SOMK UX'AL DETAILS. 17;) 



St. Lawrenoe, thon^di whether this \vas wholly a ^laeiei' 

 or ill part a fiord leadin^t,' t'nuii one, like many of tliose in 

 CJreenland, does not certainly appear. Possibly, with 

 different levels of the land, these conditions may have 

 alternated. \ cannot ima<.i'ine anythin,!,^ more like what 

 the Saguenay may have l)een, than the Franz Joseph fiord 

 in east (Ireenland.* 



The strikes of the gneiss on the opposite sides of the 

 Sa<]jiieniiy indicate that it occu})ies a line of transverse 

 fracture, constitutin<f a weak portion of the Laurentian 

 ridfjes, and this has evidently been smoothed and deei)ened 

 l)y water and ice under conditions diU'ercnt from the 

 present, in which it is ])rol)id)le that the channel is being 

 gradually filled with mud. Its excavation nu'st have 

 taken ])lace during a })eriod of continental elevation in or 

 after the I'liocene period, aiul |)revious to the deposition 

 of the thick beds of marine clay (Letla clay) which appear 

 near its mouth and in its tributaries, sometimes passing 

 into boulder-clay below, and ca})ped by sand and gravel. 

 It is indeed not improbal)le that in the later Pleistocene 

 it was in great part tilled up with such deposits, which 

 have been swept away in the course of the re-elevation of 

 the land. 



At Tadoussac, at the nu:)uth of the Saguenay, where the 

 underlying formati(Ui is the Laurentian gneiss, the Pleis- 

 tocene beds attain to great thickness, but are of simple 

 structure and oidy slightly fossiliferous. The ja-incipal 

 part is a stratified sandy clay with few boulders, except 

 in places near the ridges of Laurentian rocks, when it 

 becomes filled with numerous rounded blocks and pebbles 

 of gneiss. This forms higii baid<s eastward of Tadous.sac. 



* Second German Expedition, 1870. .See also a paper by Prof. 

 Laflaitime, Trana. R.S.C. 



