NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK 
473 
great sand-bottomed smoothwaters, often with intervale banks, 
down as far as we saw it, three miles from its mouth. It is a 
great surprise to find so smooth a river in so rugged a region, 
and there is probably nowhere in the interior of New Brunswick 
so great an extent of good canoeing water, an evidence indeed of 
the ancient and ripe character of this valley. Just below the big 
bend, the valley widens into a basin bottomed by an elevated 
boulder-strewn burnt plain strongly resembling the Graham 
Plains and probably originating in a similar way. On its western 
margin runs the North Pole Branch in a deep trench cut into the 
rough materials of this plain, the boulders of which have here 
given it its rough bed, while on the eastern margin lies Long 
Lake, seemingly with a valley extending northward from it. This 
basin seems to have been a catch basin of the glacial period. Be- 
low, the valley narrows somewhat but always is mature and 
shows a rocky plain elevated well above the river bed. This 
plain, without doubt a continuation of that above the bend, and 
similar to those to be described on the Lower North Branch, 
represents the bed of the glacial rivers which poured their swift 
waters down these valleys during the melting of the glacial ice. 
It is into this glacial wider bed the present rivers have cut their 
narrow and newer channels. 
We left this river about three miles from its mouth (finding it 
there of 1025 feet elevation) and did not see its lower course. But 
I had previously seen its mouth (Note 54) where it has falls. These 
are post-glacial, and the original junction with the Little Souths 
west probably lies a little to the eastward (Note No. 54) in a line 
with the course of the Little Southwest below it, which is really 
morphologically a part of the North Pole Branch. 
100. The Recognition and Utilization of the Plateau 
Structure of Interior New Brunswick. 
Read Jan. 2, 1006. 
No doubt most people who know anything of interior and 
northern New Brunswick think of it as a hilly country only tra- 
versable along the valleys. Until recently this was evidently the 
idea of those whose business it was to lay out portage (lumber- 
