﻿312 RAE RIVER. Sept. 



of three or four miles on the north shore of Back's 

 Inlet, their faces being to the southward, and their 

 line of direction or strike nearly due east and west. 

 At Cape Kendall the basalt is obscurely columnar, 

 and rests on a bed of compact felspar, containing 

 minute grains of a green mineral. At a cascade 

 in Rae River, ten miles above its mouth, walls 

 from eight to twenty feet high, of bluish-grey quartz 

 rock in thin layers, hem in the stream. Salmon and 

 other fish ascend a shelving shoot of the cascade. At 

 this place Mr. Rae discovered, among the limestone 

 and quartz rock, layers of asparagus-stone, or 

 apatite (phosphate of lime), thin beds of soap-stone, 

 and some nephrite, or jade, — a group of minerals 

 which belongs to primitive formations ; and from 

 the similarity of the various rocks associated in this 

 quarter to those occurring at Pigeon River, and 

 other parts on the north shore of Lake Superior, I 

 am inclined to consider that the two deposits 

 belong to the same geological era, both being more 

 ancient than the silurian series. Neither Mr. Rae 

 nor I discovered any organic remains in the lime- 

 stone. 



Among the Eskimos here encamped we recog- 

 nised two mentioned by Mr. Simpson, one having a 

 wen on his forehead, and the other being a very old 

 man who walked on crutches. The kind treatment 

 and presents they received from Messrs. Dease and 



