BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
92 
Miramichi Lake and Brook* 
This very attractive lake, with its fine hill views, pleasing: 
margins of meadow and sand, and charming campgrounds at 
the eastern end, lies in the southeastern angle of the great 
Forks basin, which rolls away in burnt barrens on the west, 
while it gives place to lofty wooded hills near by on the east. But 
its most notable and striking feature, from the physiographic 
point of view, is the fact, readily observed from some of the 
burnt knolls on the south, that it lies exactly in a great valley 
which can be traced from Half Moon Cove on the Main River 
through to N,apadagon Lake and thence on to the Eastward 
along the route now taken by the Transcontinental Railway. 
This valley, I have no question, merges ultimately into that of 
the lower Taxes, and represents an ancient outlet of the Forks 
basin, though the details are still to be worked out. 
The outlet of this lake, with the exception of an abrupt 
stair-like pitch (called the Guagus) near the lake, and some gentle 
rips near the mouth, is a sluggish and easily-canoeable stream, 
winding in a flat country which is part of the Forks Basin. 
McKeel Brook.-\ 
This stream displays some remarkable features. Rising in 
a lake said to form an attractive and effective hunting centre, 
it flows as a quickwater, and somewhat broken, stream in a great 
* The lake makes its first appearance in written records upon the map by 
Playford (MS. in the Crown Land Office), of 1832, showing the survey of the 
New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Land Company’s line which passes through it ; 
but it was given merely in sketch and has not yet been surveyed. Since the lake 
is attractive, a great game centre, and relatively accessible, it has been visited 
often by sportsmen, and is mentioned in several of their writings. Thus Sir James 
Alexander, who saw it in 1844, mentions it admiringly ( L’Acadie , II, 1849, 210.) 
Governor Gordon was there in 1862 and thought it very pleasing ( Wilderness 
Journeys, Saint John, 1864, 16). It was visited by A. Pendarves Vivian, who 
spent several days here in hunting, and thought it very attractive ( Wanderings 
in the Western Land, 1879, 65). A very charming account of a hunting trip 
to the lake is given by Risteen in Forest and Stream for October 9, 1897, and there is 
another account, of less interest, in Recreation for February, 1906. 
j-This stream is named tcaganech on the Franquelin-DeMeulles map of 1686, 
of course its Micmac name. The termination ganech means, I believe, “ outlet ” 
