CHAP. xir. THE ' OUTLOOK NEAR TROUT LAKE. 181 



and through lakes to the Height of Land ; Ashwanipi lies 

 just on the other side. 1 



Trout Lake is 1,548 feet above the sea, and about a mile 

 and a half broad. It is very shallow and contains nume- 

 rous fragments of rocks, and abounds in trout : hence its 

 name. But the chief point of interest which attaches to 

 it arises from the fact, that it is the lake where the two 

 trails to the coast meet ; and no doubt in former times it 

 was a place of some importance to the Indians, and a well- 

 known rendezvous, where food could always be obtained, 

 and an outlook from which they could distinguish the 

 telegraphic fires by night or smoke by day made by 

 their friends to give notice of a successful hunt, of the 

 welcome neighbourhood of caribou, or of the dreaded 

 approach of an enemy. Looking south from the mountain 

 where we were sitting, surrounded by bleached bones of 

 deer, the remains of former feasts, we saw the jagged crests 

 of the range of the Top of the Eidge projected clearly 

 against the blue sky, or wrapped in clouds which rapidly 

 passed away to be replaced by others coming swiftly from 

 the west. Some of the lakes of Cold-water Eiver valley 

 were visible like distant ponds, and glistening patches of 

 snow shone brightly on the north side of the mountains, 

 although July was at hand. 



But the colours of the rocks were most striking, and 

 contrasted with the gloomy green of the spruce forest and 

 the narrow strips of birch which intersect them in the 

 valley. Out of those dark solitudes rise the purple moun- 

 tains in grand walls of labradorite, or sloping away to the 

 sky in cold masses of gneiss ; near at hand are dwarf trees 

 growing from crevices in the rock, but with forms of 



