136 Lieut. Baddeley on the geognosy 
ing with them the drainage of the lands they traversed. Sup- 
posing these lands to be composed almost entirely of rocks of 
the most infertile characters, such as granite and gneiss or 
aggregates in which silex abounds, they could not be looked 
to as the sources of “the fertility in question. In this dilemma 
the action of a violent deluge was had recourse to, which by 
bringing soils from distant quarters, had accumuiated here the 
materials of future fertilization. With this impression,we visited ~ 
the country. It was found to be composed, instead of granite 
and gneiss, for the most part of rocks which, however infertile 
some of them may be as such, are made up of minerals almost 
exclusively, the decomposition of which furnishes the best soils ; 
such are syenite and trap rocks. On casting our eyes over the 
fine alluvial soils which characterize the country about Lake 
St. Joha and Chicoutimi, they exhibited no indication of the 
action cf a violent deluge ; on the contrary, they were found 
to be composed of the finest particles, which could only have 
been deposited in quiet waters. 
On visiting Lake St. John, we found a rock forming a large 
portion of the shores and of its neighbourhood, the decom- 
position of which forms the finest clays. A little farther on 
the same lake, clay-slate and limestone are found to occupy a 
still larger portion, the former rock almost always associated 
with fertile soils furnished by its desintegration, while the lat- 
ter, with few exceptions, need only be named as forming a por- 
tion of any country, to convey at once the fertility of that por- 
tion. 
Examine the limestone : you find it the depository of the 
exuvie of animals, tenants only of the ocean which now form a 
part of almost every one of its generally horizontal strata. The 
inference is obvious :—they and the limestone have been de- 
posited here together, when Lake St. John and the surroun- 
ding country were covered by the sea; and it is almost equally 
obvious 
