530 
BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
smooth sand-bottomed, alder-bordered, beaver-dammed reaches, 
mostly, however, pleasant and easily canoeable. 
This extensive basin is of the same characters as, and evidently 
homologous in origin with, the basin around Gover Lake, earlier 
described (Note 87). It was seemingly formed as an ancient 
circ by the erosion of the many streams which happened to centre 
here, while in the glacial period it became a sort of catch-basin, 
which left it deeply floored with drift. But the circ theory finds 
a difficulty, as it does in the Gover Lake basin, in the great and 
almost escarpment-like steepness of the plateau margin, some 
500 or 600 feet high, whose abruptness suggests either a fault 
origin, or very unequal erosion of rocks of different- hardness. 
It will require a thorough exploration of this complicated region 
to settle this interesting question. 
The Peters Brook branch, which I have followed to near its 
source, is a very rapid stream, torrent-like in its upper course, 
running true south, and receiving branches from the plateau on 
both sides. It heads up on the side of the central plateau not far 
south of Nepisiguit waters. 
Below the junction of these streams, and down to Whitney 
Brook, the Branch is a swift, but mostly smooth-flowing river, 
winding over gravel and small boulders, with a wide, low, bould- 
ery, and largely burnt, plain on either side in a deep but wide, 
mature, and almost basin-like valley. On the west rises a striking 
lofty ridge, which must reach to near the plateau level, some 
2,000 feet. As this ridge is very conspicuous from different 
directions, it deserves a more distinctive name than is afforded 
by the local names attached to parts of it, and I propose to call it 
by the simplified Indian name for the Branch Apskwa Ridge or 
Mountain. On the east the valley-wall is lower towards the 
Guagus, and there even seems to be an ancient high gap there. 
In it lies the bog-bordered Jacks Lake, which has outlets both 
into the Branch and into Guagus, as I have myself seen. Whitney 
Brook occupies the larger part of a deep narrow gap extending 
dear through to the North Pole, and the remainder of the gap 
is occupied by Killheg Brook, the two streams heading very close 
together. These great gaps from Pole to Branch must have 
some significance in the physiographic history of this region. 
