﻿152 GREAT SLAVE LAKE. Jult, 



better success, as far as sleep was concerned, than on 

 the preceding night. During the day the sun's rays 

 felt intensely warm ; and the puffs of northerly 

 wind blew as hot as if they had passed over the 

 deserts of Arabia. At midnight a strong contrary 

 wind springing up, compelled us to anchor until 

 half-past 2 a.m. on the 17th, when we again took 

 to the oars, and entered Great Slave Lake at 7 

 in the morning. 



Like the Athabasca Eiver, the Slave River joins 

 its lake through a delta of low, well- wooded, alluvial 

 islands, by many channels, having a spread of more 

 than twenty miles. Near the easternmost, which is 

 named John's River {Riviere a Jean)^ is Stony 

 Island, a naked mass of granite, rising lifty or 

 sixty feet above the water ; and beyond that, to 

 the eastward, the banks of the lake are wholly 

 primitive. In the vicinity of the westernmost 

 channel of the delta, and from thence to the efflux 

 of the Mackenzie, the whole southern shore of the 

 lake is limestone, associated with a bituminous 

 shale, and belonging, as well as can be ascertained 

 from its fossils, to the Erie division of the New 

 York system, which includes the Marcellus shales, 

 and is referred by English geologists to the carbo- 

 niferous series. In the small channel which divides 

 Moose-deer Island from the point of the bay on 

 which the present Fort Resolution stands, many 



