CHAP. xiv. THE BURNT COUNTRY. 



numerous and large the farther we ascended, until we 

 came to Ashwanipi. 



Embarking again in our canoes, we paddled slowly 

 against the stream ; but it was dispiriting work. The river 

 reflected the black banks, the dead spruce stretched their 

 bare arms wildly in the air ; huge blocks of gneiss, twenty 

 feet in diameter, lay in the channel or on the rocks which 

 here and there pierced the sandy tract through which the 

 river flowed ; while on the summits of mountains and along 

 the crests of hill-ranges they seemed as if they had been 

 dropped like hail. It was not difficult to see that many of 

 these rock-fragments were of local origin, but others had 

 travelled far. From an eminence I could discover that 

 they were piled to a great height between hills 300 and 

 400 feet high, and from the comparatively sharp edges 

 of many, the parent rock could not have been far distant. 

 Although regretting that destructive fires should have so 

 changed the face of the landscape, I could not but rejoice 

 that their occurrence had been the means of displaying 



L */ O 



the astonishing character of this boulder-covered country. 

 But why all boulders ? Where is the clay which is 

 almost invariably associated more or less with travelled 

 rocks in other parts of the world ? It would have been 

 delightful to have lingered in the midst of such awful 

 ruin, and gone back in imagination to the infinite past, 

 striving to trace the history of those ' travelled rocks ' 

 which, I felt persuaded at the time, is not yet fully un- 

 derstood. The huge fellows, perched on the very edges 

 of the cliffs, so well seen against the clear sky, were par- 

 ticularly inviting. But we must hurry through this 

 desolate land, painting its picture on our memories and 



a 2 



