﻿BOULDERS. 67 



The first expanse of water we traversed is six 

 miles across, and tlie second is fully wider. They 

 are connected by a rocky channel, on whose shores 

 many boulders are curiously piled up eight or ten 

 feet above the rocks on which they rest. Other 

 boulders lie in lines among the trees near the 

 shore. They have been thrust up, many of them 

 very recently, by the pressure of the ice, since the 

 channel is too narrow for the wind to raise waves 

 powerful enough to move such stones." 



The granite and gneiss which form the east 

 shore of Lake Winipeg strike off at its north-east 

 corner, and, passing to the north of Moose Lake, 

 go on to Beaver Lake, where the canoe-route again 

 touches upon them. At some distance to the west- 

 ward of them the Saskatchewan, which is the prin- 

 cipal feeder of Lake Winipeg, flows through a flat 

 limestone country, which is full of lakes, the re- 

 ticulating branches of the river, and mud-banks: 

 it has in fact all the characters of a delta, thousrh 

 the divisions of the stream unite into one channel 

 before entering the lake. This flat district extends 

 nearly to the forks of the river, above which the 

 prairie lands commence. Pine Island Lake, Muddy 

 Lake, Cross Lake, and Cedar Lake, where the 

 boats were arrested by ice in 1848, are dilata- 

 tions of the Saskatchewan, and when the water 

 rises a very few feet, the whole district is flooded ; 



F 2 



