W. II. Twenhofel — Physiography of Newfoundland. 9 



depart greatly from a horizontal attitude ; the general dip is 

 away from the cliff face, but at some localities, as the St. John 

 Mountains and St. George Bay, the beds dip toward the cliff .* 

 In most places, the beds if projected towards the mountains 

 with the dip they have at the sea, would abut against the cliff 

 face ; but it is very probable that at its base the strata have an 

 entirely different attitude. Such is the case at Bonne Bay and 

 the Bay of Islands, and Murrayf found similar conditions 

 about St. George, where at the foot of the mountains the beds 

 " are usually very highly tilted, inclining in the opposite direc- 

 tion (away from the mountains) or vertical." 



Erosion has done extremely little to destroy or modify this 

 precipitous westward-facing scarp, its integrity being well pre- 

 served. In but a few places like the Bay of Islands and St. 

 George Bay has a large river cut its way to the sea or pushed 

 its head far beyond the mountain face ; but many small valleys 

 have been cut in the upper portion of the wall at elevations 

 varying with the region, but averaging one-half to two-thirds 

 the height of the cliff. Most of them flare out near their 

 heads and flow on levels having a lesser gradient than lower 

 down in their courses and nearly all of them appear to head in 

 a wall. At Bonne Bay, where some of these valleys were 

 studied in detail, they present a profile similar to that which 

 follows (fig. 3). The upper level is flat-floored, quite wide, in 

 a few cases one-half mile or more, and at an elevation of about 

 1200 feet above the sea, or about 900 to 1000 feet below the 

 top of the Table Mountain wall. At Bonne Bay and the Bay 

 of Islands many of the lower elevations rise to about the level of 

 these upper valleys, where they, while not flat-topped, show an 

 older topography on their summits, and at least one table 

 mountain, that at Port au Port, rises to a level slightly less. 



Their width is out of all proportion to the small streams 

 flowing in them, which move slowly from one to another of 

 the ponds and lakes commonly present. Lower down in. their 

 courses they become a series of rapids and cataracts, enclosed 

 in steep- walled narrow gorges, the descent of which, actual 

 experience teaches is not only difficult but dangerous. 



At Bonne Bay the upper valley level affords an easy route 

 of travel from that place to Trout River, a fishing settlement 

 about ten miles farther south on the coast. This route, after 

 the ascent to the upper level has been made, is a really excel- 

 lent one for vehicles, and the only one that is at all practicable 

 (see ^. 4). 



* The dip at the St. John Mountains was judged from the deck of a 

 schooner, but appears so plain that it can hardly be questioned, 

 f Murray, Geol. Surv. Newfoundland, p. 88, 1866. 



