NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK. 223 
are glaciated to remarkable smoothness (even smoother than, 
typical roches moutonees), and they are so nearly bare of vege- 
tation that the view is unobstructed in every direction, while one 
may travel over them as conveniently as across cultivated fields 
or along good roads. It is indeed one of the purest joys of life 
to stride in full-pulsing health on glorious summer days over such, 
elevated places as this, where the eye may revel in the spacious 
distances, the spirit may come into sympathetic touch with all 
benignant nature, and the mind finds satisfaction in the pride of 
accomplishment as it solves the problems of the construction of 
this ancient land. 
An important question now arises as to the relation of these 
great plateaus to the great central peneplain or plateau, which I 
have described in earlier notes as extending from, south of the 
Negoot Lakes (Notes 55, 56, 64) to Patchel Brook, and beyond, 
that to the northeastward of Thunder Mountain. That the 
plateau in which the South Branch heads is an extension of this 
same plateau, there is, I think, no doubt. Since the country falls 
away to the eastward, as the river courses show, it must be that 
the axis of this old watershed is now represented by the Bald- 
Mountain-Historians Range, whence it extends across the Upsal- 
quitchi'an valley to the Chiefs Plateau, after which it extends 
across the Nepisiguit (this being the only considerable river which 
anywhere crosses it), and thence away to the northeastward to 
reach the sea, I believe, in the vicinity of Belledune. In this 
region it is cut across by three valleys, partially by that of the 
South Branch south of Bald, by the Upsalquitchian valley and by 
the Nepisiguit, and here this important watershed is at its narrow- 
est existent part. 
We consider finally the remarkable relations which exist be- 
tween the valley of the South Branch and of other neighboring 
valleys. In two earlier notes (Nos. 33, 70), I have expressed the 
belief that the South Branch is the morphological and ancient 
head of the Upsalquitch, and this view I find fully sustained by 
these later studies, though the South Branch proves to be more 
complicated and interesting than I had thought. 
The first striking feature of the valley is the remarkable basin 
of its upper course, which narrows regularly northward, and, as^ 
