﻿126 GEOLOGY OF RIVER'S BANK. July, 



and bison, moose deer, and other game, are said to 

 resort to it in numbers. 



At the deserted post named Pierre au Calumet, 

 cream-coloured and white limestone cliffs are 

 covered by thick beds of bituminous sand. Below 

 this there is a bituminous cliff, in the middle of 

 which lies a thick bed of the same white earth 

 which I had seen higher up the river in contact 

 with the limestone, and following the undulations 

 of its surface. 



A few miles further on, the cliffs for some 

 distance are sandy, and the different beds contain 

 variable quantities of bitumen. Some of the lower 

 layers were so full of that mineral as to soften in 

 the hand, while the upper strata, containing less, 

 were so cemented by iron as to form a firm dark- 

 brown sandstone of much hardness. The cliff is, 

 in most places, capped by sand containing boulders 

 of limestone. One very bituminous bed, carefully 

 examined with the microscope, was found to 

 consist, in addition to the bitumen, of small grains 

 of transparent quartz, unmixed with other rock, 

 but enclosing a few minute fragments of the pearly 

 lining of a shell. A similar bed in another locality 

 contained, besides the quartz, many scales of mica. 

 The whole country for many miles is so full of 

 bitumen that it flows readily into a pit dug a few 

 feet below the surface. 



