LAKE SUPERIOR. 57 



thin layers of chlorite, and injections of granite. Numbers of mar- 

 tins and barn-swallows {H. viridis and americana) frequent these 

 cliffs, and often a pair of screaming sparrow-hawks. Farther on, the 

 hills were burnt over for a great distance, showing rounded summits 

 of white scorched rock, the lichens and earth mostly washed off from 

 them, but the blackened tree-stems still upright. 



At Cape Choyye, where we encamped, the cliff conies boldly down 

 upon the lake, the rocks rising from the water to the height of three 

 hundred feet, with narrow chasms, sometimes vertical, sometimes 

 slightly inclined, and strewed all the way up with stones, like the 

 " slides " at the White Mountains. Beyond this it falls away into a 

 vast basin of green sloping hills, curving inland and then sweeping 

 out to rocky points beyond. The cliff, wherever the slope allows any 

 soil to rest, is covered with birches to its base, leaving room for a wide 

 slope of debris, and a beach that rises in five terraces, the lower one 

 falling steeply to the water some twenty feet, showing that it alone 

 can be connected with the present level of the lake, and that the 

 rest must belong'to former epochs. 



At the water's edge were several unconnected masses of dark 

 red sandstone in place. One mass, which John, our " middleman," * 

 christened "fire-boat" (i. e. steamboat) we waded out to, in 

 order to avoid the flies while we bathed. Further on was a broad 

 sheet of the same rock, sloping gradually from below the water 

 up to the beach, full of " pot holes," worn into the rock by the action 

 of the waves on stones lodged in its crevices. One of these stones, 

 which was nearly round, might have weighed fifty pounds. Some 

 of the holes were three or four feet deep, and as many in diameter. 

 One was in the shape of a cloven foot ; others formed steps, the stone 

 having worn down at one side of the hole for a certain distance, 

 worked on horizontally awhile, and then downwards again. The outer 

 part of the rock, over which the water still washed at ordinary times, 

 was covered with winding channels, of only a few inches' depth, run- 

 ning off into the lake, formed apparently by the grating back and 

 forth of sand and small pebbles. 



July 1th. We were off by four this morning, but the wind 



* The bowman and steersman of a canoe are called the " bouts " and are usually 

 picked men, receiving higher pay than the " milieux." 

 5 



