U B R A R V 



LAKE SUPERIOR, 



NARRATIVE 



CHAPTER I. 



BOSTON TO THE SAULT DE ST. MARIE. 



WE left Boston on the 15th of June, 1848, at 8 A.M., in the cars 

 for Albany. The weather was warm, and we were well powdered 

 with dust, when, at about 6 P.M., we arrived at the ferry on 

 the Hudson. The Western appears to be more exposed to this 

 nuisance of dust than the other railroads, probably from the many 

 cuts through banks of crumbling clay and gravel. We were inter- 

 ested to hear that a contrivance for watering the track had been 

 proposed and successfully experimented on. 



At the hotel we found the New York members of our party, which 

 now numbered eighteen. After tea we assembled in a large room up 

 stairs, where Prof. Agassiz made the following remarks on the region 

 over which we had passed : 



" The soil of this tract is of great variety, but everywhere presents this 

 feature : that its surface is covered with loose materials, all erratic, (or be- 

 longing to rocks whose natural position is distant from the points where 

 these fragments are found,) and all evidently transported at a very remote 

 epoch. These erratics are of all sizes, from sand to large rocks ; the larger 

 ones angular ; the smaller ones more or less rounded, scratched and polished, 

 as are also the surfaces of the rocks on which they rest. These polished 

 rocks have been noticeable to-day, especially to the westward of Worcester. 

 These marks we shall find still more strongly shown as we proceed north- 

 ward. 



" We have nowhere seen unaltered rocks, but exclusively those of a 

 granitic character, metamorphosed from originally stratified formations by the 



