XLVIII THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



An area of about thirty square miles of Tabletop rises above 

 3,000 feet and once the rim is scaled there are no difficulties in ex- 

 ploring the hills and valleys except those caused by thickets of spruce 

 in sheltered spots and swamps and lakes in more open places. A 

 dozen or more lakes and ponds may be seen from any of the mountain 

 tops, and doubtless there are far more of them in this little area than 

 in all the rest of Gaspé. Those toward the northwest drain into Ste. 

 Anne river and are without fish ; those toward the southeast are 

 tributary to Madeleine river and are inhabited by speckled trout, 

 giving a ready way of determining the watershed. 



The geological map shows the name of Richardson peak, 3,700 

 feet, near the southwest corner of Tabletop. My determination of 

 the height is 4,090 feet. No other mountain of the group has received 

 a name. The highest point, reaching 4,350 feet, is near the eastern 

 side, and may be called the Botanists' Dome, since it is near the 

 main camp of the American botanists. A cairn, probably erected by 

 them, marks the summit, from which one looks down upon Gaspé. 

 Just to the east of the dome there is a drop of more than 2,000 feet 

 to wooded valleys leading off to the sea. In clear weather one should' 

 see Anticosti and the Laurentides across the St. Lawrence; but haze 

 robbed us of that vision. Toward the west rises Mt. Albert and then 

 point after point of the Logan range, each bluer and fainter than the 

 last one. 



The Logan Range 



The first high mountains known to have been climbed in the 

 Shickshocks are thirty miles west of Tabletop, near the head waters 

 of Chat river. The highest was determined by Logan himself, as 

 reaching 3,768 feet. On the Geological Survey map it is called Mt. 

 Logan, but it may be better to reserve that honoured name for the 

 highest point in Canada, the Mt. Logan of the Yukon territory, 

 19,850 feet high. 



The next mountain to the west, probably Logan's Mt. Mat- 

 tawees, is a little lower, and is sometimes called by hunters "Le 

 Couvert de Chaudron," from its flat, dome-shaped summit. The 

 third mountain is Bayfield (3,471 feet), separated from the others by 

 the deepest canyon in the Shickshocks, where Chat river has carved 

 its valley down to 400 feet above the sea, so that there is a chasm of 

 3,000 feet between the mountains toward the east and those to the 

 west. All of these mountains consist of Archaean schists, so that their 

 surface differs greatly from the granite domes of Tabletop. The 



