APPENDIX A LV 



Certain physical features, due to the geology of the region, make 

 a longer isolation probable. The lack of harbours prevents "the 

 building of seaports where the outside world can stir up curiosity and 

 ambition. The lack of great water-powers, like those on the north 

 side of the St. Lawrence, will prevent the growth of important in- 

 dustrial centres which would be disturbing elements. The only pulp 

 mill on the north side of Gaspé is at the falls of Madeleine river, 

 seven miles from the sea, and it does not promise great expansion. 

 Unless some other, still unknown, geological factor, such as the finding 

 of a great mining region in the Shickshocks, arises, northern Gaspé 

 seems destined to remain a peaceful, contented, unenterprising back- 

 water of civilization, where a fringe of settlers cut the white birch 

 for spool wood and the spruce for some sawmill, cultivate poorly a 

 few acres of soil and catch the cod in its season, while the mountains 

 just in their rear remain a wilderness, the home of moose and caribou 

 and bear seldom molested by a sportsman. 



The rising flood of mechanical invention and of restless travel 

 and excitement bid fair to pass on either side somewhat as the lobes 

 of the great ice sheet did, leaving the Gaspé mountains as a scarcely 

 touched island between them. It will be no misfortune if Gaspé 

 should remain as a sample of what has been, as the home of an almost 

 forgotten simplicity of pioneer life once pervading the whole of 

 Canada. It may remain a restful and picturesque oasis in the arid 

 desert of mechanical progress. Perhaps it should be isolated even a 

 little more than nature has arranged for, so as to preserve one stage 

 of the evolution of modern civilization; somewhat as Roche Percé 

 and Bonaventure island have been made sanctuaries for the sea birds 

 which otherwise might soon have vanished. 



—5 



