206 Geology, c^-c. of Malbay, L. C. 



Murray or Malbay is a rounded indenture in the north 

 shore of the St. Lawrence, ninety miles below Quebec. 



It is a basin, about half a league in diameter, closely in- 

 vested by a semi-circular range of lofty hills, with irregu- 

 lar and pine-clad summits, and grassy declivities, chequer- 

 ed with the white dwellings of the peasantry. A consid- 

 erable breach in the middle of this elevated Belt (near 

 which stands the church and a cluster of houses) permits 

 the passage of a noisy river into the St. Lawrence, and dis- 

 closes in the rear, an ascending country, occasionally dis- 

 tributed into farms ; and supported in the distance by lands 

 of a <;rand and picturesque outline. 



These hills, or mountains, are divided into three distinct 

 portions, occupying respectively the western, middle and 

 eastern sides of the Bay. 



The western hill, like the others, is a bluff continuation 

 of the mountain groupes in the interior. Its height is from 

 eight hundred to one thousand feet. The upper parts are 

 broad and protuberant, and are covered with fractured 

 rocks and dense vegetation. At the outer angle of the bay, 

 they dip at once in a dark shattered precipice two liundred 

 feet high, which extends outwards for half a mile (west) a 

 little beyond a thready cascade, and then shelves into a 

 slope of large ruins, either advancing into the St. Law- 

 rence, or resting on low mounds of uninjured gneiss. In- 

 wards, the precipice is replaced by alluvion, clothing the 

 whole declivity which faces the basin, in two or three ter- 

 races, frequently broken into knolls, and excavations, or 

 indeed, nearly obliterated by rains and periodical torrents. 

 These irregular deposits preserve nearly the same height; 

 that of the upper terrace being from three to four hundred 

 feet, — and the lower ones varying from twenty to eighty 

 feet. 



Their breadth is small at the outskirts of the bay, but it 

 increases, at the bottom, (from a rough estimate) to seven 

 hundred yards. This latter space is principally taken up 

 by the lowest tier, and presents, among its pasturage and 

 cornfields, a singular and beautiful assemblage of small de- 

 tached oblong eminences, fringed, and crowned with shrub- 

 bery, and greatly resembling the Barrows of the earlier pe- 

 riods of Britain. They are the deposition of conflicting 

 currents of water. 



