AMERICAN HARBOR, OR NATASHQUAN 



beaches of rounded pebbles elevated from 

 fifty to two hundred feet above the sea and 

 lopking almost as fresh as if just left by the 

 tide. Fish-stages built fifty years ago on the 

 eastern coast are in places now barely acces- 

 sible from the water in boats. Mr. Comeau told 

 me of finding the remains of an old whale or 

 seal establishment on an inlet so far from the 

 salt water that he could not approach it even 

 in a canoe. On the southern coast in sandy 

 regions there are banks of marine sands cut 

 by rivers many miles inland. At the mouth 

 of the Great Natashquan River are low sand- 

 cliffs eight or ten feet high. Some seventy- 

 five miles inland I found cliffs of the same 

 marine sand over one hundred and fifty feet 

 high — the cliffs known by the Indians as 

 Tishkatawaka, or "cut up straight." Back of 

 the beach at Natashquan are parallel ridges 

 which represent ancient shore-lines. Similar 

 sand-ridges occur miles inland and are elevated 

 high above the sea. 



The harbor of Natashquan in Audubon's 

 day, although shallow in places, was doubtless 

 deeper than it is now. Captain Joncas's father, 

 who came to the coast as a trader with the 



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