A Week in Gaspe. 323 



coast in summer. This bold and picturesque coast, after running 

 down to the low point of Cape Rosier, on which stands an im- 

 posing white brick tower, which figured somewhat largely last 

 winter as a disputed item in the public accounts, falls back 

 suddenly to the southward, and then stretches out into the 

 bold narrow promontory of Cape Gaspe, which marks the out- 

 crop of an Upper Silurian limestone believed to be the geo- 

 logical equivalent of that which forms the cliff of Niagara, and 

 the great ridge which divides Lake Huron. Here, with its feet in 

 that same ancient ocean in which shell-fish and corals long since 

 collected its molecules of lime, it asserts its usual character by 

 standing forth as the last member of the Silurian series that lifts 

 its head above the waters. As we passed it the sea broke heavily 

 upon it, and we could in some degree sympathize with stout old 

 Jacques Carder, when in his first voyage, after battling for many 

 days off this cape and on the opposite shore, against the autumnal 

 northwesters, he called a council of his officers, and, anxious 

 though he was to see what lay beyond, bore away on his return 

 to France. Being fortunate enough to have as a fellow-passenger 

 Mr. Faribault of Quebec, who carried with him a little library of 

 his favorite antiquarian lore, we read the narrative as we passed 

 over the ground. Cartier found here only a tribe of Indians, who 

 appeared to him among the rudest he had seen ; a branch of 

 the Micmac tribe that stretched along all the coast from Maine 

 to Gaspe, and afterwards called in this district the Gaspesians. 

 They appeared to have no property but their bark-canoes, under 

 which they slept at night, and nets made of some kind of Indian 

 hemp ; and were probably a fishing-party, whose wigwams might 

 have been at the head of the bay, where their descendants still 

 reside. They had abundance of maize and various kinds of fruits, 

 some of which they dried for winter use. The name Gaspe is 

 derived from the language of these Indians, and is stated to mean 

 as nearly as possible the "land's end." * 



Resting on the Upper Silurian beds which form Cape Gaspe, 

 and of course newer in geological time, is a series of gray, redj 

 and brown sandstones and shales. These rocks belong to the 



*M. Hamel, quoted by Stuart in a paper on Canadian names in Proc 

 of Quebec Lit. and Hist. Society, gives the meaning as " Bout de la 

 pointe de terre." It is perhaps identical with the termination "gash "in 

 names of points of land in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick ; as, Hala- 

 gash, Tracadegash. 



