EARLY DEVOXIC HISTORY OF XEW YORK AND EASTERN NORTH AMERICA 93 



At places, as south of the Robin beach at Perce, the lower beds are 

 fine feldspathic red, green or gray sandstones, but even these carry pebbles 

 and the prevailing character of the formation is conglomeratic. South of 

 the region under immediate consideration, sweeping along all the country 

 on the north shore of Chaleurs bay and into New Brunswick, these 

 deposits are widespread. 



It is by no means easy, with present knowledge, to determine the 

 true age of these deposits. In considering the commonly accepted 

 view of Logan and his successors expressed above, we are confronted 

 by phenomena at Perce and thence north to Point St Peter which seem to 

 us to render this conclusion less secure than observation of the more 

 southerly outcrops would induce. Strata of conglomerates composed of 



more oil but only in the hope of finding some oil. The successive managers of the com- 

 l)anies have lived in enviable magnificence at the Basin in the same hope of discovery. 

 Nothing has seemed to me, a passing observer, so out of harmony with the spirit of the 

 country than this display of prosperity with only a bubble behind it. Yet the hope has I 

 believe all been fully justified. The sandstones into which the drills have gone are saturated 

 with petroleum and there must indeed be an enormous total amount of this material in the 

 strata. But nature seems to have made no proper provision for its accumulation. Practice 

 on the theory of storage in pools parallel to the anticlines, which has been so fruitful in other 

 Appalachian oil fields has here been without result. The folds are there, and their troughs 

 into which the oil might settle by gravity, but somehow it has got away. All external con- 

 ditions for extensive production are absolutely favorable and attractive. But there is no 

 oil. The total product of all these years is the little that has been accumulated in the bot- 

 tom of the wells and been pumped out. I have been in no position to form an explanation 

 of the real cause of this condition, but it is my suspicion that through cracks and joints 

 in the folds and troughs the oil which might have acciimulated therein has gone on 

 further down and out of reach of the drill. Gaspe as an oil field is deranged. 



Gaspe can not make a home for miners of any kind, for there are no mineral deposits 

 of any present moment in it. Gaspe Basin being a magnificent harbor became a busy 

 little port of passage, its gentle eastern and southern slopes have made some small farming 

 possible while its rivers are the nurses of a busy lumber trade. 



It is the submarine topography of Gaspe that fixed the business of its people 

 from the dawn of its civilized history. Its seas are washing over the devoured continents 

 and their shallow rocky bottoms are the home of the cod. The ancient unceasing warfare 

 between sea and mountain has cut out for Gaspe its occupation for all time. Its history 

 and its civilization, its stories of fortunes acquired or oftener of meagre livings wrested 

 from the sea have all their origin, like the picturesqueness of its scenery, in the geology 

 of the country. " Que voulez-vous ! " exclaims the Abbe Ferland; '' It is the land of the 

 cod. By your eyes and by your nose, by your tongue and your gorge and by your ears as 

 well, you are soon convinced that in the Gaspesian Peninsula the cod forms the basis of 

 aliment and amusement, of business and conversation, of regrets and hopes, of fortune 

 and of life and, I venture to say, of society itself." 



