468 
BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
Survey Reports or in any other scientific publications. Sportsmen 
have visited it but little until very recently, and I find but two 
references in sporting literature. Mr. Frederick Irland was on 
the North Pole Branch ini the spring of 1901, hunting bears with 
Henry Braithwaite, and he has described his trip in a charminglly- 
written and beautifully-illustrated article in Scribner's Magazine 
for September, 1901. And there is a reference to Half-Moon 
Lake, with a crude sketch map showing it for the first time, in 
Mr. E. Hough’s account of his winter trip in 1901 through this 
region from the Nepisiguit to the Little Southwest Miramichi in 
Forest and Stream for Nov. 1, 1902. Mr. Braithwaite has hunted 
here for many years and has hunting camps at two of three points, 
while other guides from the Lower Miramichi are gradually 
entering the valley and establishing camps. Much lumbering has 
been done on the stream, especially bellow the Forks, in connection 
with which a number of portage roads have been built ; but there 
is still much uni umbered country near its source, between which 
and the Nepisiguit branches remains the only piece of absolutely 
virgin wilderness now' to be found in New Brunswick. 
As the map will show, the North Pole Branch has not a single 
source, but several, radiating fan-like from a junction south of 
Forks Mountain. Of these source streams I have seen four, 
which are as follows. The most northerly is that on which lies 
Half-Moon Lake, a pretty crescent-shaped little woods lake, 2059 
feet above the sea,* surrounded by low plateau hills, showing it 
to lie in a valley cut a little below the plateau level. The 
character of the stream above and below it I do not know, except 
that Mr. Braithwaite tells me it has “granite ledges and falls, 150 
feet” upon it as shown on the map. Almost directly south of it 
on Braithwaite’s trail, but separated from it by a mile of two of 
elevated plateau in a clear- water brook, Devils Gulch, running 
southeast in a curious little irregular gulch or gorge The rock 
*Determined by aneroid checked for weather from Fredericton and 
Chatham, as were all other elevations given in this paper. Since, how- 
ever, in all cases I was able to obtain! but a single good measurement, and 
since single measurements are liable to much error, too much confidence 
cannot be placed on them. The elevation of the plateau south of Half 
Moon Lake I made over 2,200 feet. 
