Sea- Cliff of the Lower Saint Lawrence. 297 



beach, yet distinctly above high tide mark, occurs interruptedly 

 along the ten-mile stretch from Saint Jean Port Joli to Saint 

 Roche Point. A few miles beyond the mouth of Riviere 

 Ferree, the cliff appears again, and extends on past Sainte. 

 Anne de la Pocatiere. At this place the twenty -foot terrace is 

 a mile wide, sloping almost imperceptibly from the foot of the 

 bluff near the College down to the water's edge, where a long 

 dike shuts off the low marsh from the high tides. Beyond 

 the dike, mud-flats extend out into Sainte Anne Bay as far as 

 the eye can see. According to the chart (No. 314) the out- 

 going tide exposes two miles of flats, and beyond low-tide mark 

 flats less than one fathom deep reach to a distance of five miles 

 from shore. This extreme width of tidal flats is due largely, 

 no doubt, to sediment brought down by Riviere Ouelle. 



On the north side of the Saint Lawrence, the chart shows 

 clitflng above and behind the modern beach at Bay Saint Paul, 

 Eboulements Bay, Cape Martin, Goose Cape, and especially 

 encircling the shore of the great Isle aux Coudres. Beyond 

 Goose Cape no suggestion is to be found, on the chart, of a 

 twenty-foot terrace on the north shore. 



Beyond Point Saint Denis, on the south shore, the mud-flats 

 have a width of fully three miles. Near Kamouraska two- 

 thirds of this shallow coastal shelf is laid bare at low tide. As 

 Kamouraska Island the entire terrace, three miles wide, is 

 covered and bared, alternately, by the incoming and outgoing 

 tides. Cliffs not far behind the modern beach, south of Kam- 

 ouraska, seem from the chart to mark the inner border of the 

 twenty-foot shelf. This is plainly the case near Fraserville, 

 where a great tidal marsh occupies the reentrant at the mouth 

 of the River du Loup. 



At Cacouna, the first point on the south shore visited by the 

 writer in 1910, the terrace and sea-cliff are very distinct. The 

 terrace here, at high tide, appears to be merely a narrow shelf 

 behind the modern beach. At low tide, however, it can be 

 seen extending out through shallow water for more than a 

 mile, as far as Cacouna Island. The importance of so strong a 

 shoreline, although suspected when it was first seen, was not 

 appreciated until, on the following day, a similar display of 

 cliff and terrace, at the twenty-foot mark, was found at Trois 

 Pistoles, 25 miles east of Cacouna, and .on the next day a still 

 more striking occurrence of it at Bic, 35 miles east of Trois 

 Pistoles. These observations, coming so rapidly at the begin- 

 ning of the field season, quickly disposed of the suspicion that 

 the beach at Cacouna might owe its extraordinary strength to 

 local conditions. 



A stretch of the twenty-foot terrace and cliff near Isle Yerte 

 is very well shown on the recently published chart No. 202. 



