52 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



principal arch the barges can pass at all times either under sail or by oars ; 

 through the other they can only float when the sea is high. The debris of 

 the rock scattered all along bears witness that the sea is continuing its 

 encroachments. Some day, perhaps, the arches will fall in and the Isle 

 Percee will form three immense columns which will rival in volume the 

 pyramids of Egypt. 



Sir William Logan was at Perce in 1843 on his first field work as 

 director of the Canadian Geological Survey. While at the village he put 

 up with a Mr Moriartyand in the fragments of his journal which have been 

 published by Professor Harrington' he says that his host formerly cut hay 

 on the top of the rock but had abandoned his farming there some six years 

 before, as a foolhardy fellow by the name of Pierre L'Aigle took it into his 

 head to dance on a projecting piece of rock which gave way, dashing him 

 to death on the beach. Today the angles of the rock are such that to climb 

 it seems beyond human daring. 



On the 17th of June, 1845, one of ^1"^^ ^"^o arches fell. My inform- 

 ant, Mr Philip Le Boutillier, an engaging and vigorous man of above 

 80 years, says that as he was on that day turning the key in the door of the 

 Le Boutillier Co.'s shop, he was startled by a thunderous and ear-splitting 

 crash and turning toward the rock saw, amid clouds of dust and spray and 

 the terrified screams of the birds, that the outer and greater arch had fallen. 

 And thus today it stands with but one of the three or four arches on which 

 the eyes of Denys and LeClercq so often looked, remaining, and a new 

 one creeping at right angles to the rest, lengthwise through the base of the 

 seaward obelisk. Here we behold, as under the eye, the ruin which the sea 

 has wrought on this single isolated rock in the last 250 years. I find on 

 carefully comparing my measurements with the dimensions which can be 

 derived from the Crown land maps of Perce, the original draft of which is 

 not far from 50 years old, that there is no apparent change of dimension in 

 this interval except in a lessening diameter at certain points. 



It is not often that a geologist falls upon a proposition so concrete 

 and uncomplicated as that which an isolated mass like Perce rock presents. 



^Life of Sir William Logan. Montreal. 1883. 



