102 LAKE SUPERIOR. 



interruptedly to the water. The distance to the top of the bank 

 seemed trifling, but once embarked we found it a very severe tug, for 

 the average slope being 30 to 31 and the sand very loose, we slip- 

 ped back at each step nearly as much as we advanced. The height of 

 the plateau above the river here is not less than a hundred feet, and 

 the bank seemed to be composed of mere sand and gravel, hori- 

 zontally stratified. Sitting clown at the top to recover our breath, 

 we had before us an extensive view over the forest, through which 

 the river opened a long lane northward and seemed to expand be- 

 yond into a lake. At this spot we struck a trail leading to some 

 works opened a year or two since near the Falls. The supposed 

 copper, however, proving to be iron pyrites, they were speedily 

 abandoned. 



We had little difficulty now in reaching our place of destination, 

 and came out of the forest upon a chasm of nearly vertical slate rocks, 

 on a level again with the river, which comes in from the northward 

 in a mass of rapids and little preliminary cascades, and falls in one 

 sheet fifty or sixty feet into the chasm, a sort of gigantic well-hole, 

 its sides black and savage with the splintered edges of the slate- 

 rock, and so steep and even overhanging that we could not from 

 any position get a view of the bottom. Below, the stream turns 

 sharply to the left and rushes out through a deep gorge not more 

 than five or six yards wide at the bottom. From below the gorge 

 there is a very wild and picturesque view of the river boiling out 

 from between overhanging rocks. 



On our way back we followed the miners' trail all the way to the 

 lake, coming out about a mile to the eastward of our camp. In 

 our course we had diverged considerably from the river, and found 

 the ground much more open, the trees scattered so much that we 

 sometimes had difficulty in tracing the line which was " spotted" 

 or scored upon them ; the ground dry and lichenous. We descend- 

 ed to the lake by a succession of well-marked terraces of large rough 

 pebbles, and then through thickets and over irregular broken rocks 

 in piles smoothed by a treacherous covering of moss. 



In the evening the Professor made the following remarks upon 

 the terraces and the drift formation about the lake : 



