56 
limestone. Finally, the Black Cape limestones are involved with marine 
lava flows that end in land flows of very great thickness, making the sea- 
shore east of Black cape for more than one-half mile. This section was 
first made known by Ells, and in his report of 1883 occurs the following: 
About one mile east of Little Cascapedia river, the Silurian strata 
.... “come out boldly upon the shore and form a cliff of moderate elevation for nearly 
2 miles, or until they meet the intrusive traps of Black cape. At their western 
exposure the rocks are limestones, hard and bluish.” 1 
It should be noted that Ells regarded these basalts as intrusive, but 
since the traps are in many places full of amygdules, and in flowing over 
the sea-floor picked up some of it, it is plain that they are extrusives. 
They will be described later. 
Dr. John M. Clarke on his travels to Perc6 has many times seen the 
strata of Black cape, and in 1913 he gave a generalized statement of .the 
Black Cape section in Guide Book No. 1, “Excursion in Eastern Quebec 
and the Maritime Provinces/’ published by the Geological Survey, 
Canada, for the International Geological Congress at its Toronto meeting. 
He says: 
“The rock section [of Black cape] is of special interest for its extraordinary develop- 
ment of the Silurian, the shore section from the mouth of the [Little Cascapedia] river to 
Black cape itself displaying an unduplicated thickness of fully 7,000 feet of strata. . . 
They stand at high angles to the horizon, usually dipping 60 degrees to 80 degrees south- 
east. . . The eroded edges of the strata are overlain elsewhere in the region by the 
red sands and conglomerates of the Bonaventure formation, and there are several consider- 
able fissures in the [lowest] Silurian limestones of this section which are filled in with red 
sand derived from the overlying beds. All these occurrences indicate land exposure 
of the Silurian during all of the early and middle Devonian time. 
“The base of the section at the west begins with greenish, highly nodular lime shales, 
very compact and heavy bedded, weathering out into irregular and gnarled shapes. These al- 
ternate with more highly calcareous shales and compact limestones of red and ochreous tints. 
These compact limestones contain Stricklandinias of great size (<S. gaspiensis Billings) 
and in great number. . . Throughout the lower beds the rest of the fauna is largely 
of Stromatoporoids and corals which occur in enormous quantity and great diversity.” 
Above the lower limestones that terminate where Mr. Howatson’s 
farm begins, the greater part of the higher Silurian 
. . . “continues sandy to near the end of the section which terminates at the volcanic mass 
forming Black cape, but toward the top the sands become interlaminated with thin beds 
of volcanic ash, with red and purplish shale, and eventually calcareous and variegated 
beds succeed to these, becoming in places compact limebanks entirely constituted of the 
debris of fossils.” 
“The volcanic mass which forms Black cape itself and against which these upper 
strata abut presents a total sea-face of 4,600 feet, and within it are two notable inclusions 
or separate masses of Silurian strata. The first of these is in Macrae cove, 600 feet from 
the beginning or base of the intrusive, and the second at Lazy cove, one-third mile farther 
east. . . At Macrae cove the thickness of the sediments is 150 feet and in the narrower 
Lazy cove they are 75 feet. . . The volcanic cliff ends one-half mile beyond Lazy cove 
and at its termination the red conglomerates of the Bonaventure formation lie against it 
at an angle of 30 degrees”.* 
The senior author of the present paper had visited Black cape in 1905 
and 1913, and during the summer of 1923 both authors spent some days 
there studying the continuous and unrepeated sequence, which afforded 
a fine opportunity to check up results in the highly disturbed Port Daniel- 
Gascons region. 
i Geol. Surv., Canada, Rept. of Prog. 1880-81-82, pt. D, p. 13. 
* Twelfth Inter. Geol. Cong., Guide Book No. 1, pp. 110-112 (1913). 
