﻿132 FORT CIIEPEWYAN. July 



The height of Lake Athabasca above the sea is 

 estimated by Captain Lefroy at six hundred feet.* 

 Its basin offers another instance of the softer strata 

 having been swept away at the line of their junc- 

 tion with the primitive rocks ; and a reference to 

 the map will show that there must have been an 

 evident connection between the cause of this ex- 

 cavation and that of Wollaston and Deer's Lakes, 

 belonging to the Missinipi River system. f Wol- 

 laston Lake is said to supply a river at one end, 

 which falls into Athabasca Lake, and one at the 

 other, which joins the Missinipi, which, if correct, is 

 not a common occurrence in hydrography, though 

 one or two instances of the kind, in seasons of flood, 

 have been alluded to in the preceding pages. 



Much of the country in the immediate vicinity 

 of Chepewyan is composed of rounded knolls of 

 granite, nearly destitute of soil, and many of them 

 smooth and polished. These rocks extend along 

 the north shore of the lake ; and the eminences 

 rise in the interior in a confused manner, one over 



* Eight months of observations with the boiling-water ther- 

 mometer by this officer, give an elevation of 468 feet, excluding 

 two observations on which he could not rely. This being, 

 however, in his opinion too low, he assigns the altitude men- 

 tioned in the text, after a review of his entire body of observa- 

 tions in various parts of the country, and checking one by 

 another. 



■j" See Appendix. 



