NATURAL H l STORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK 
429 
newer strata, but approximately so. The presence of these curves 
would seem to indicate that the older rivers flowing radially out 
of the Central Highlands, here met the ancient Carboniferous 
Plain, which, having an even slope northeast, carried the rivers hi 
that direction, a feature which speaks for a somewhat ancient 
origin of the system. These curves are not in all cases in their 
original positions, as I have shown in some of the earlier notes 
on these rivers, and as the cartography of others seems to imply. 
The reasons for the remarkable turning of all the lower courses of 
all these rivers into the single Miramichi are fairly plain and 
have already been indicated. It is due to the pre encei of a great 
north and south depression beginning in Nepisiguit Bay (which 
owes its existence to it), and running south along the present 
course of the lower Nepisiguit, Portage River, the Northwest 
Miramichi, the several right-angled bends of the Main Southwest 
Miramichi, including Cains River, and perhaps even showing in 
some of the branches of Salmon River.* This great depression, 
which is parallel with the watershed just to the eastward of it, 
and with the sea-coast, is, no doubt, either a shallow syncline or a 
great fault line,' formed in times comparatively recent. The fact 
that north of the main Miramichi it is occupied by a single valley 
(which from its Indian name we may call the Minaqua), col- 
lecting the streams from the west, while south of the Miramichi 
it is not a single valley but rather the turning of the streams into 
one another, is probably due to the fact that the syncline, with its 
anticline on the east, is 'less marked to! the south and more 
marked towards the north. 
We consider now the valleys in detail. The upper part of the 
first of them, the Main Southwest Miramichi, and its relations 
with the Nashwaak and Taxes, are puzzling, and I reserve con- 
sideration of them until I have been able to study them upon the 
ground. Aside from this, however, the courses of most of the 
valleys are fairly plain. 
* 0 <r, continued through the Gaspereau, Grand Lake and the lower St. 
John, it form? one of the great lineament lines of Eastern North America, 
discussed by W. H. Hobbs, in the report of the Eighth International Con- 
gress, (Washington, 1905, 193). 
