116 REPORT—1840. 
where a rise of ten or twelve feet in the level of the water would flood 
a distriet of, perhaps, forty or fifty square miles, so flat is the country. 
A most remarkable feature in this great river-valley is the distinctness 
and regularity of the alluvial terraces to be seen wherever the banks 
are not too rocky and precipitous. This holds in regard both to the 
main river and to all its tributaries. Where these latter join the main 
river they are always to be seen; and what is equally remarkable, most 
of the tributaries, as well as the principal river, have falls at or near 
their embouchure. 
The author has seen such terraces on all the other rivers of New 
Brunswick, on the salt marshes at the head of the Bay of Fundy, on 
the rivers of Nova Scotia, on the St. Lawrence, on the Ottawa, on the 
Great Lakes, upon the Hudson, the Potomac, and on all the Atlantic 
rivers of the northern and middle States,—terraces formed of loose de- 
trital matters, and evidently indicative of the levels at which the water 
formerly stood in these rivers. The author views these terraces, and 
the numerous and well-known examples of the same phenomena in the 
Old World, as affording the most palpable evidence of a recent and ge- 
neral rising of land in all the countries where they occur, or at least 
where their existence cannot be explained upon other and ascertainable 
grounds. The author then describes more minutely the circumstances 
attending the falls of the river St. John, from notes taken by the Rev. 
Mr. Coster, Rector of Carleton, who has had daily opportunity of exa- 
mining the facts. 
I. i. The river St. John takes rank among the third or fourth class 
of American rivers, and among the first or second class of European 
rivers. It rises far in the interior of the province, among the high- 
lands which form the N.E. termination of the Alleghany Mountains. . 
The Chaudiere, St. Francis and Etchenine fall off on the Canadian side ; 
the Connecticut, Penobscot and Kennebec again fall off toward the 
Atlantic; while the St. John, after a course of 500 or 600 miles, and 
draining about two thirds of the whole province, falls into the Bay of 
Fundy. The flourishing city of St. John is built on a projecting mass 
of slate and limestone rocks, on the left bank, just where the river falls 
into the bay. 
For the first seventy miles it is navigable for vessels drawing any 
depth of water: after passing the shoals at the mouth of the river Oro- 
mocto, which in dry seasons become rather shallow, it again becomes 
navigable for schooners for a further distance of thirty miles; after this 
it is still navigable for two or three hundred miles for small boats and 
canoes. Ships of six hundred tons burden are sometimes built about 
Fredericton, which is eighty-three miles above St. John. Some idea 
may thus be formed of the quantity of water which the St. John river 
contains. 
* 9, At the confluence of the St. John and Kennebekasis, about five 
miles above the falls, and for about five miles further up, the St. John 
spreads itself into a very spacious bay of an irregularly triangular figure, 
which, at its greatest breadth, will probably measure ten miles. Below 
this bay, which is ealled Grand Bay, the river makes an abrupt turn 
