NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OP NEW BRUNSWICK. 529 
almost a torrent, with many rapids, cascades and falls, while the 
valley deepens, with walls steep in places even to cliffs. At times 
the fall lessens, and the stream becomes broader, and here occur 
a great number of new beaver dams and other works, while traces 
of other large game are abundant, and all signs of man are 
pleasingly absent. Continuing farther all these features wax 
larger ; the valley is deeper and wilder, the walls are steeper, with 
some granite cliffs, while the falls are higher, culminating in one 
of much beauty and great symetery some eight feet in height. 
Gradually the valley, winding much, swings to the southward; 
it crosses the Freeze line as the “ Brook ilarge enough to drive ” 
of his plans, receives two larger streams in very deep valleys (one 
of which heads in a barren close to the source of South Branch 
Nepisiguit), then rapidly lessens in slope to a swift-flowing un- 
obstructed stream, while the country falls off in elevation. Be- 
yond this I have not seen it, but it can have no other course than 
to issue soon from the plateau, and, as I am told by Mr. Sinclair, 
it soon unites with other branches about as shown upon the map. 
As to the origin of this part of the vailey, it seems fairly plain. 
The drift bed and margin of the stream show it to be pre-glacial, 
though new ; and it represents, I have no doubt, the head of one 
of the old Northumbrian rivers now cutting its way back into 
the central plateau. 
As the main stream wings into the southeast direction charac- 
teristic of the valleys of this region, it receives from the west 
several large streams, which I have seen at their intersections 
with the portage road shown on the map. Their approximate 
sources are located by Freeze’s timber lines, and lie, no doubt, 
upon the slopes of the central plateau, but the larger part of 
their courses is through a great basin of gently-undulating rocky 
swells separated by stretches of bouldery black spruce plain and 
barren, the whole bounded sharply to the northwest and east by 
the abrupt slope of the central plateau. The lowermost of the 
affluent brooks, however, as the map will show, occupies a gap 
between the great Apskwa ridge and the finely-rounded Bob’s 
Mountain leading to the North Pole Branch and followed by the 
portage road. These branches, like the friain stream below them, 
flow swiftly, now in rough boulder-obstructed courses, now in 
