09 
BULLETIN of the natural history society. 
it was then a branch of a much greater valley which now 
persists in part in that fine great trough containing the Belleisle 
and the sources of the Midstream, and which formerly emptied 
I believe, along the general course of the present Cocagne 
and across the present Egmont Bay through Prince Edward 
Island, — a matter which I hope later to discuss in detail.* 
In this case Prices Brook was then a branch w r hich has since 
worked back to the other valley. Then in times long past, 
when these old Northumbrian Rivers, formerly all flowing 
northeastward, had their valleys broken across and their upper 
courses turned westward by the elevation of the Eastern Water- 
shed (that now r followed approximately by the Intercolonial 
Railway), this Nevers-Canaan valley found its low r est outlet 
into the Washademoak system, back into which it had pre- 
sumably almost cut. The great branches, North Fork, 
Alward Brook, and the Canaan above Nevers Brook would 
then be later streams, formed after the reversal of the Wash- 
ademoak, and not relics of the most ancient drainage from 
the Southern Highlands into the Eastern Plain as I once 
thought; and on this basis the alignment of Prices Brook with 
the Upper Canaan would be coincidental and not causal. 
This leaves unexplained the curious course of Riders Brook, 
which has a direction suggestive of an origin as the head of 
the Washademoak below T it, although the somew hat re-entrant 
direction of its branches suggested a former course for them 
directly across into the northeasterly flowing Washademoak. 
The origin of Riders Brook, however, seems reasonably clear, 
for being caught between the Southern Highlands and that 
offlying parallel ridge of the same, which is' represented by the 
Devonian rocks through w hich the Washademoak cuts between 
Riders Brook and the North Fork, Riders Brook represents 
a valley formed by the erosion out of the softer rocks between 
two harder ridges, exactly the type of valley which has given 
us the great valleys just to the southward, — the Belleisle- 
Millstream, the North River-Smiths Creek- Kennebecasis, and 
*Thi' ureat Belieisle-Millstream valley attracted the attention of Gesner, who mentions 
it several times in his Third Report, 32, 42. and in his New Brunswick, 146. 
