REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I914 157 



tion rests is of the so-called " Hudson River shale " but other parts, 

 particularly those underlying the mountains where the eastern face 

 reaches its most abrupt expression, are the distorted limestones of 

 the late Siluric and Upper D.evonic, the limestones which enter so 

 very largely into the composition of the features which Professor 

 Davis has designated as the " little mountains east of the Catskills " 

 and constitute the broad lowland between them and the Hudson 

 river. In lower Quebec and New Brunswick the equivalent conti- 

 nental deposit known as the " Bonaventure " mantles the coast 

 regions only, lies, like the Catskill, for the most part without distor- 

 tion on the edges of highly disordered Siluric and Devonic lime- 

 stones, and its material may have been derived from the northern 

 and northeastern shores of the uplifted continent of Laurentia and 

 its north Atlantic extent, for the fact of this derivation of sediment 

 from the east is evident in the westward thinning of the mantle 

 wherever it is found. Its greatest thickness is, like that of the 

 Catskill, always at the east. 



Behind the village of Perce, P. Q., which stands at the outermost 

 front of the Gaspe peninsula, rises a cluster of mountains whose 

 center is composed entirely of this sedimentation of coarse conglom- 

 erates and heavy sands. The summit level at this center lies at 

 approximately 1200 to 1400 feet and the summit platform is a 

 gently rolling surface which retains approximately its original form 

 without much degradation and with very little evidence of stream 

 dissection. The long, low rolling summit, sloping off toward the 

 north, impressed the early French settlers and they gave to the 

 place the name Table-a-rolante, a term which applied to the whole 

 plateau of the central Perce mountains, the outer and easternmost 

 of which, with its sheer red cliff like that of the Catskills, is today 

 more commonly known as Mt Ste Anne. This mass of rocks has in 

 itself no structural features not comparable with the Catskills of 

 New York. They are on the whole more conglomeratic, but the 

 approach of their strata to horizontality, their low, long undulations 

 and their greater thickness at the east, all -.indicate a similar con- 

 temporaneous, if not common, origin. 



The Table-a-rolante is an uplifted relict of this Devono-Carboni- 

 ferous Bonaventure formation, bounded by four sheer sides and 

 resting on the upturned Paleozoic limestones. On all except the 

 seaward side these Paleozoics surround the Table-a-rolante, rising 

 to greater heights and extending back into the great Paleozoic field 

 of interior Gaspe. The Table-a-rolante itself stands like a tremen- 

 dous cake of pack ice on the waves of the sea, an isolated, almost 



