156 
BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
the other, commonly known as the North Shore, facing the Gulf 
of St. Lawrence, is in the form of a crescentic curve, which is 
somewhat longer. On the north the border is also a water one, 
that of the Bay Chaleur and Restigouche river, but is of minor 
importance in the present connection. The total coast line is 
about 600 miles in length. 
On the southern coast the shore is bold, the water deep, and 
the action of waves, tides and currents powerful. But as a rule 
the rocks forming this coast are either compact and crystalline, 
giving to these agencies but little chance to act, or they are com- 
posed of schists dipping at high angles towards the sea and form- 
ing steeply sloping walls, from which the waves are turned back 
with little excavating effect. Hence, though the coast line is 
somewhat broken, and in places picturesque, it seldom shows 
much undermining, or the formation of any recesses, which can 
fairly be designated as caverns. An exception to this general 
statement is, however, to be found along certain portions of the 
shore, where the old pre-Cambrian schists have still resting upon 
them, or sloping off from them, strata of more recent age. This 
is to some extent true along the shores of Lepreau Basin and 
about Point Lepreau, and again in the vicinity of Ouaco, especi- 
ally about ^lelvin's beach, both localities being in rocks of the 
Lower Carboniferous system ; but the most remarkable illustra- 
tions by far are those which occur in connection with the rocks 
of the same formation about the head of the Bay of Fundy, ac 
Hopewell Cape. Here a series of coarse conglomerates, dipping 
landward at a high angle, and broken by numerous faults, skirt 
the shore for half a mile or more, in a series of bluffs one hundred 
feet or more in height, and owing partly to their exposed posi- 
tion, just where the accumulated energies of the bay have their 
maximum of power, and partly to their own nature (the loosened 
pebbles of the rock adding enormously to the eroding action of 
the water), have been carved and undermined to a degree not 
often equalled. Certainly no point on the Atlantic seaboard of 
America can show more curious or more impressive exhibitions 
of sea-sculpture than are to be found here. The accompanying 
