344 



MINERALS AND GEOLOGY 



the district consist of Post-Cainozoic deposits. Kaisecl beaches, in 

 form of a series of terraces, extending to a height of about 100 feet 

 above the sea, occur on some of the Mingan Islands; and other 

 evidences of elevation are seen in the pillared rocks left here and 

 there upon the surface, at heights of fifty or sixty feet above the 

 present sea level. Drift clays, holding limestone pebbles, overlie the 

 calcareous strata of some parts of Anticosti, especially on the south- 

 west coast, where they form cliffs of considerable height. But the 

 more remarkable of the Post-Cainozoic formations of Anticosti are the 

 great peat-beds, which cover large areas on the southern part of the 

 Island. One of these extends in a narrow band along the south-east 

 coast, between Heath Point and South Point, over a length of nearly 

 eighty miles. 



THE APPALACHIAN OR EASTERN TOWNSHIPS' AND GASPE^ DISTRICT. 



The term " Appalachian region " was first bestowed on this part 

 of Canada by Dr. Sterry Hunt, The district forms, indeed, a pro- 

 longation into Eastern Canada of the Appalachian region of the United 

 States : the Appalachian chain, with its tilted, contorted, and in great 

 part metamorphosed series of rocks, extending into the Stoke Moun- 

 tains and other elevations of the Eastern Townships, and appearing 

 further east in the Shickshock Mountains of Gaspe. The district 

 comprises all that portion of the Province which lies east and south 

 of the great line dislocation referred to under the preceding district 

 as running north-easterly from Lake Champlain to Quebec, and from 

 thence along the bed of the river and the Gulf. Whilst to the west 

 and north of this dislocation, the strata are practically undisturbed, 

 those which lie directly east and south of it have been greatly tilted 

 and uplifted, and generally reversed in dip ; and towards the more 

 central parts of the district many of the beds have been altered or 

 rendered crystalline by metamorphic agencies, and have been folded 

 up with one another, and with an older system of crystalline rocks 

 forming the. axes of the higher elevations so as to produce great com- 

 plications of structure. As regards physical features, the district is 

 more or less throughout of a mountainous character, but also, as a 

 rule, of good fertility differing remarkably in this respect from the 



