1 847-49.] JOURNEY TO LAKE SUPERIOR. 15 



from Boston, three doctors, and myself. The rendez- 

 vous was a hotel at Albany, on the I5th of June, 1848. 

 On the same evening, Professor Agassiz began his daily 

 remarks on the region travelled over during the day, 

 giving a sort of itinerary lecture. He had brought with 

 him a piece of black canvas and some chalk, and deliv- 

 ered a regular address, on rocks polished and scratched 

 by old glaciers and erratic pebbles and boulders, trans- 

 ported at a very remote epoch, and called attention to 

 the deposits of the red rocks of the Connecticut valley, 

 as well as to the vegetation of Massachusetts. 



It was a very original and unique summer natural 

 history school ; for Agassiz never repeated it, although 

 he said emphatically that he would do so every summer. 

 But circumstances were stronger than his desire ; and 

 with the exception of a rather limited excursion to the 

 Adirondacks, the Lake Superior expedition remains his 

 only scientific exploration into the interior of North 

 America. To be sure, he made several other explora- 

 tions on the Atlantic coast, in Maine, the White Hills, 

 Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Florida, and created 

 a summer school at the island of Penekeese, as we shall 

 see ; but he never made another scientific tour similar 

 to the Lake Superior excursion of 1848. 



The tour extended through Niagara Falls, Lakes Erie 

 and Huron, with researches on the islands of Mackinaw 

 and St. Joseph, at the rapids of Sault Ste. Marie, and on 

 the whole northern shore of Lake Superior. In birch- 

 bark canoes, containing three, four, or even five per- 

 sons, besides three boatmen each, every feature of the 

 unsafe and sometimes dangerous shores was explored, 



