NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK. 19 
Coal Creek. It makes the impression of occupying a rather 
deep valley in a high country all choked with glacial drift. 
Then it enters another large intervale basin, w T ell settled and 
cultivated, in which it winds sinuously back and forth, 
receiving Cranberry Brook from the westward. This inter- 
vale extends for three or four miles, below which the valley 
again closes in, the reddish sandstones reappear, and the stream 
flows for a time in gentle rips through a stony valley. Soon 
there appear, in low cliffs, the striking laminated slates or 
argillites, which are shown on the Geological map and 
mentioned in the Reports as Devonian. Below comes in Hector 
Brook, a fine large stream, through a deep narrow valley, 
below which the country opens out and the stream developes 
a border of attractive cultivated intervale down to near the 
main river, when it passes some low sandstone cliffs and pours 
through intervale into the main river. 
Below the North Fork the character of the main river 
gradually changes. It continues to show the same long still- 
water character, with only occasional and mild rips, but the 
valley is obviously narrower and the country higher than 
above, while the banks become prevailingly stony and rise 
often to cliffs. A mile or two below the Fork, on the right 
or north bank, occurs one of the finest examples of uncon- 
formability that it has ever been my fortune to see, for here 
the level gray sandstones may be seen to rest upon the edges 
of the highly tilted slates which are described in the Geological 
Reports as Pre-carboniferous argillites, and marked on the 
Geological map as Devonian. Somewhat lower dowm, on the 
opposite, or south bank, the same laminated gray argili- 
ies form a steep, high, almost cliff-like bank of a very singular 
appearance, for, seen from upstream, the faces of the laminae 
are visible in great shining sheets, while seen from downstream 
only their black edges are visible.* Low r er still some fine 
*Some very striking legend must have been told by the Indians to explain this remark- 
able place, though the Indian who knows this river the best, Chief James Paul of Saint 
Marys, was unable to recall any such, when I interviewed him on the subject. He told 
me, however, that a curious ledge near the mouth of the North Fork Stream gave origin 
to the Indian name of that stream, vs. Sagunik, which word, he said, means a gill of 
a fish, the rock having that appearance. He refers here, of course, to one of the exposures 
of these laminated argillites. 
