NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK 
437 
knowledge of this river, and I have been told by other lumber- 
men of other New Brunswick streams, that the great quantities 
of logs now driven at a time down a stream, especially when sup- 
plemented by the great rushes of water when the splash, or driv- 
ing, dams (of which there are several on the Tracadie) are 
opened, cause an extensive tearing awiay of the soft banks, mak- 
ing the river-beds much broader and much shoaler than they were 
originally. This subject should be kept in mind in studying the 
ancient routes of Indian travel, and will explain why several New 
Brunswick routes were much used by the Indians where now a 
canoe could be taken only with very great difficulty, or even not 
at all.* 
The North Branch, so far as I have seen it, some two or three 
miles up, is also in large part a meadowy, sand-bottomed, 
smooth-water stream, up which even now in low water a canoe 
could be worked with little difficulty. The valley, which is some 
40 to 50 feet below the general level of the country, though small, 
is moderately open and mature ; and, since it continues exactly the 
direction of the main Tracadie below it, I have no doubt it is 
morphologically the head of the Tracadie, while the present main 
stream, from the mouth of the North Branch northwesterly to 
the great bend, represents a branch which has worked back across 
the ancient watershed and captured the head of the Caraquetian 
Valley. 
Below the North Branch the combined streams form a shallow, 
rippling, cold and dear-water river, winding somewhat in an 
open and seemingly rather mature valley, washing at times 
against high glacial banks or low cliffs of sandstone, the jointed 
pieces of which are washed out to form small angular boulders 
in the stream. These small sandstone boulders are practically 
the only ones found throughout the length of the Tracadie, the 
granite or other crystalline boulders of the rivers of the interior 
being here quite wanting. Such is the Tracadie down to the 
South Branch. 
*Possible Indian routes from the Tracadie to Bay Chaleur are discussed 
in the paper cited in the preceding footnote. 
