NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NKW BRUNSWICK 
461 
Lake, true also to a lesser extent of Lake Chenire, namely, Its 
banks are formed of vertical walls of peat, some six to eight or 
more feet above the water, which are being cut away by the lake 
itself.* They thus resemble exactly the peat-cliffs bordering the 
sea to the eastward. Here, at places shown on the map on the 
two Mai Baies, on Miscou Harbor along Muddy Brook, and on 
the open sea between the Mai Baies, the moors are being eaten 
into by the sea, the peat forming vertical cliffs from one or two 
up to eight feet in height. This is particularly striking on the 
coast between the Mai Baies, where the sea is rapidly cutting in- 
to the low peat cliffs, carving them precisely as it carves a soft- 
rocked coast. I suppose there is no doubt that the two Mai Baies 
were recently fresh water lakes like Big Lake, and that the en- 
croaching sea. will presently eat its way along Eel Brook and 
cut into Big Lake converting it into a salt lagoon. The outlet of 
Big Lake now falls a foot or two over sand and gravel into the 
salt water. 
But how did these moors originate, and what influences have 
given them their present form? It is, first of all, plain that they 
were formed when the island was much larger and much higher 
above the sea than now. Sphagnum moors can only form in fresh 
water, and they extend much beyond the present limits of the 
island, since they occur outside the dune beach on the west of the 
island south of Eel Brook, and again outside the dune-beach 
north of Birch Point. Further, they must have extended far 
off to the eastward to permit thick peat beds now to border 
the sea. Their formation implies the presence of a great shallow 
impervious basin with a complete rim of upland, a rim now sunk 
beneath the sea and represented in the extensive shoals on the 
west side of the island, and by the shoals and reefs' off Birch 
Point and Wilsons Point (described on the Admiralty charts and 
“Sailing Directions”) on the east. Probably the margin of this 
basin was formed by glacial upland, not by rock, which will ex- 
plain perfectly its total disappearance. The sinking of the land 
*Big Lake shows in one or two places sand beaches against the peat- 
cliffs. At first sight the peat seems to rest upon them, but examination 
shows that they rest against vertical walls of peat. 
