450 HULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
54. — Ox THE PlIYSIOCiRAHHIC HiSTORY OF THE LiTTLE SOUTHWEST 
Miramichi River. 
(Read November 5, 1901.) 
Tlie Little Southwest Miramichi is noted among guides and 
lumbermen as the roughest river in all New Brunswick. It is conse- 
ijuently one of the least visited and least known, although it has some 
of the wildest scenery, and is one of the richest in game and fish, in 
the province. I have been along its entire length from the Crooked 
Dead water to its mouth,* and have made the following observations 
upon its physiography : 
Its general physiographic origin and earlier history have been 
traced in brief in an earlier note (No. 50). It is one of that series of 
branches of the Miramichi, all having a history in common, rising in 
the ancient crystalline highlands of the province and flowing eastward 
across various formations, cutting deeply into all of them. It is its 
later <|uaternary, especially glacial, history which is now to be con- 
sidered. The subject is illustrated by the accompanying map. No. 3. 
There is no question, I believe, that the group of lakes which we 
are accustomed to consider as the source of this river (viz., the Little 
Southwest Lakes) belong morphologically to the Renous system, and 
have only a post-glacial (or, at all events, very late pre-glacial) con- 
nection with the Little Southwest Miramichi, by the very rough 
stream between the lakes and the main river (West Branch), a con- 
clusion reached as a result of evidence to be presented in the next note 
of this series. The true morphological head of the Little Southwest 
Miramichi lies eastward of Long Lake, of the Negoot group, and the 
Upper North Branch is a true morphological branch, even though it 
exceeds the main stream in size. Possibly, like some other branches 
larger than their main streams, its headwaters have been captured 
from some other river, a subject still to be investigated. I have my- 
self been only a mile above the junction of the Upper North Branch 
and the Main River; here the river, 1,082 feet above the sea, is a 
dead water for three miles or more, below which, to the junction with 
the West Branch, it falls some twenty-five to thirty feet through a 
.series of boulder trains across its course, evidently the remains of old 
glacial dams. From the West Branch, 1,052 feet above the sea, down 
to the six and one-half mile turn, and somewhat beyond, the river 
* In company with Mr. M. I. Furbish, in August, 1901. 
