3H 
BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
a subject of the greatest interest, to which I shall return in a future 
note. 
In these easy portage routes, moreover, we have an excellent 
example of the correlation which exists between physiography and 
history. It was, for instance, the great ease of connection between 
the St. John waters and the Penobscot, and through the latter with 
other rivers to the southward, which allowed of those sudden and 
deadly forays of our Indians against the New England settlements, 
which in turn led to the voyages of reprisal by Church and others 
which play so large a part in the early history of the province. 
33. — The Physiographic History of the Nepisiguit River. 
In the whole of the attractive science of physiography, there is no 
subject of greater importance or interest than the changes which river 
valleys undergo in the course of their evolution. Rivers are forever 
extending their basins and moving their watersheds, while frequently 
they capture other rivers. Hence it comes about that some rivers are 
composites of two or more streams originally separate. 
A river with a simple uneventful history would possess a fairly 
direct general course, a drainage basin of somewhat regular outline, 
and a valley increasing in width and decreasing in slope from source 
to mouth. Very different from this is the Nepisiguit. Twice in its 
course it bends permanently at right angles ; it has a remarkably 
irregular drainage basin, and a valley which, through most of its 
extent, lessens in breadth and increases in slope towards its mouth. 
Such a river must have had a complicated history, and it is, I believe,, 
a composite of four different river-systems. The evidence for this 
view will now be briefly presented, as worked out during the two 
trips I have made along its entire length. 
The Nepisiguit shows four very distinct portions (see accompanying 
map), first, the lakes at its source and its upper valley to Silver 
Brook ; second, the portion thence to below Indian Palls, scenically by 
far the finest part of the river ; third, the portion thence to Nepisiguit 
Brook ; and fourth, the part thence to the mouth It will be con- 
venient to consider these separately. 
The Nepisiguit Lakes are about 1,000 feet above mean sea level, 
and stand about 150 feet above the Nictor Lakes, with which they are 
