﻿QQ EAINY LAKE. 



limestone fragments into the woods, and heaped 

 them round the stems of trees, some of which are 

 dying a lingering death ; while others, that have 

 been dead for many years, testify to their former 

 vitality, and the mode in which they have perished, 

 by their upright stems, crowned by the decorticated 

 and lichen-covered branches which protrude from 

 the stony bank. The analogy between the en- 

 tombment of living trees, in their erect position, to 

 the stems of sigillarice^ which rise through dif- 

 ferent layers in the coal-measures, is obvious.* 



The action of the ice in pushing boulders into 

 the woods was observed at an earlier period of 

 our voyage, and is noticed in the following terms 

 in my journal. "In the first part of our course 

 through Rainy Lake we followed a rocky channel, 

 which was in many places shallow, and varied in 

 breadth from a mile, down to a few yards. Some 

 long arms stretch out to the right and left of the 

 route, and particularly one to the eastward, into 

 which a fork of Sturgeon River is said to enter. 

 There is considerable current in these narrows. 



* If one of the spi-uce firs included in tlie limestone debris 

 had its top broken off, and a layer of mud were deposited over 

 all, we should have the counterpart of a sketch in Sir Henry 

 de la Beche's Manual (p. 407.). The thick and fleshy rhizomata 

 of the Calla jjahistris, marked with the cicatrices of fallen 

 leaves, and which are abundant in these waters, bear no very 

 distant resemblance to stigmarice. 



