NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK. 101 
The Main River from the Forks to Boiestown* 
Having thus considered the characteristics of all the great 
branches of the Upper Miramichi, we turn now to the main 
stream. The Forks lie in low intervale country, and this in 
turn is near the focus of a remarkable great drift-floored basin 
which extends to the westward in continuity with the wide 
Foreston gap, northward up the North Branch to Bedel Brook, 
northeast up McKeel Brook, southward to the Nashwaak sources, 
and east to Lewey Mountain and the Narrows, while it has an 
outlet to the southeast across Miramichi and Napudogan Lakes 
as already described. f This basin is broken by low ridges, but 
is in general sharply marked off from the bounding highlands, 
which rise abruptly 500 feet or more above its general level. 
This basin, like others in the region, no doubt owes part of its 
characters to erosion, but its abrupt bounding walls of rock, 
which I take to be intrusive, imply that previously it was an 
area, perhaps originally filled with softer rocks and perhaps not, 
left unoccupied by such intruded bosses and ridges as form the 
neighboring highlands. It is because these ridges all have a 
north and south direction that the streams, ever eroding down 
between them, have also come finally to have north and south 
directions, though these may originally have been very different. 
* This part of the river was first mapped, with the great branches, on the 
Franquelin-DeMeulles map of 1686, when it is called by its ancient Micmac name 
of Ristigouchiche or “ Little Restigouche,” Miramichi being a word of unknown, 
and probably European origin. It was first surveyed in 1831 by Jacob Allen, 
whose map is the basis of all later ones, though the upper part was re-surveyed 
by H. M. G. Garden in 1837 and in 1867. The river has been studied geologically 
by Robb, as shown by his report to the Geological Survey of Canada in 1866-69, 
173, though Ells, Chalmers and others have occasional references thereto in their 
reports. The river is still wholly unsettled from the Forks down to Hayesville. 
Its branches have yielded vast quantities of lumber, and some time ago it afforded 
good sport in salmon fishing, in which connection it is mentioned by several 
writers, notably by Gordon, Alexander, and Vivian, who are cited in the footnote 
under Miramichi Lake. 
f A former different outlet for the waters of this basin is mentioned as probable 
by Chalmers in his report for 1902 (12, M). It is not improbable that the entire 
basin once emptied by way of the Foreston trough into the St. John, which would 
have made a river homologous with the Tobique. 
