W. H. Twenhofel — Physiography of Newfoundland. 11 



on which rise local elevations. Professor Schnchert, who 

 visited this part of the island after the writer had left for home, 

 states that "what we saw [on the west] was confirmed in the 

 eastern part of the island and the interior, although the physio- 

 graphic aspect is a very different one. One sees no such 

 foreland as we saw in western Newfoundland. The nearer one 

 is to the coast the more fiord-like it is " 5* but even here a 

 section published by Walcott in 1899,f extending from Signal 

 Hill, St. John's Harbor, to Portugal Cove, Conception Bay, 

 shows well preserved fiat-topped hills. 



On the granite hills of the interior, where crossed by the 

 railroad, " the surface is not a plane ; but a gently undulatory 

 one with pointed conical residual hills standing several hun- 

 dred feet higher,"^ a description, judging from the reports of 

 Murray and Howley, apparently applicable to most of the inte- 

 rior upland. 



Murray states that two great depressions extend across the 

 island, one from St. George Bay through the Humber Valley 

 and Deer Lake to White Bay, the other from St. George Bay 

 through Grand Lake to Hall Bay, their location coinciding with 

 the two great faults described by him. 



Rivers and kikes. — The rivers and lakes of Newfoundland 

 are in no respect striking or peculiar with the exception of the 

 Humber and its tributaries. In general, the rivers flow north- 

 east or southwest, parallel to the ridges, along the outcrops of 

 the sedimentary formations. The lakes have their greatest 

 elongation in the same direction. Near the shore the general 

 aspect of the rivers is that of youth, falls and rapids being met 

 with at nearly every turn, with lakes in many places inter- 

 rupting the course of rapid flow. In the interior the rivers 

 flow in wide, sediment-cloaked valleys, carved in the softer 

 sediments, most of them consisting of chains of lakes separated 

 by intervals of rapid water. 



The Humber River with its tributaries, however, more than 

 atones for whatever simplicity is exhibited by its fellows. It 

 has two main branches, one rising far to the south, about twelve 

 miles from the head of St. George Bay, the other about nine 

 miles from the head of White Bay, at an elevation of less than 

 700 feet. The former flows for about fifty miles in a north- 

 northeast direction, where it meets the latter, which has followed 

 a south-southwest course for more than twenty miles. After 

 the junction the united stream flows almost due west for about 

 ten miles, where another tributary enters from the north-north- 

 east which has two branches ; one believed to head less than 



* Schuchert, Personal letter dated October 3, 1910. 



f Walcott, Bull. Geol. Soc. America, x, p. 221, fig. 6, 1899. 



% Schnchert, Note book, August 26, 1910. 



