14 



NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



On this south side it is not the gnawing of the ocean that shows itself 

 by the abrupt marine descent but a continuation of the dipping rocks car- 

 ried on downward for full 300 feet indicating a recent depression of the 

 whole land area on this side of the peninsula. The sea is indeed eating 

 away on both sides of the Forillon, but on the north at a tremendous 

 advantage under the fierce impact of the northeast storms. 



Let us follow the line 

 of 50 fathoms. Fifty 

 fathoms is less than half 

 the hight of the rocks 

 rising- straigfht above the 

 water at Cape Gaspe, 

 and yet should the water 

 fall away these 300 feet 

 the land would run out 

 into the gulf, following 



Grande Greve — The same point of view with an elevation of the land to 50 fathoms tlie direCtlOU Of thc 



mountain range until it included the rocky "American bank," into a head- 

 land of no small dimensions. Such it once was. Now washed by the waters, 

 the home of the cod, it leaves only to the imagination the scenes of life played 

 out on its grassy slopes during the ages before its destruction was accom- 

 plished, and while it was the outermost eastern tip of the Appalachian system.^ 



The mantle of conglomerate which lies nearly flat over the folds south 

 of Malbay obscures the appalachian structure save where the sea has 

 revealed it. The great fold of Perce is largely buried beneath the Devono- 

 Carbonic rocks of Bonaventure island and Mt Ste Anne. 



Appalachia in Gaspe was completed before the close of Devonic time. 

 The folded rocks do not carry evidence of late Devonic age and the 

 unfolded conglomerate mantle of the upper coast above their broken 



^ Mr Charles Biard, of Perce, has obtained for me samples of the rock lying on this 

 "American" or "Green Bank" and taken at a depth of about 4 fathoms, and these 

 prove to be entirely similar in character to the gray limestone of Cape Gasp^. 



