REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR IQI:^ 133 



tinental and insular shores and on the bottom of these shallow 

 intervening seas were laid down, to hundreds and even thousands of 

 feet, the sediments of the ocean filled with the remains of living 

 beings that played out their days in succession as unknown time 

 rolled by. Thus the shallow sea became overloaded with its burden 

 of deposits — a load of soft and plastic material made still more 

 yielding by being carried constantly farther downward into regions 

 of higher heat as the later deposits continued to pile on top of the 

 earlier. Against this soft and weakened mass of deposits stood, 

 on one side, the great weight of the waters in the vast Atlantic 

 ocean basin, pressing upon them landward, and on the other, the 

 irresistible crystalline continent — the Canadian shield. 



The outcome was inevitable; the whole mass of sea deposits 

 was slowly turned up into great mountain folds and troughs — 

 not all at once but slowly, fold after fold, to unmeasured heights, 

 and often the folds at the south were thrust upon and over folds at 

 the north. Thus, broadly and rapidly speaking, the Appalachian 

 system of mountains was built up through the ages, not at any 

 one time in geological history, but beginning i^lowly and early at the 

 north and ending late at the south. In the early development of this 

 structure the shove of the soft rocks against the crystalline shield 

 was so valiantly withstood at the north, that there, along the south- 

 ern outline of that shield, from Lake Ontario to Natashkwan, the 

 softer rocks broke down, making, where the two lay in contact, a 

 deep and broad fracture extending from southwest to northeast. 

 The existence of this break or fault in the rocks was long ago 

 signalized by Sir William Logan^ and it is known today as '' Logan's 



1 One who has followed closely in the footsteps of Sir William Logan in 

 his geological work in eastern Quebec may perhaps be permitted, without 

 impropriety, to revert to the extraordinary achievements of this great 

 Canadian, and his distinguished services to geological science. 



The year after Sir William organized the Geological Survey of Canada, 

 he began his official career by explorations in the Gaspe peninsula. Laboring 

 in the early 40's among the picturesque sea cliffs of that inviting country, 

 traversing its wildernesses, he determined its geological systems with their 

 wealth of unrecorded facts and made of the Gaspe country ground that will 

 always be of classic worth to geological science. Had he done no more, he 

 would have served well; but he did do vastly more in the development of the 

 mineral resources of the Dominion. A country that is rich and strong and 

 great will not forget its obligation to such a distinguished servant. France, it 

 is said commemorates by public memorials the services of its eminent 

 civilians more often than it does those of its military and naval heroes. Such 

 a memorial to Logan is wanting. There stands a rock cliff in the heart of the 



