. A terrible trail through fallen timber brings one to 

 Lac aux Américains at 2,300 feet. This beautiful lake between tre- 

 mendous cliffs is on no map except my own. Its name comes from a 



