327 



section exposes an oblique cutting through an entire coal 

 basin, known as the Cumberland Coal basin. 



This basin is in the form of a broad synclinal trough, 

 having a width of about 25 miles (32 km.), trending in a 

 general east-northeast direction in conformity with the 

 regional Appalachian structure, and paralleling a youthful 

 dissected old land to the south, the Cobequid hills. To 

 the north the basin is limited by a well defined anticline 

 and a narrow belt of subsidiary folds, referred to as the 

 Minudie anticlinorium, but rocks considered to be 

 equivalent to basal members of the Joggins series extend 

 with nearly horizontal attitudes beneath the southern 

 lowlands of New Brunswick. 



From the Chignecto shore eastward, the syncline pre- 

 serves its general regularity of structure for 20 miles 

 (32 km.) inland, where transverse folds and faults again 

 bring up the lower rocks of the series in a belt some 12 

 miles (19 km.) wide, which is partially occupied by the 

 watershed between the Bay of Fundy and Northumberland 

 strait. From here eastward to the Strait the synclinal 

 character of the trough is again manifest, but more notice- 

 ably interrupted by secondary parallel folds, until it sinks 

 gently beneath the waters of St. Lawrence gulf. In the 

 extreme southeast, however, it is no longer limited so 

 completely by the Cobequid plateau, but, passing around 

 several outliers of older rocks, merges into the Pictou Coal 

 basin. 



PHYSICAL FEATURES. 



The whole area underlain by the Carboniferous rocks 

 forms the Cumberland lowland, as contrasted with the pre- 

 Carboniferous Cobequid upland to the south. The surface 

 of the lowland is everywhere nearly plain or gently rolling, 

 with an average elevation of little over 200 feet (61 m.) 

 above the sea, but rising gently to the base of the Cobequids 

 to elevations of over 300 feet (91 m.), and then rapidly to 

 the 800 (244 m.) to 1,000 feet (305 m.) elevations of the 

 upland surface. The monotonous character of the lower 

 plain is broken, however, by low rolling ridges developed 

 on the harder sub-rock, and by a few isolated monadnocks, 

 such as Springhill (610 feet, 186 m.), Claremont hill (565 

 feet, 172 m.), and the Salem hills (450 feet and 390 feet, 

 137 m. and 180 m.). Such a residual is also present in 



