IN KINGS COUNTY, N. S. HAYCOCK. 297 



ing in them is insignificant. The cro&s trenches in this particular 

 locality are, however, small as compared with those that cross 

 the mountain at intervals of a few miles throughout its length, 

 some of which are scarcely above sea level, others as Digby Gut 

 and Petite Passage 150 to 200 feet below. 



These deep gorges are probably Pre-glacial, as well, since 

 they are partly filled with boulder clay and usually, if not 

 always, set opposite to corresponding depressions in the older 

 hills on the opposite side of the valley. The ice of the Glacial 

 epoch flowed over ridge and through hollow alike, and beyond 

 sweeping away the decayed and shattered layer down to the 

 undecomposed rock seems to have had little effect in transform- 

 ing the general topography of the county. These gorges then 

 are doubtless Pre-glacial, but how much older ? Though much 

 larger they are of the same character as the smaller hollows 

 tilled with the sedimentary limestone, and ate probably of the 

 same, or Mesozoic age. Although direct evidence of this has 

 not yet been obtained it may exist, only awaiting the coining of 

 a careful observer. 



The most significant features of these greater gorges is their 

 positions, just mentioned, nearly opposite to corresponding river 

 gorges on the south-east side of the valley. Almost every deep 

 gorge in the North Mountain has its corresponding river valley 

 in the higher ground of the South Mountain opposite. The 

 depressions reaching the Bay of Fundy coast at Parker's Cove, 

 Digby Gut, Sandy Cove, opposite the Lequille, Bear, and Wey- 

 mouth rivers are striking examples. A possible if not the only 

 plausible explanation of this fact, taken in connection with the 

 evidence of the great age of these depressions, is that they are 

 respectively the old outlets of Mesozoic rivers that flowed north- 

 westwardly across the sandstone and its overlying trap sheet, 

 draining a country more extensive than the present Nova Scotia, 

 because of its greater elevation, and with their greater volume 

 wearing broad channels through the red sandstone but abrupt 

 and precipitous trenches in the trap. The effect would be the 

 same in the basins of the smaller streams such as those now 



