4 
The mountainous and inhospitable character of the interior of Gaspe, 
especially along its northern side, accounts for its backwardness in develop- 
ment. The fringe of settlements along the St. Lawrence depends on fishing- 
in the summer and lumbering in the winter, though most families cultivate 
a few fields and do some farming. On the milder southern side farming 
is of much more importance and there are still some tracts of excellent 
land not yet taken up. 
TIMBER 
The larger villages of Gaspe, such as Matane and Gaspe Basin, depend 
chiefly on the lumber trade, spruce and balsam furnishing most of the 
logs, though a little pine occurs also. White birch is of importance in 
places as a source of spool wood; and sugar maple is found in most of the 
lower valleys. 
The size of the timber diminishes with the altitude and above 2,500 
feet it is not suitable for lumber, though available for pulpwood. Above 
3,500 feet, spruce and balsam make up the forest, the trees being small 
and scrubby; and the exposed mountain tops are either quite bare or are 
covered with low bushes very difficult to force a way through. 
STRUCTURAL FEATURES 
That Gaspe is a part of the Appalachian system has long been recognized, 
and on its southern side typical Appalachian folds have been described. The 
northern side, though showing distinct folds in places, has been much more 
profoundly affected by thrust faulting. The extent of the movement of older 
rocks over later ones has not 3 m t been worked out, and probably will be difficult 
to work out, because of the large amount of crushing and tilting of the beds 
that has taken place. The total compression of the region thus caused may, 
however, be as great as that so brilliantly demonstrated by McConnell in the 
eastern ranges of the Rockies, the classic example of thrust faulting in Canada. 
The front of the great block of the earth’s crust wffiich was driven against 
the resistant Archsean continent to the north was not straight, as in the case of 
the Rockies, but convex, as shown by the direction of Shickshock mountains 
and by the strike of the rocks between the mountains and the St. Lawrence. 
More than eighty observations for strike and dip were made at points along 
the north coast, with the result of finding almost every possible orientation 
but with a prevalent direction north of east at the western end of the 
peninsula, east and west toward the centre, and south of east toward its 
extremity. In other words the average strike of the beds is parallel to the 
coast and to the mountains in the different parts of northern Gaspe. 
The dips recorded average above 45 degrees towards the mountains; 
i.e. southeast, south, and southwest, as one goes from the west end of the 
peninsula to the east end; and only four dips were to the north. A con- 
siderable number were, however, noted as vertical or nearly so. Planea 
of thrust faulting are well displayed in several places, one of the best 
observed being on a shore cliff near Riviere-iUla-Martre (Plate I). 
Although there is a striking arc-like arrangement of the structures of 
the peninsula on its northern side the geologic elements of the southwestern 
limb of the arc differ greatly from those of the centre or of the southeastern 
limb. The core of the mountains to the southwest consists of a baud of 
schists considered to be Archsean, and the central and southeastern parts, 
so far as known, include nothing older than the Cambrian. 
