﻿332 DISMAL LAKES. Sept. 



night, and of other remarkable places on the route 

 between Great Bear Lake and the Coppermine 

 River, by the aneroid barometer ; but that instru- 

 ment during the journeys underwent such a change, 

 that no reliance could be placed on its indications, 

 when they were compared with those of the barome- 

 ter at Fort Confidence. The same inconvenience, 

 however, did not materially affect observations 

 made on it at short intervals of time ; and in this 

 way the brow of the hill to the south of the creek 

 was ascertained to be six hundred and seventy feet 

 above the stream. 



Onwards from the level of this brow the country 

 is a gently undulated plain, which is bounded on 

 the south at the distance of a feAV miles by an even 

 range of hills two or three hundred feet high, and 

 far to the north by the Coppermine Hills, which 

 Lieutenant Kendall and I crossed in 1826, as men- 

 tioned in the narrative of Sir John Franklin's 

 second overland journey. A range of lakes, named 

 by Mr. Simpson the Dismal Lakes, lies between 

 these hills and our line of route. They are skirted 

 by broken belts of wood, but the rest of the country 

 is quite naked, the few dwarf trees that exist on 

 the plain being concealed in the depressions of the 

 water-courses of the small rivulets. 



The comfortable supper of venison, a sound 

 night's rest in an encampment where nothing was 



