56 LAKE SUPEKIOR. 



July Qth. Weather calm and overcast. Stopped to breakfast at 

 the mouth of a river much like the last. Hearing the noise of rapids, 

 some of us made our way up the stream until we came in sight of 

 the fall, but the musquitoes were so unendurable that we hastened 

 back. 



As the day advanced the wind rose, and gave the bateau an opportu- 

 nity to use her sails, but only for a short time, speedily coming ahead. 

 The prospect in front of us was a noble one, lofty headlands rising one 

 beyond the other until fading away in the distance. The shore, which 

 had continued to present an uninterrupted ridge three or four hun- 

 dred feet in height, becomes more abrupt and broken about Cape 

 Gargantua, with deep chasms from decomposed dikes. The aspect 

 of the coast here is exceedingly picturesque, steep broken points and 

 rocky islands and islets generally sloping towards the north, and often 

 worn smooth, grooved and scratched on the north side. We passed 

 inside of one cliff, that showed a vertical face of at least two hundred 

 feet in height, dyed with an infinite variety of colors by the weather 

 and by the lichens, whose brilliancy was increased by the moist atmos- 

 phere. One orange-colored lichen in particular, was conspicuous in 

 large patches. Here and there a tuft of birch aided, by the contrast 

 of its bright green, the delicate gradation of tints on the gray rock. 

 On a little strip of beach at the foot of a cliff in a cove called Agate 

 Bay, we picked up an abundance of very pretty agates and other 

 interesting minerals. At lunch-time we stopped at a curious rock, 

 part of which seems as if cut away nearly to the level of the water, 

 while the rest rises steeply to the height of thirty or forty feet. One of 

 the common Indian legends about the deluge and the creation of the 

 earth attaches to this rock, and the Indians still regard it with venera- 

 tion. According to one of the men, " the Evil Spirit," (N. B. The 

 gods of the aborigines here as elsewhere are to their Christianized 

 descendants nothing but the devil, the elder spirit of all mythologies.) 

 after making the world, changed himself and his two dogs into stone 

 at this place, and the Indians never pass without " preaching a 

 sermon " and leaving some tobacco. Even our half-breeds, though 

 they laughed very freely about it, yet I believe left some tobacco on 

 the top. This rock is remarkable in a mineralogical point of view. 

 It is an amygdaloid porphyry containing asbestos and quartz, with 



