﻿1848. OF river's BANK. 125 



and tenacity. Some of the beds above this stone 

 are nearly plastic, from the quantity of mineral 

 pitch they contain. Roots of living trees and her- 

 baceous plants push themselves deep into beds 

 highly impregnated with bitumen ; and the forest 

 where that mineral is most abundant does not 

 suffer in its growth. 



The shale banks are discontinued for a space in 

 the neighbourhood of Berens' House, where thin 

 beds of limestone come to the surface, and form 

 cliffs twenty or thirty feet high at the water's 

 edge. 



Further down the river still, or about three 

 miles below the Red River, where there was once 

 a trading establishment, now remembered as La 

 vieux Fort de la Riviere Rouge, a copious spring of 

 mineral pitch issues from a crevice in a cliff com- 

 posed of sand and bitumen. It lies a fcAV hundred 

 yards back from the river in the middle of a thick 

 wood. Several small birds were found suffocated 

 in the pitch. 



Soon after passing this spot, we saw right ahead, 

 but on the left bank of the river, a ridge of land 

 named the " Bark Mountain," looking blue in the 

 distance, being fully sixty miles off. From its 

 name, I conclude that the canoe birch abounds on 

 it. It is the length of a spring day's march, or 

 about thirty miles, distant from Fort Chepewyan ; 



