NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK 
471 
a basin actually exists north of Forks Mountain, can be seen from 
Braithwaite’s trail north of Skunk Lake, where it skirts the slope 
of the plateau, and it is implied in a statement made to me by 
Deputy Surveyor Freeze in speaking of the high range of granite 
hills crossing the stream at Forks Mountain. Presumably the 
“Falls” on the map mark the approximate boundary between 
plateau and basin. The direction of the upper course of this 
branch would also suggest that there it may originally been 
emptied into the Lower North Branch, forming the morphological 
head of that river. But the causes which have thrown these 
streams thus together, and as well the details of the geography of 
the basin must await more thorough study than I was ab’e to 
give it. It seems to me, however, possible that several of the 
smaller streams may have had their directions determined by the 
formation of rifts in the granite of the region. 
We consider next the valley below the Forks. From above 
the Forks down to the big bend of the river, it is a smooth-flow- 
ing, clear stream of abundant water, winding over gravel and 
cobbles and with occasional little rapids formed by a few small 
boulders. All this part forms, in ease of water and charm of 
scenery, * nearly as pleasing a canoe stream as any I know. In 
but one place did I observe any of the granite gulches so 
abundant on the upper waters, and that was at the place about 
east of Devils Lake where the stream, close against the western 
valley wall, flows through a typical rifted gulch, with low vertical 
granite walls on each side, but deep and smooth without a fall. 
The entire valley itself while deeply cut (some 400 feet) into the 
plateau is mature, wide, drift-bottomed, the river having always 
a wide stony flat, commonly of the Rhodora-Hypnum-Black 
Spruce type, on one side or the other. Seemingly the valley was 
formed by a stream very much larger than that now occupying it, 
and in any case it has all the characters of an ancient valley and it 
is no doubt one of the original Northumbrian System (Note 93). 
Such is the stream down to the big bend ten miles from Its 
mouth. From an inspection of the course of this curious bend, 
(1127 feet above sea-level) on the map, on which, since it is with- 
in the limits of Freeze’s survey of 1881, it is accurately represented, 
