﻿164 GEOLOGY OF THE BANK OF THE RIVER. Jult, 



wider parts of the river the coast is shelving, 

 and not easily approached, in boats, from the 

 shallowness of the water ; but in the narrower 

 places the beach is steep, and the channel is full 

 of boulders. In the few spots where sections of 

 the strata are visible, a bituminous shale, con- 

 taining many fragments of the small pteropodous 

 shell Tentaculites Jlssurella, indicates the formation 

 to be the same with that on the Athabasca River 

 and Slave Lake, which has been said above to be 

 probably the Marcellus shale. Between the old 

 fort and Hare-skin River, the basis of the bank is 

 formed of a greyish green slate-clay, which, under 

 the influence of the weather, breaks into scales like 

 wack^, and at last forms a tenacious clay. The 

 whole banks of the river seem to belong to a shale 

 formation ; but from the want of induration of the 

 beds, they have crumbled into a slope more or less 

 steep, and the capping of sand, clay, and boulders 

 has fallen down and covered the declivity. On the 

 south, a long even rising ground, named the Trout 

 Mountain, which runs parallel to the river at a dis- 

 tance of from ten to twenty miles, is visible at in- 

 tervals the whole Avay ; and a similar but higher 

 range, named the Horn Mountain, exists on the 

 north. 



Of the composition of these eminences, I have 

 no information ; but I suspect, from the evenness 



