216 
BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
It is reproduced, though somewhat crudely, in the accompany- 
ing cut, which is one-half the size of the original, and which 
covers the same area as our larger new map illustrating this note. 
A later sketch of the river in Whitehead’s sportsman’s map, 1902, 
adds* some lakes at the heads of its western branches. 
References to the basin in scientific or other literature appear 
to be extremely few. The earliest I have found is the mention 
in Dashwood’s “ Chiploquorgan,” (1871), of a hunting journey 
he made on foot in 1863 from the mouth of this branch to the head 
of the Sevogle, apparently along the stream, and he appears to 
have ascended Bald Mountain and to have gone thence to Kewadu 
Lake. The next record of a visit is by Ells, in his Geological 
Report, 1879-80, who gives an account of the geology, and some 
description of the topography of the region. His report does not 
made it clear by what route he traversed the country, but he has 
been so kind as to write me that he went on foot with a hunter 
from Forty-two Mile Brook via the Northwest Miramichi and 
Kewadu Lake to Bald Mountain, and thence along the South 
Branch to its mouth, whence he returned to the head of the Nor- 
west, and thence by Little Bald (Cartier) to Nepisiguit. The 
only published references to the region since that time appear to 
consist in a mention in the University Monthly for November, 
1898, of a visit of some surveyors to Bald Mountain, and an 
account of the killing of a big caribou on Bald (our Kagoot) 
Mountain by James Turnbull, in Recreation for March, 1899. ^ 
number of sportsmen have visited the Bald Mountain district, 
guided by j\Ir. A. Pringle, who has a hunting camp at the foot 
of this mountain (the only human work in the South Branch 
basin), and a trail thence, as shown on the accompanying map, 
to the Northwest Miramichi. I can learn of no one who has 
ascended the lower course of the South Branch by canoe, and it 
is probable that our canoe trip up its lower ten miles last August 
was one of the first ascents of it made by white men, and doubt- 
less it was the first by amateurs without guides.* Very little 
* We drajf^jed our canoe and load up for some ten miles ^a mile or two above the Second 
Forks) and went the remainder of the distance on foot; afterwards we carried over from 
near Paradise Pond into the source of the Northwest, and descended that river to New- 
castle. 
